Virtualization News Desk

SYS-CON's 2nd International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in NYC: Call for Papers Attracts Record Number of Submissions

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:00:00 EST

SYS-CON Events, producer of the 2nd International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo, to be held March 22-24, 2009, in New York City, announces that its Call for Papers has been attracting a record number of submissions. Topics proposed include all aspects of providing or using massively scalable IT-related capabilities as a service using Internet technologies. Financial analysts estimate that by 2011 the volume of Cloud Computing market opportunity will amount to $160BN, including $95N in business and productivity apps (e-mail, office, CRM, etc.) and $65BN in online advertising. Help plant your company's flag in the fast-expanding business opportunity that is The Cloud: submit your speaking proposal today!

Virtualization Expo: Workspace Virtualization

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:00:00 EST

Desktop virtualization and application virtualization technologies are increasingly used throughout enterprises to reduce hardware costs, improve manageability, and ease deployment of corporate software assets to PCs. Desktop virtualization enables deployment of a full desktop environment with applications in it to PCs, and lets them run on a remote server. Using it IT can achieve greater efficiencies by centralizing PC resources.

SAP Presented at SYS-CON's 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 19:15:00 EST

In his virtualization session on Nov. 21 at the 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo in San Jose, CA, Roland Wartenberg, SAP's director of virtualization strategy, discussed the supported virtualization solutions provided by partners of SAP's virtualization ecosystem. Simply running an SAP solution in a virtualized environment is not enough.

Exclusive Q&A with Rob Weltman, Director of Grid Services, Yahoo!

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 15:00:00 EST

Cloud-based tools, including large-scale data-intensive computing as offered by Hadoop, are key to the rise and rise of cloud computing. In this wide-ranging Exclusive Q&A with SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal, the Director of Grid Services at Yahoo! - Rob Weltman - explains how analyzing and learning from ever-growing volumes of business data is essential to continuously refining and improving service offerings.

Distributed Computing and Virtualization: Bring on the Cloud!

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:45:00 EST

Most Cloud providers let you run apps of any kind on their compute, store, and connectivity resources. Salesforce, which up until now limited themselves to their own apps for SFA and CRM, has declared itself a Cloud Computing company. In their case they really are a Cloud Computing Company, but I am going to try to outline this whole phenomenon and discussion in terms that I can relate to. Perhaps you can to.

Virtualization 2.0 Is All About Manageability

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:45:00 EST

With virtual infrastructures becoming prevalent in production environments and often supporting critical business services, the second phase of virtualization is here. In Virtualization 2.0, it's all about manageability. The shifting emphasis to business service management rather than just virtual machine management means that it is no longer sufficient to simply monitor the uptime or resource usage of virtual machines and servers and believe that the entire IT infrastructure is working well.

IDC Chief Analyst Predicts Cloud Computing Boom Despite Downturn

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 12:30:00 EST

IDC recently predicted that cloud computing would account for 9 or 10 percent of IT spending by 2012, up from the 4 percent allocated in 2008. "That's a conservative forecast made before the Dow tanked," Gens commented last week. "So that's going to accelerate cloud offerings from the big vendors," he added.

rPath Broadens Its Pitch

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 10:04:00 EST

Besides SUSE and its own brand of Linux, rPath is now supporting the Ubuntu and CentOS Linux operating systems as part of its rBuilder and rPath Lifecycle Management Platform. The move broadens the start-up’s options for deploying and managing applications in traditional, virtualized and cloud environments. rBuilder is a build-and-release management system for creating virtual appliances and application images.

What's Really Industry Changing About Cloud Computing?

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 08:15:00 EST

This is an incredibly important time for the cloud computing area. What are some of the new directions in the massively parallel cloud computing space? I’ll mention four that I’m particularly interested in, that are exciting and challenging, and that I think will have a huge impact on the industry.

SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo: Show Report

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 07:35:00 EST

Overall, very exciting times, and a great event put together by the folks at SYS-CON! There was a lot of excitement and optimism throughout the event. As someone put it: cloud computing is about 700 days old. That means that there are a lot of arguments about definitions, and where things are going, and so on. And that also gives a lot of vibe and a lot of fresh community spirit.

