History

Login VSI has released version 4 of its vendor independent Login Virtual Session Indexer (VSI) benchmarking utility. Login VSI measures the performance and scalability of Virtual Desktop Infrastructures (VDI) and Server Based Computing (SBC) environments by simulating unique user workloads. Eventually developed as a free tool by Login Consultants to benchmark systems for use with Project Virtual Reality Check, Login VSI evolved into a company of its own and has become a commonly used benchmarking tool used by different vendors nowadays. Login VSI is provided for free as an Express Edition, there is also a Pro edition which is supported by Login VSI.

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Citrix has released version 3.1 of its Secure Type-1 Client Hypervisor platform XenClient XT. Version 3.1 is the follow up of version 3.0 which was released in October last year. XenClient was first introduced in May 2011 offering XenClient in a version supporting advanced levels of security, isolation and performance with extreme client computing requirements. XenClient XT runs on selected Intel vPro desktop and laptop hardware from Dell, HP and Lenovo.

Starting with version 3.1 Citrix now offers a trial download allowing customers to test the functionality for 90 days.

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On April 24, Citrix announced its financial results for first quarter of fiscal 2013, ended March 31, 2013.

Citrix announced a total revenue of $683 million, for an increase of 14% compared to Q1 2012

Net income registered a decrease of 13,3% compared to 2012 while Non-GAAP results raised from $111 million for Q1 2012 to $117 million for Q1 2013.

The stock market reacted with a fall of nearly 10 percent for Citrix Systems shares after the release of the earning report that showed decreasing profits.

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On April 23, VMware released the results about its growth for Q1 2013.

VMware, announced a total  revenue growth of $1.19 billion, for an increase of 13 percent compared to Q1 2012.

Operating Margin registered a decrease of 26%, as reported in the official news, reflecting a $63 million realignment charge.

The non-GAAP Operating Margin registered an increment of 26% from Q1 2012.

The stock market over-reacted to the results and several analysts downgraded VMware rating from Market Perform to  Underperform consequently re-aligning the price target of its shares.

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On April 18, Microsoft Corp. announced quarterly revenue of $20.49 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2013.
Operating income, net income, and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $7.61 billion, $6.06 billion, and $0.72 per share.

These financial results reflect the net recognition of revenue related to the Windows Upgrade Offer, Office Upgrade Offer and Pre-Sales, and the Entertainment and Devices Division Video Game Deferral, partially offset by the European Commission fine. The following table reconciles these financial results reported in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) to non-GAAP financial results. We have provided this non-GAAP financial information to aid investors in better understanding the company’s performance.

Dell has released a paper titled: “Top Seven Networking Concepts Every Virtualization Administrator Should Know“. The paper which contains 7 pages and is written by Scott D. Lowe, Founder and Managing Consultant, The 1610 Group. The paper discusses concepts that today’s modern VMware virtualization administrator needs to know to maximize overall system performance while controlling costs, some of the tips relate to other Hypervisor platforms as well. The paper is available for users after logging in with their Quest account, or by creating one.

Top Seven Networking Concepts Every Virtualization Administrator Should Understand:

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Savision, a company providing added solution on top of Microsoft System Center has released an extension which customers using System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) to manager Microsoft Hyper-V environments can install. The extension which can be downloaded for free will analyzes your Hyper-V environment for problems, and then provides specific and detailed recommendations to tune virtual machines and hosts for better performance and availability. Later this year, Savision plans to update the plugin with the ability to also apply the recommendations given by the tool.

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Oracle has released a maintenance release for its virtualization platform VM VirtualBox. The release can be installed on top of VM VirtualBox 4.2 which was released in September last year.

Some of the fixes which are described in more detail in the change log are:

• Support for multimonitor. Dynamic enable/disable of secondary virtual monitors. Support for XPDM/WDDM based guests
• Debian Linux kernel 3.2.0-4 (3.2.39) compile fix
• VM settings: fixed crash on machine state-change event
• Multi-screen support: seamless mode: fixed a bug when empty seamless screens were represented by fullscreen windows

5Nine has announced a release candidate of a new extension which will hook the 5nine Security Manager functionality into Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. 5nine Security Manager provides an agentless Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware and Virtual Firewall solution.

The solution is a combination of multiple protection modules managed centrally, including anti-virus (based on Sophos Anti-Virus Enterprise engine), anti-malware, IDS, web application protection, log inspection and programmatic virtual firewall.

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VMware announced the schedule of a webinar called: “Unleash the Power of Virtualization to Simplify IT”.

Scheduled for April 23, 2013 at at 8:00AM -1:00PM PT/ 11:00AM – 4:00PM ET, the virtual event is dedicated to showing how to harness virtualization to simplify IT.

The Online VMware Forum 2013 is a free online event, with registration required.

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