I recently interviewed Gregg Holzrichter, the VP of Marketing for Virsto Software, about two of his company's recently announced products: Virsto 2.0 for Hyper-V, and the first release of Virsto for VMware vSphere. Virsto hopes that these products will help IT administrators make more effective use of their storage by leveraging virtualization....
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Over the last decade or so, Microsoft's System Center product family has grown to resemble that over-achieving acquaintance we all know who suffers from a hopelessly complex personal life. ...
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VMware has updated two of their least expensive virtualization products, announcing this morning that VMware Fusion 4 and VMware Workstation 8 are now shipping and available for purchase....
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With the largest VMworld ever as a backdrop, Symantec and VMware have announced that they'll partner to develop new desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) offerings that will include features designed to ease virtual desktop deployment, simplify management, and enhance security. According to Symantec, these new solutions will utilize Symantec Endpoint Protection, the Altiris Client Management Suite, VMware vShield, VMware View, VMware vCloud Director, and VMware vSphere 5 to deliver a "secure, manageable and cost-effective DaaS solution" that leverages "on-premise Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) with the efficiencies and scalability of cloud computing." In a statement released in support of the agreement, VMware Vice President and General Manager of End-User Computing Chris Young touted the integrated aspects of these new DaaS solutions. "VMware is committed to enabling the delivery of IT as secure, cloud-based services to end users," Young said. "Through our expanded partnership with Symantec, we can deliver Desktop-as-a-Service solutions for enterprise organizations and service providers that offer the security, management and compliance customers require – all baked directly into a virtual desktop infrastructure and accessible to end users regardless of device or location." Managing virtual desktops and defending against the ongoing deluge of security threats can be an arduous for many administrators, and Symantec's approach could have appeal to admins who want to streamline their workflow and manage their virtual infrastructure more efficiently. Symantec and VMware haven't provided any names, availability, or pricing information on this new DaaS product yet, but Symantec's statement did indicate that the solution will leverage vCloud and vSphere to provision and manage virtual desktops, while Symantec's Client Management Suite would manage virtual desktops and applications post-deployment. VMware vShield and Symantec Endpoint...
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The relationship between Microsoft and VMware at VMworld has always been a stormy one. As the primary competitor to VMware in the virtualization space, Microsoft has historically had a limited presence at VMware's premier virtualization event, with modest booths and meeting rooms stuffed into the corners of the VMworld expo hall. Citrix and Microsoft had a very public spat with VMware about their poor booth locations and other grievances before VMworld 2009, although relations between the three companies have improved somewhat since then. (See our visual chronology of Microsoft's VMware presence at the end of this post.) Microsoft's limited floor presence at VMworld continues this year, with the company consigned to a modest meeting room in the corner of the expo floor, where I joined Windows IT Pro technical directors Mike Otey and Sean Deuby to meet with Edwin Yuen, Microsoft’s Director of Cloud and Virtualization Strategy. We all joked about Microsoft's spartan meeting facilities, which rattled and shook when heavy equipment used by VMworld event staff rumbled by. Microsoft and the Private Cloud With the clamor of heavy moving equipment as a backdrop, we asked Yuen about Microsoft's cloud strategy and what Microsoft's reactions were to VMware's product announcements at the show. When it comes to competing with VMware, Yuen said that one of Microsoft's most powerful arguments is the price differential between comparable private cloud solutions from VMware. "The economics of the private cloud have changed," Yuen said. "We're really at an inflection point now for private cloud adoption." Yuen said that Microsoft's private cloud efforts were being well-received by customers, and that pricing was the most-cited factor behind adoption of Microsoft's private cloud solutions. Yuen pointed to a Microsoft private cloud white paper that outlines several scenarios where small and medium businesses could save 5- and 6-figures by deploying Microsoft...
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VMware CEO Paul Maritz welcomed close to 19,000 attendees during his late afternoon keynote at VMworld 2011 here in Las Vegas. Preceded by several minutes of TRON-like 3D animation depicting virtualization and the cloud, Maritz used the 90-minute keynote to explain VMware's vision towards "IT as a service" and to introduce a number of new products, including vCloud Data Director and updated version of several of their existing products, including the formal roll-out of VMware vSphere 5.0....
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I met with Veeam at TechEd last week, and their message was simple: Hyper-V support is coming this year.
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I met with HP last week at TechEd, and Allen Tiffany, the manger of HP’s thin client product team, showed off the company’s advances in thin client technology....
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XenDesktop is a desktop virtualization and application virtualization platform. It's aimed at letting users access their desktops and applications anywhere, on any network. It also addresses the identity challenges that come with virtualization....
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vWorkspace manages VDI and Terminal Services-style desktop virtualization from one database. In addition to management, it provides features such as automation, user experience enhancements, and WAN latency compensation....
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