Red Hat's Brian Stevens Explores the Evolution of the Cloud at 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 07:00:00 EST

"The days of Cloud 1.0 are here," stated Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens in his session this morning at SYS-CON’s Virtualization Conference & Expo, in San Jose. He discussed the evolution of the cloud, and how to build a cloud. Over the last five years, the open source community has turned its attention to virtualization, and Stevens discussed what has been achieved so far, and what is under development.

Cloud Power Panel at SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 22:00:00 EST

The future of cloud computing is all about lowering costs and getting the ability to easily move between service providers. At the Cloud Power Panel on Friday at the 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo in San Jose, CA, the power panelists – Songnian Zhou, CEO of Platform Computing; Thorsten von Eicken, CTO of RightScale; Peter Nickolov, President & CTO of 3tera; Erik Carlin, Sr. Cloud Architect, Mosso/Rackspace, and Steve Herrod, CTO, VMware – examined the risks and rewards of Cloud Computing for the enterprise.

Photo Album of the 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 21:45:00 EST

SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo attracted more than 40 sponsors and exhibitors with over 1,200 preregistered delegates. The three content-packed days emphasized value with a rich array of sessions led by exceptional speakers about the business and technical value of cloud computing.

Providing Maximum Efficiency with Virtualization Technologies

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:00:00 EST

Virtualization is actively being used by Sybase IT to help solve power/cooling issues as well as transform the datacenter into an environment that brings greater benefits to their customers, especially the engineering organization. Average CPU utilization was very low on physical servers and through virtualization this has improved considerably.

Business Continuity Planning for Maximizing Data Center Uptime

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

Next to ensuring the safety, health and well being of your employees, the next most important business continuity task is resuming business-critical operations. Keeping servers highly available is what likely keeps most data center managers up at night. There is a higher probability that most data centers will be affected by a virus, hardware failure, power failure or upgrade gone wrong than by a more disastrous weather-related event like wind, fire or rain.

Fedora 10 Out

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 15:45:00 EST

Fedora 10 is out and about. Fedora of course is Red Hat's freebie community OS and testbed for coming attractions in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. The new rev is supposed to have substantial virtualization improvements for remotely installing and managing storage provisioning and includes NetworkManager connection sharing so laptop users with Ethernet or mobile broadband connections can collaborate anywhere, anytime.

Cloud Computing Pioneer David Linthicum Launches Blue Mountain Labs

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:30:00 EST

David S. Linthicum, a well-known pioneer in the worlds of cloud computing and service-oriented architecture, has launched Blue Mountain Labs, a company equipped to take enterprises and technology vendors into the emerging world of cloud computing. Blue Mountain Labs uses a unique methodology called Cloudsizing to analyze their clients' business needs — thoroughly examining who they are and what they do—before they define a cloud computing solution or strategy that will work for their clients’ enterprises, large or small.

Pillar Data Systems' Application-Aware Profiles Compatible with Citrix Virtualization Platform

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 12:15:00 EST

As a member of the Citrix Ready Program, Pillar Data Systems has announced compatibility of its Application-Aware profiles with the Citrix Application Delivery Infrastructure. Today's news builds on a series of certifications Pillar has made with the delivery of its Axiom Storage systems, which are now listed in the Citrix Ready catalog for XenServer products.

Skytap Publishes ‘Top Ten Reasons Enterprises Will Accelerate Cloud Adoption with Virtual Labs in 2009’

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:46:00 EST

Skytap has announced the 'Top Ten Reasons Enterprises will Accelerate Cloud Adoption with Virtual Labs in 2009.' In 2008, the momentum behind cloud computing increased with many vendors announcing solutions, including Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure, Google AppEngine, and Rackspace Mosso. As enterprises finalize their budgets for 2009, many are now including cloud computing to achieve near-term cost reductions.

Cloud-Based Build and Test Automation Tool Now Available

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

Exist has announced the availability of Maestro S+, an extension to its open source build management platform, Maestro, fortified to run integrated testing using Selenium. Leveraging Exist's expertise in build automation and continuous integration tools such as Apache Maven and Apache Continuum, Maestro S+ provides solutions to connectivity across locations, slow overall build, test and release cycles and scalability issues.

