History

Quoting from the Scalent official announcement:

Scalent Systems, Inc., the leading provider of server infrastructure repurposing software enabling real-time infrastructure for large enterprise data centers, today announced the appointment of Ali Zadeh to the role of president.

Zadeh’s distinguished career in the information technology industry spans more than 25 years, including COO of NeoPath Networks, recently acquired by Cisco. Previously, Zadeh was vice president of international sales at Network Appliance, where he was responsible for 40 percent of the company’s revenue, and managed a global team of 500 employees and 200 resellers in 50 countries. Prior to NetApp, Zadeh was vice president of sales and marketing at Initio Corporation. Zadeh also served at Adaptec where he managed OEMs, distributors and representatives for strategic accounts…

VMware just released an uncommon update for both ESX Server 3.0.2 and VirtualCenter 2.0.2.

Dubbed Update 1 the new package acts as a patch accumulator but also brings in some new features. In particular:

• ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 (build 61618)
  The Update 1 introduces support for new Intel Quad-Core Xeon 7300.
• VirtualCenter 2.0.2 Update 1 (build 61426)
  The Update 1 introduces the new VCB Role, with a specific set of user privileges which can be assigned at host and cluster level, and image customization for 64bit versions of Windows 2003 Standard / Enterprise Editions and Windows XP Professional.

Download ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 here and VirtualCenter 2.0.2 Update 1 here.

VMware just updated its free P2V/V2V migration tool to version 3.0.2.

The new release (build 59994) is mainly aimed at bug fixing but also extends support to some critical products:

• Support for 6th geneation VMware virtual hardware (Player 2.0, Workstation 6.0, ACE 2.0, Fusion 1.0 virtual machines)
• Support for Acronis True Image 9
• Support for Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 7

Download VMware Converter 3.0.2 for free here.

After just one month since release 3.2 Thinstall is ready to move forward and introduce a new release.

Application Virtualization Suite 3.3 introduces one major feature: capability to generate MSI installers for virtualized applications. This permits system administrators to integrate Thinstall applications with their existing inventory tools like ones from Microsoft, IBM, Altiris, LANDesk, BMC and CA.

Download a trial here.

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

Techworld published an interesting interview with Raghu Raghuram, Vice President of Data Center and Desktop Platforms at VMware, about future of virtualizationl.

A couple of answers are particularly interesting:

Q: What new products will we see over the next 12 months?

A: What we are introducing today is what gets deployed over the next 12-18 months, such as 10 gig networking, AMD’s virtualisation indexing, IO virtualisation built into cards, MPIV on storage cards, up to 32 cores. Other things that will happen in the ecosystem – we see a great wave of IO virtualisation, increasing cores, and from our own product line – I can’t talk about specifics but you’ll see us being concurrent with these technologies as they come out.

…

Q: AMD has spoken about the support it will be providing for code parallelisation – can you say what that means for VMware?

A: Yes, we’ve always said that virtualisation is the killer application for taking advantage of the virtualisation support built into the processors, such as the support for threads at the processor level, such as hardware interfaces to have multiple virtual channels so applications can talk to them in parallel. To take advantage of all that without having to rewrite the application or OS – virtualisation is the only way to do it. So we are focused on that, working with AMD and Intel. It’s the next golden age of virtualisation.

Read the whole interview at the source.

Quoting from ComputerWire:

…

“The Virtuozzo Management Console will also have the ability to manage Parallels Server,” said Rudolph. “We’ll deliver the ability to migrate a workload from a Virtuozzo container to a Parallels virtual server and back. If a customer is running Longhorn with 12 containers in Virtuozzo and one of them is a database that needs to be continually up and running, they’ll face the challenge of how to upgrade some of the other containers. Now, however, they’ll be able to migrate the ones that need upgrading to an isolated virtual server in Parallels, upgrade and test them, then migrate them back.”…

Read the whole article at the source.

Thinstall continues to pursue its OEM business model already successful with LANDesk, Provision Networks and BMC.

Quoting from the official announcement:

Thinstall, a leading Application Virtualization Platform Solution, and Macrovisionâ Corporation today announced the integration of Macrovision’s AdminStudio product with Thinstall’s virtual application technology to make it easier for IT administrators to package applications for virtualization. Customers using the products together can benefit from an easy to use, low-cost system that simplifies packaging applications for virtual desktop management.

