Year: 2006

Quoting from the SWsoft official announcement:

SWsoft, a recognized leader in server automation and virtualization software, today announced that the SWsoft Developer Network (SWDN) has attracted more than 1,000 subscribers in less than 90 days.
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The Community Technology Preview program was added for the recent launch of Plesk 8.1 for Linux/Unix, giving developers an opportunity to preview, test and provide feedback on product features directly to SWsoft engineers. SWDN?s OPEN FUSION Forums offer another new resource for developers to share experiences and ask questions…

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

Pacific Gas and Electric Company today announced the first-ever utility financial incentive program to support virtualization projects in data centers, with industry support from VMware, Intel Corporation and other high tech leaders.
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PG&E customers in northern and central California who are interested in earning financial incentives for virtualization projects must apply for the rebate prior to pursuing a project. The incentives are based on the amount of energy savings achieved through data center consolidation. Qualifying customers can earn a maximum rebate amount of $4 million per project site.

In addition to the rebate, customers can expect to save $300 to $600 in annual energy costs for each server that is removed. Those savings can almost double when reduced data center cooling costs are also taken into account.
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For more information on Pacific Gas and Electric Company?s virtualization technology rebate program, please visit our website at www.pge.com/hightech.

This announcement probably represents one of the most important milestone in modern virtualization history, demostrating value of the technology and indirect profits it leads to.
Worldwide governments should consider following PG&E example to save money improving energy management and preserve environment.

Quoting from the Red Hat official announcement:

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, and VMware, the global leader in virtual infrastructure software, today announced an expanded relationship to support customers and ISVs who are deploying virtualization today. As part of the relationship, Red Hat and VMware are delivering certification and focusing on open, community-based interoperability between Red Hat and VMware solutions.
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By collaborating on key technology issues such as virtual machine disk formats, paravirtualization, and management API’s, the companies intend to work within the open source community to create a common, interoperable virtualization model that ISVs and customers can trust – no matter which deployment model they choose.
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Starting today, the Red Hat Application Stack virtual appliance is certified and available in VMDK format in the VMware Virtual Appliance Marketplace for both customers and ISVs to evaluate in a pre-production environment.
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Red Hat and VMware plan to jointly deliver channel bundles of Red Hat Enterprise Linux and the Red Hat Application Stack paired up with VMware Infrastructure and VMware Server…

Quoting from the HP official announcement:

HP today introduced a solution that eases the management of desktop environments and lowers costs by reducing the need to over-provision IT resources.

The HP Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) provides customers with a cost-efficient desktop environment by consolidating many physical desktop PCs onto a single server that is centrally hosted and managed within the data center. The solution combines HP hardware and management software with services and partner components, such as VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.
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As a member of the VDI Alliance program, HP’s offering leverages Virtual Desktop Infrastructure from VMware.
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The solution also includes HP Systems Insight Manager and ProLiant Essential tools to unify management of virtual and non-virtual machines. To meet their storage needs, customers can use HP StorageWorks storage area network, network attached storage and HP Modular Smart Array direct attached storage solutions.

HP Services completes the offering with VMware Capacity Planner assessment, installation and startup, consulting and integration, educational and financial services, and hardware and software technical support…

Quoting from the Wyse official announcement:

Wyse Technology, the global leader in thin computing today announced a new “Thin Computing Pilot in a Box for Enterprise Desktop Virtualization” including key hardware and software components to enable enterprises to quickly evaluate the benefits of desktop virtualization and terminal services architectures.
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The Thin Computing Pilot in a Box for Enterprise Desktop Virtualization includes:

• 25 Wyse S10-VDI-Edition Thin Computers The S10-VDI Edition delivers all the security of a stateless device, with a built in, self-updating operating system that can quickly find and connect with the virtual desktop server.
• 25 licenses for Wyse Device Manager – Wyse infrastructure management software
• 2 days of Onsite Consulting

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The Wyse Thin Computing Pilot in a Box for Enterprise Desktop Virtualization is priced at an estimated customer price of $9,995…

Quoting from the NEC official announcement:

NEC Corporation today announced the launch of a new Virtual PC-Class Thin Client System. The new system includes the next generation of Thin Client computing device, the US100, which provides a high level of IP telephony and video processing quality in the smallest thin client footprint.