Fedora 10 Lays Out Roadmap for Future of Open Source Computing with Virtualization Enhancements

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

The Fedora Project, a Red Hat sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration project, has announced the availability of Fedora 10, the latest version of its free open source operating system distribution. Fedora 10 features numerous leading-edge technologies and continues to lay the groundwork for derivative open source distributions throughout the enterprise.

IBM Launches New Cloud Computing Consulting and Implementation Services

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 22:00:00 EST

IBM has announced new cloud computing services to help businesses of all sizes take advantage of this increasingly attractive computing model. IBM is applying its industry-specific consulting expertise and established technology record to offer secure, practical services to companies in public, private and hybrid cloud models.

Amazon CTO Keynotes at Cloud Computing Conference & Expo

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:15:00 EST

In his Cloud Computing Keynote in San Jose, CA, on November 20th – entitled "A Head in the Cloud - The Power of Infrastructure as a Service" – the CTO of Amazon.com, Werner Vogels, discussed the many challenges when building a reliable, flexible architecture that can manage unpredictable behaviors of today's Internet business.

Capgemini Announces Cloud Computing Center of Excellence

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:15:00 EST

Capgemini has announced an agreement signed between Capgemini UK plc and Amazon Web Services, extending its Outsourcing portfolio with cloud computing services. Capgemini’s new Center of Excellence, focused on cloud computing, will help its enterprise clients take full advantage of integrating cloud computing into their IT and business strategy. Capgemini’s Cloud Computing Center of Excellence will initially have a team of Amazon Web Services-trained professionals located in North America, Europe and India to help clients evaluate and implement Amazon’s current offering; this will evolve as other provider’s cloud computing capabilities mature.

IBM to Validate Resiliency of Cloud Computing Infrastructures

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST

In a move that could spur the rise of the nascent computing model known as "cloud," IBM said it would introduce a program to validate the resiliency of any company delivering applications or services to clients in the cloud environment. As a result, customers can identify trustworthy providers that have passed a rigorous evaluation, enabling them to reap the business benefits of cloud services.

Enabling Desktop Virtualization in High-Risk Environments

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:00:00 EST

Server virtualization has moved well beyond the arena of early adopters and is an accepted solution to many of the challenges faced by IT organizations. However, desktop virtualization has not made the same inroads. Certainly, there have been some key uses for desktop virtualization, such as development and test, but there has not been broad penetration into the non-technical desktop market.

Citrix Survey Finds College Labs Looking Ahead to Desktop Virtualization

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 08:15:00 EST

A recent survey conducted by Citrix Systems revealed that virtual desktop delivery interests higher education information technology (IT) professionals looking for ways to optimize the computer lab. Seventy-six percent of 200 higher education IT professionals indicated an interest in adding virtual desktop delivery to their institution’s virtualization profile.

HP's Director of Virtualization at SYS-CON's 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo in Silicon Valley

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 03:15:00 EST

Nick van der Sweep, HP's Director of Virtualization and Insight Software ESS Infrastructure Software, gave an information-packed breakout session at SYS-CON's 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo last week in San Jose, California. He explained to delegates how to develop a virtualization strategy that will enable the transformation of a datacenter into a cost-effective, energy efficient and responsive IT environment that can dynamically adapt to the changing business requirements.

Microsoft’s Mike Neil Keynotes at SYS-CON's 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:15:00 EST

"Virtualization will help our customers be more agile and efficient," noted Mike Neil at SYS-CON’s Virtualization Conference & Expo, in San Jose, CA, "and there are three areas these companies are focused on." These areas are to drive costs down, increase efficiency, and using virtualization to provide new capabilities.

Symantec and Intel Present General Session at SYS-CON's 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:00:00 EST

With an ever increasing variety of physical and virtual endpoints, companies are rapidly facing the next big challenge – manageability. So stated Symantec's Brian Duckering and Intel's Chuck Brown in their general session on Friday at SYS-CON’s 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo held in San Jose, CA. In order to manage hybrid types of models, companies need to balance the datacenter with the needs of the users.