…

The integration enables software applications to be packaged into a “Thinstalled” single, self-contained executable (EXE) file, for immediate distribution by IT administrators. Customers using the new release of AdminStudio, version 8.6, can benefit from the integration by speeding up software migrations and deploying custom, commercial and legacy applications directly into Thinstall’s Vista-ready Virtualization Platform…

Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcements for Ed Walsh:

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure software, today announced that former EMC and Avamar executive, Ed Walsh, has joined the company as president and chief executive officer. Walsh takes the reins at the fast-growing company from John C. Thibault who remains with the company as executive chairman focusing on the company’s strategic direction.

…

Most recently, Walsh was vice president and general manager of EMC’s Information Management Software Group. Prior to joining EMC, Walsh served as CEO at Avamar Technologies, Inc., a venture-backed software firm acquired by EMC in late 2006. At Avamar, Walsh established the company as the leader in the next generation data protection and data de-duplication software market and led it to 700% revenue growth over 18 months. Avamar’s data de-duplication product received, along with VMware, one of the first Morgan Stanley IT Innovation Awards, recognizing the most impactful technologies in the data center. Previously, Walsh was senior vice president of sales, marketing and alliances for CNT, a publicly-traded storage networking company. There he re-aligned the company’s channel and go-to-market strategy and led CNT to record growth and profitability. CNT was acquired by McData Corporation in 2005. Prior to CNT, Walsh co-founded Articulent, a systems integrator and channel reseller focused on data management solutions…

Quoting from the Virtual Iron official announcements for John McCarthy:

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure software, today announced the hiring of former EMC and McData sales executive John McCarthy to lead its worldwide sales, channel and field operations. As senior vice president of sales, McCarthy will report to new president and CEO, Ed Walsh at the fast-growing company.

…

Most recently, McCarthy ran his own consulting firm, JEMO LLC., assisting companies with their sales, channel and go-to-market strategies. Prior to that, he was with Computer Technology Network (CNT) where he helped increase sales by 20% and gross margins by over 50% in just six months before the company was acquired by McData Corporation in 2005. At McData, McCarthy helped create the new McData/CNT sales organization in North America, integrating two different direct and indirect sales teams. Before joining CNT, McCarthy was president and chief operating officer of StorageApps, a pioneering technology company in the fast growing data storage management market. While at StorageApps, John grew sales from $30 million to $50 million before the company was acquired by Hewlett Packard in 2001…

Quoting from the Embotics official announcement:

Embotics, the Virtual Machine Lifecycle Management Company, today announced the appointment of Dr. James Serack to its Advisory Board Council. The Council helps Embotics with product direction, organization and strategy associated with managing and controlling virtualized environments.

With more than 24 years of leadership, engineering and business experience, Dr. Serack is the director of Americas Architecture and Innovation for Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), a global information technology and services company. At CSC, he served also as Ascension Health Account CTO and a solution executive in Business Development. Prior to CSC, Dr. Serack was vice president of Information Services (CIO) for the R&D divisions of Nortel Networks.

Dr. Serack is currently the chair of the Advisory Board of Western Engineering (ACWE) at the University of Western Ontario, and on the Executive Steering Committee of the American Nursing Time and Motion Research Project. He is a professional engineer and holds a Bachelor in Engineering Physics (1983) from the University of Saskatchewan and a PhD in Electrical Engineering (1988) from Edinburgh University, Scotland. Dr. Serack presents numerous papers in microelectronics and is an active contributor to technology Wikis. He also holds a patent in the telecommunications field…

During its Q3 2007 earning report webcast VMware announced acquisition of a new company, after Determina and Dunes Technologies: Sciant.

Differently from other companies VMware acquired so far, Sciant doesn’t produce any virtualization product. It’s the biggest bulgarian company providing software developers in outsourcing and has a remarkable list of customers (many of them VMware customers as well).

Formerly known as Wizcom, it has three offices in Sofia, Varna and Vietnam, and VMware already used it in the past.

Sciant counts on over 190 developers covering a broad range of skills. One of the most interesting are ones about mobile computing, which VMware may use to extend its hypervisor domain beyond x86 market.