The device is designed to achieve the impressive multimedia performance through the employment of NetClient, the advanced system-on-a-chip solution that incorporates leading-edge technologies from NEC and ServerEngines? LLC.

The new system also features VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure pre-installed and pre-integrated with NEC systems through collaboration established under the VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Alliance program…

The solution is composed by the thin client US100 (costing approx. $439) and 2 possible management stations: the NEC Express5800/VPCC Virtual PC Server, if you don’t already have VMware Infrastructure 3, supporting up to 20 thin clients (costing approx. $16,176), or the NEC Express5800/VPCC Management Server, which act as middleware between thin clients and existing VMware Infrastructure 3 (costing approx. $3,301).

All products are expected to hit the market on December 15th.

Quoting from the VMware official announcement:

VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced the winners of the first-ever Virtual Vanguard Awards. The awards recognize VMware customers who have best employed VMware Infrastructure to create innovative, high-ROI and leading-edge IT strategies. The winners represent achievements in four categories:

• Best Overall ROI and Operational Benefits
  This award showcases the company that has seen the quickest and largest ROI using VMware technology. The entries were judged on the overall impact of costs avoided, time-to-ROI or operational benefits-not the largest or quickest ROI in terms of absolute numbers. The judges also looked at the effect of virtualization on total IT budget, operational performance and/or corporate bottom line.

  Winner: IndyMac Bancorp

• Most Comprehensive VMware Infrastructure
  This award honors the most comprehensive VMware Infrastructure deployment based on a combination of total size and on amount of total infrastructure virtualized. The judges looked for customers utilizing virtualization technology in multiple ways across their IT infrastructure, from desktop to data center and from development to production, and have virtualized at least 50 percent of their development, staging and production environments.

  Winner: Phoenix Insurance Company

• Most Critical Application in Production
  This award recognizes the most mission-critical application running on VMware Infrastructure. ?Mission-critical? was defined by the consequences of application failure: Should this application become unavailable for any noticeable length of time, the impact on the applicant?s company would be serious. Examples of such serious consequences might include loss of revenue, broken service-level agreements, customers unable to pay bills or place orders, violations of regulatory compliance rules and compromised security.

  Winner: Tescom

• Vanguard Award for Innovation
  his award honors customers who have taken virtualization to new levels, leveraging the technology to push the envelope and create unique, innovative solutions to IT challenges.

  Winner: Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

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Quoting from the Cassatt official announcement:

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Cassatt will extend support to the latest version of VMware?s products, VMware Infrastructure 3, in the next version of Cassatt Collage?, a software platform that automates the management of data center resources to improve application service levels. XVM will support VMware Infrastructure 3 in the next release of the product later this calendar year.
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Cassatt will offer a pilot program for customers interested in early access to XVM support for VMware Infrastructure 3…

Quoting from the Emulex official announcement:

Emulex Corporation today announced the availability of its LightPulse Virtual Host Bus Adapter (HBA) technology for VMware Infrastructure environments, delivering enhanced SAN management capabilities.
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Emulex’s LightPulse Virtual HBA technology is supported for use with VMware Infrastructure servers that use Emulex 4Gb/s Fibre Channel HBAs and is fully interoperable with industry leading fabric switches from Brocade, Cisco, and McDATA. The LightPulse Virtual HBA technology will be generally available for VMware Infrastructure in the first half of 2007.

By providing unique features implementing its N-Port ID Virtualization, Emulex’s Virtual HBA technology enables server virtualization solutions to seamlessly deliver SAN management Best Practices, such as zoning and LUN mapping, to simplify storage administration and lower cost of ownership…

Quoting from the Compellent official announcement:

Compellent Technologies, a provider of affordable and modular enterprise storage solutions, today announced it has been added to the SAN Compatibility Guide for VMware Infrastructure 3.

Compellent?s Storage Center? SAN has passed compatibility testing requirements to become a part of VMware?s list of supported storage platforms…