Mind Mapping in the Cloud

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:15:00 EST

Apple’s not the only one telling people to "Think Different." So is an outfit called Mindjet. It's into mind mapping, which isn't as chilling as it sounds. It's merely a way of brainstorming and diagramming non-linear thinking that actually goes back to Porphyry of Tyros in the third century. He used the technique to visualize the concept categories of Aristotle, which of course makes it alright then. But we digress.

Level 3 Selected to Support Pando Content Delivery Cloud

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 10:15:00 EST

Level 3 Communications has announced that it has been selected to provide caching and downloading services to Pando Networks. Pando will use Level 3's content delivery network (CDN) to support the delivery of rich media content for commercial customers. Level 3's caching and downloading services will enhance Pando's content delivery cloud platform and enable users to download and stream large media files, including full-screen high-definition (HD) video.

Intel Presents General Session at SYS-CON’s SOA World Conference & Expo

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:30:00 EST

"SOA evolves in a set of micro domains," stated Intel's Joshua Painter, as he examined the state of SOA practices at SOA World Conference & Expo, in San Jose, CA. Despite the many instances of SOA that are emerging within the global 2000 today, the ability to leverage common services and a common metadata layer in a secure and scalable manner is paramount, but rarely addressed.

Virtualization Expo: Cute Trick Saves Dell’s Bad News from Being Worse

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

At the end of one of the worst days in the history of Wall Street, when every metric ultimately reacted like acid eating through a thin plate of copper, Dell posted its third-quarter results, returning a surprise 9% increase in EPS on deflated revenues and net earnings apparently because of stock buybacks. The company made no quantitative forecast. It only said that it believes global end-user demand “will continue to be challenging” and that it would focus on optimizing “liquidity, profitability and growth,” particularly profitability.

Security Implications of Virtualization Platforms in the Virtual Data Center

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 05:00:00 EST

Referred to by many names – server virtualization, OS virtualization, kernel virtualization – virtual machine (VM) platforms, such as VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V, are typically the first forms of virtualization introduced to the data center. These technologies are becoming both less expensive and more accessible, making them attractive candidates to be the first virtual "guinea pigs" in the data center.

Amazon Launches CloudFront

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:00:00 EST

Amazon has launched an HTTP content delivery service (CDN) called CloudFront that works with its S3 cloud storage widgetry and EC2. It's now a public beta, having been privately tested the last couple few months. It's the stuff Amazon promised in September and may someday give the likes of Akamai and Limelight some bad nights if and when it gets more sophisticated and appeals to bigger accounts.

IBM Buys Transitive

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:45:00 EST

IBM is going to buy Transitive, the British cross-platform virtualization firm that salvaged legacy Macintosh programs and made Apple's move from IBM to Intel chips as graceful as a prima ballerina’s pirouette. Transitive is clever at running applications written for one kind of microprocessor and operating system on multiple platforms with little or no modification and could probably be made to run all legacy apps in virtualized form on a single hardware platform.

Symantec Announces Veritas Operations Services at Cloud Computing Conference & Expo

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:00:00 EST

Symantec has announced Veritas Operations Services, a new cloud computing-based online services platform to help organizations identify hidden risks in their data centers - improving service availability and increasing productivity of the operations staff. Veritas Installation Assessment and Veritas Storage Foundation Health Check are the first two services immediately available, providing an alternative to traditional reactive operations models and enabling IT organizations to perform prioritized, preventative maintenance using the latest known good configurations, best practices and data center risks. Symantec's new Operations Services proactively manages the storage and server environment to deliver rapid time to value and expands the Symantec portfolio to help organizations secure and manage their information.

CA & VMware to Integrate Management Solutions

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 01:00:00 EST

CA and VMware are going to jointly develop a management solution and, to start, have signed a deal to make CA Data Center Automation Manager interoperate with VMware Stage Manager. The joint solution is designed so enterprises and cloud service providers can seamlessly provision applications and resources from both corporate datacenter and service provider clouds.

Appistry to Conduct Cloud Survey at SYS-CON's 1st International Cloud Computing Conference & Expo

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:45:00 EST

Appistry announced findings from the first in a series of surveys the two organizations are conducting among CloudCamp participants. The inaugural Appistry/CloudCamp "Inside the Cloud" survey showed Amazon besting Google by a nearly two-to-one margin as the company expected to play the largest role in the future of cloud computing.