Year: 2004

“SoftGrid is perfect for Northeastern University’s complex heterogeneous IT environment,” said Richard E. Mickool, Executive Director of Information Services, Northeastern University. “We manage hundreds of applications, from high-end engineering software to multiple versions of the same word processor. All of them need to be available on our public desktops used by students and staff, which means we spend a tremendous amount of time regression testing each time we roll out a new application or patch. By taking advantage of SoftGrid’s application virtualization abilities, testing to make sure that one application does not break another is no longer needed. This means we can enable any user to go up to any computer on campus and get exactly the applications they need. SoftGrid addresses key issues we thought might never be solved.”

“Utility computing promises to help dynamic enterprises handle IT complexities more easily and cost-effectively. SoftGrid Enterprise can make this possible for applications with a new approach to a virtualized environment that addresses the real challenges of large, global organizations in a simple, reliable way,” said Dan Kusnetzky, Vice President, System Software Research, IDC.

SoftGrid Enterprise Edition

Without any re-programming, SoftGrid transforms Windows applications from products that must be installed locally into virtual services that can be centrally configured, managed, and deployed on-demand to desktop, laptops and servers. SoftGrid’s patented “Application Virtualization” enables applications to run without installation or alteration to the host operating system, allowing any applications to run side-by-side without conflict or the need for regression testing.

The new SoftGrid Enterprise Edition was enhanced with capabilities that meet the unique needs of large-scale organizations:

-) ?Application Portability? for Network-free Delivery of Virtualized Applications

IT can have all the advantages of application virtualization without delivering applications across a network. Designed for end-users on low-bandwidth connections, SoftGrid?s Application Portability supports the deployment of virtualized applications via CD or data keys instead of network delivery. Once deployed, the virtualized applications have all the advantages of network-delivered SoftGrid applications, including license compliance and real-time access to updates and patches anywhere in the world.

-) ?Application Replication? for Business Continuity and Branch Office Support
By virtualizing applications, SoftGrid turns applications into data files. As a result, these virtualized applications can be treated ? and replicated ? just like data, making them much easier to manage. This enables:

-) Seamless, synchronized disaster recovery for applications:
Applications are kept up-to-date between live sites and back-up sites by automatically replicating virtualized applications files on the live sites? SoftGrid servers with the SoftGrid servers at the back-up site. This not only provides dramatic time savings ? the alternative is to install application to each terminal server and desktop at the back-up site each time a change is made at the live site ? it also reduces end-user downtime to minutes instead of hours or days in case of a disaster.

-) Branch office support:
Using application replication, anytime an application update or patch is added to a SoftGrid server at the main data center, the change is automatically replicated to branch office servers, which then deploy the change to local end-users. This greatly reduces WAN traffic, and enables IT to update applications for an entire global organization with one change to their central SoftGrid server.

-) Enabling the Virtual Desktop for ?Free Seating? and ?Hoteling?
Dynamic organizations must be able to seamlessly assign people new desktops and quickly provide them with applications they need. This is critical for replacing desktops that fail and for users that access ?hoteling? desktops (where different people use the same desktops at different times). Without SoftGrid, this requires the time-consuming process of re-installing the operating system and applications each time a new user accesses the computer.

SoftGrid?s combination of virtualization, on-demand delivery and user-driven application rights transforms machines from being application-centric to user-centric. This means that based on users? credentials, they?ll automatically get access to applications they have the right to regardless of the client device. This also impacts business continuity, as any user can be moved to any location served by SoftGrid and get just the applications they have the right to access.

-) Increased scalability

SoftGrid now supports over 1,000 concurrent connections on a single processor SoftGrid Virtual Application Server.

…

Pricing and Availability

– One management point for all physical server and virtual
infrastructures
– Bare metal provisioning of Linux or Windows on physical servers
– Bare metal provisioning of VMware ESX Server virtual host environments
and VMware GSX Server
– Flexible provisioning of virtual machines themselves
– Patch and configuration management
– Application deployment and updates
– Resource monitoring and alerting
– Hardware management at the BIOS and RAID levels
– Integration with PowerP2V, PlateSpin’s platform for infrastructure
conversion solutions

“PlateSpin Operations Management Center has become a critical component to our customers.” said Matt Stearly, President of Infinite Solutions. “It uniquely meets the requirements of provisioning and management for both physical and virtual environments in the datacenter, and as such, has become something that both Infinite Solutions and our customers have come to rely on.”

“As data centers begin to adopt new heterogeneous infrastructure technologies, we are seeing that the need for total server management and lifecycle solutions are increasing.” said Stephen Pollack, CEO of PlateSpin Ltd. “PlateSpin is addressing the need for more flexibility in the data center by providing the only provisioning solution capable of managing the multi- architecture data center, which is a prerequisite for building tomorrow’s on demand, autonomic business service management architectures.”

Pricing and Availability

The company said Monday that it will have “experimental support for 64-bit host operating systems designed for AMD64 and Intel Extended Memory 64 Technology [Intel EM64T].”

One observer of the 64-bit processor world, Nathan Brookwood of Insight 64, is looking for 64-bit extensions to come this summer from Microsoft, when it delivers a version of its Windows XP Service Pack 2. Microsoft last week released a version of SP2, but hedged on a date for its final release.

“Microsoft has been trying to get 64-bit extensions down,” said Brookwood in an interview. He noted that the extensions for robust 64-bit applications have been held up because Microsoft has been working harder than ever to include improved security features in its software.

VMware said it will have preliminary 64-bit support available for VMware GSX Server 3.1 and VMware Workstation 4.5.2, with support for Windows Server 2003 (Beta) for 64-bit extended systems. VMware support will also be available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 64-bit host operating systems. VMware GSX Server customers and VMware Workstation 4.x customers will be provided free updates in most instances.

“The introduction of support for 64-bit computing marks the first milestone for VMware’s 64-bit roadmap,” the firm stated. “Future milestones will include the ability to concurrently run 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines on AMD64 and EM64T architectures.”

The 64-bit software from both Microsoft and VMware would be of immediate benefit for AMD, which has been marketing its 64-bit Athlon and Opteron PC models for several months. Intel has been slower to move in the 64-bit PC market, although its high-end Itanium processors have powerful 64-bit capability.

VMware, which is a unit of EMC, said the 64-bit updates unveiled this week enable its users to continue using their 32-bit guest operating systems while migrating to 64-bit host operating systems.