Year: 2008

At the end of October on its official blog Microsoft finally detailed when it will relaunch the technology acquired by Kidaro Technologies in March.

Kidaro offered a security wrapper for desktop virtualization platform called Managed Workspace that Microsoft planned to offer as part of its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP). But besides a name change (from Managed Workspace to Microsoft Enteprise Desktop Virtualization or MED-V) nothing happened so far.

The formal relaunch is expected somewhere in the first half of 2009 but Microsoft is now adding that a first MED-V beta will be ready for the first quarter of that year.

Microsoft also announced that App-V, its application virtualization and streaming solution once known as SoftGrid, will support 64bit virtualized applications in H1 2010.
The beta testers will be able to access the bits in early 2010, while those customers adhering the TAP program may have it in late 2009.

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Announced at VMworld 2008, the Vizioncore P2V migration tool (coming from the Invirtus acquisition last year) vConverter 4.0 is finally available.

This new major release introduces important capabilities and it’s clear that, like PlateSpin (now acquired by Novell) also Vizioncore is fully reshaping the message to associate P2V migration to disaster recovery:

• Continuous P2V migration
• Incremental image replication
• User profiles library (for reusing the same credentials over time)
• Raw Device Mapping
• Availability as virtual appliance (for P2V/V2V migration in COS-less platforms)

Download a trial here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Just one month after hitting version 2.0, VKernel is ready to deliver a new minor update for its Capacity Analyzer (formerly Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer).

The only new thing is the capability to schedule the generation and delivery of the reports.

It’s clear that VKernel is still enjoying the startup phase of its corporate life, when new features are added as soon as customers demand for them and the product releases can be up to one every month.
This approach of course makes happy the early adopters and supporters, but may scare away big prospects.
The fast and furious release schedule will certainly end up as soon as the company reaches a critical mass.

Download a trial of Capacity Analyzer 2.1 here.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

This week Microsoft releases a new version of its free capacity planning tool called Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP).

Now the tool can discover and map which virtual machines are served by which virtualization host, meaning that Microsoft is working to extend the product capabilities to already virtualized environment for “continuous capacity planning”.

The new 3.2 version is available here, free of charge as usual.

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.

Somebody at VMware has just published an informal (but nicely edited) video showing in action the experimental feature Distributed Power Management (DPM) that the company introduced with VI 3.5.

It shows how four physical servers are powered on, one after another, during the day to address the increasing workload demand, while VirtualCenter manages to distribute over 100 virtual machines among them.
At 5pm, when most of the corporate workforce goes away, the VMs are moved back to the first server and DPM turns off the other three servers.

If you never saw the thing in action it may worth a look:

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This week Vizioncore announced the appointment of a well-known figure in the Xen world: Roger Baskerville.

Baskerville was Director of EMEA Channels in XenSource before the acquisition and then was the Regional Director of Server Virtualization for Northern Europe at Citrix.
His new role at Vizioncore is Vice President of EMEA.

Baskerville certainly knows the potentials of XenServer in Europe. Maybe Vizioncore is finally opening its product portfolio to more virtualization platforms than just VMware: if the company is now targeting Citrix customers Baskerville was probably one of the best persons for the job.

The application virtualization startup InstallFree (see virtualization.info coverage here) announced this week the appointment of two key executive for the Europe: Rashied Akrum and Carina Rozendaal.

Rashied Akrum joins InstallFree as Vice President EMEA while Carina Rozendaal takes the role of Senior Director of Sales & Marketing EMEA.

Both comes form SoftGrid, acquired by Microsoft in 2006, and can certainly bring some valuable experience in the new company.
The former SoftGrid CEO, David Greschler still works in Microsoft as Director of Virtualization Strategy, so the relationship between InstallFree and the software giant may further improve.

This week Virtual Iron announced an extension of its partnership with LeftHand Networks as the virtualization vendor joined the SAN vendor’s Technology Alliance Program.

The relationship started over one year ago when LeftHand obtained the certification to work with the Virtual Iron hypervisor.

It’s interesting to note that this new deal arrives immediately after HP completed the acquisition of the storage vendor, after months of heavy promotion operated by VMware.
Maybe the relationship between Virtual Iron and HP may further improve now.

With much surprise yesterday Cisco announced a new investment in VMware, buying 500,000 shares from Intel for a value of $13,3 million.

The networking giant already invested $150 million in July 2007 just before the VMware IPO.
With this new equity stake acquisition Cisco owns 1,7% of the virtualization vendor.

The relationship between the two has progressively tightened because Cisco is developing the first virtual switch for VMware Infrastructure 4: the Nexus 1000V.

A lot of things are interesting in this move:

• Intel gave away its shares despite it’s rumored interest to acquire VMware (which may be the reason behind the removal of Diane Greene as CEO).
• Cisco continues to invest in VMware despite it’s rumored interest to acquire Citrix
• Cisco still doesn’t tell what hypervisor is using for its new WAAS 4.1 appliance but it seems unlikely that it’s ESX or ESXi.

Microscope is reporting that VMware will cut the product prices by 10% starting next Monday.

As the articles correctly states this move counter the previous 10% price increase that became effective Sep. 1, generating a lot of negative comments.

Microscope couldn’t receive an answer on how VMware can afford this while even its competitors like Citrix are raising up the prices by the same 10%.

Is this a first, concrete effect of the new CEO Paul Maritz guidance?

Update: This cut is effective only in those countries (Europe, Australia and New Zealand) where VMware raised the price Sep. 1, as detailed above. Other countries like Japan don’t benefit of the price cut.