VMware Launches ThinApp 4.0 to Run Virtually Any Application on Any Windows Operating System without Conflict

Posted in: Application Delivery, C-Level, Deskside, Virtualization by thirdoctet on June 10, 2008 | No Comments

VMware ThinApp Agentless Application Virtualization Enables “Package Once, Deploy Anywhere” Non-Disruptive Virtual Applications

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 10, 2008 — VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced the upcoming availability of VMware ThinApp 4, an application virtualization solution that lets customers run multiple versions of virtually any application on any Windows operating system without conflict. For example, users can run both Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 on the same operating system without disruption. 

ThinApp, based on Thinstall technology, the leading agentless application virtualization solution, requires no pre-installed software on physical or virtual PCs and no new deployment infrastructure or management tools.  ThinApp dramatically improves application packaging, delivery, and management by enabling plug-and-play applications using an enterprise’s existing systems and management tools.  ThinApp packages applications in familiar formats (.MSI or .EXE) that can plug into existing infrastructure for software license management, deployment, audit and compliance. 

ThinApp 4 introduces two revolutionary new features: Application Link and Application Sync, which enable two virtualized applications to communicate with each other and remote virtual applications to be updated.  These features are important for easier management of the virtual applications. ThinApp extends VMware’s industry-leading desktop virtualization product family to enable management solutions for both desktops and applications.

Traditional application packaging and delivery tools are fraught with application and operating system conflicts, which lead to a “brittle” desktop environment. ThinApp eliminates these conflicts and securely packages applications for delivery to physical and virtual desktops throughout the extended enterprise. The result is an application delivery solution which lets IT administrators define their technology roadmaps based on their business needs rather than being constrained by application limitations. 

Customers want application virtualization technologies that do not restrict applications to one presentation format or another, ThinApp enables the same virtual application to be streamed from a network, presented from a terminal server, delivered to USB stick (e.g., for a contract worker), or delivered through standard software delivery tools with little to no integration required.  ThinApp also helps IT administrators manage applications that do not run as well in shared-user environments such as Microsoft Terminal Server. By creating a separate instance with its own private sandbox, each application runs in the context of each user session without having to be modified; if a user “breaks” the application, other users are not impacted.

“Application packaging, testing and delivery continues to be one of the biggest drivers of desktop management costs and a barrier to compliance and security,” said Jeff Jennings, vice president of desktop products and solutions for VMware. “With VMware ThinApp, customers can decouple applications from the underlying OS, which makes their application environments more agile and flexible while maintaining control over their desktops.”

Rolling out new applications, desktops, or operating systems brings with it the challenges and complexity of managing IT change.  This disruption puts the business at risk, as employee productivity can suffer when applications do not work.  In addition, the growing trend for mobility and the need for agility are often compromised by strict regulatory requirements.

“During the past two years, new client architectures have emerged that complement today’s PC configuration tools, improving efficiency of management and enabling user-provisioned client computing,” said Ronni Collville, vice president, Gartner. “Over the next 2 to 5 years over 50% of medium to large enterprises will adopt application virtualization – to save costs, complexity, and time to value throughout their desktop lifecycle. The ability of upcoming application virtualization technology to work with multiple PC configuration tools is critical to reducing the overall complexity and realization of true costs savings of packaging, testing and deployment of applications and desktops.” * 

VMware ThinApp 4.0 highlights include:

• Application Link (NEW) – Free-flowing communication between interdependent virtual applications.  Application Link allows interdependent applications to communicate with one another (such as Java, .Net, IE, Office) to eliminate conflicts, reduce application size, and maintain continuity and tracking of software licenses.
• Application Sync (NEW) – Internet-based updates of applications. Application Sync streams byte-level updates to users’ critical applications inside and outside the enterprise using HTTP/HTTPS, and on managed and non-managed PCs running virtualized applications.
• “Package once, deploy anywhere” with agentless application virtualization. ThinApp uses Thinstall technology, which pioneered agentless application virtualization allowing applications to be deployed on virtually any Windows OS across virtually any device (kiosks, PCs, laptops, thin clients, virtual desktops).
• Works with existing management tools to streamline costs and maintain compliance. ThinApp plugs into existing processes and desktop management tools to reduce the costs and complexity around managing the physical and virtual desktop.  According to Gartner**, “Virtualized applications can reduce the cost of testing, packaging and supporting an application by 60%.” 
• Conflict-free applications eliminate risks to business continuity. Applications are isolated from the underlying OS, eliminating costs of conflicting resources and allowing different versions of an application to run side by side (such as different versions of Internet Explorer).
• Regain control of the desktop. ThinApp, along with VMware’s desktop virtualization family of products (ACE, Fusion, Workstation, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) enables IT to segment their applications, operating systems and migration deployments to speed time to value while decreasing complexity of managing the desktop.

“VMware ThinApp allows our contracted employees working on foreign networks where interoperability and security concerns exist to safely access complex applications critical to their productivity,” said Robert Carter, senior IT engineer, Fluor Federal Services. “ThinApp is another example of the way VMware helps customers address real-world problems that save time, money, and manpower.  I am very excited to see how ThinApp will continue to evolve.”

“VMware’s approach to providing modular virtualization solutions that plug into existing Desktop Configuration Management tools enables customers to re-engineer their approach to migrations without disrupting their current processes,” said Scott Fulton, vice president, BMC Service Automation Product Line. “Both companies are committed to providing end-to-end solutions that make for seamless adoption of desktop virtualization.  Our demonstrated success in this area has already enabled mutual customers to streamline their efforts in user based provisioning, enhancing business service alignment and achieving greater operational efficiency.”

Pricing, Packaging and Availability:
The VMware ThinApp offering, which includes a copy of VMware Workstation and 50 client licenses, is priced at $5,000.  The client licenses are priced at $39 per endpoint. The ThinApp licenses are perpetual.  ThinApp will be available for purchase within 30 days through VMware’s network of distributors, resellers and OEMs.  All prices are VMware list prices.

Services and Support –VMware will offer 5×12 Gold and 24×7 Platinum support options for ThinApp.  VMware also offers several services to accelerate application virtualization adoption including ThinApp JumpStart, ThinApp Plan & Design, and ThinApp Application Packaging Framework.

For more information on VMware ThinApp, please visit: http://www.vmware.com/go/thinapp.

*Gartner Research Inc., “Strategic Planning for Application Virtualization”, Ronni Colville, Terrence Cosgrove, May 16, 2008
**Gartner Research Inc., “TCO of Traditional Software Distribution vs. Application Virtualization”, Brian Gammage, Mike Silver, Terrence Cosgrove, Mark Margevicius, April 16, 2008

About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter.  Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2007 revenues of $1.3 billion, more than 100,000 customers and nearly 14,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies.  VMware is headquartered in Palo Alto, California and on the web at www.vmware.com.

VMware is a registered trademark of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Virtualizing Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: Building a Better Platform with VMware Infrastructure 3

Posted in: Communicate, Messaging, Virtualization by thirdoctet on | No Comments

Care of VirtualizationAdmin.com; Today’s messaging environments must be highly available, disaster tolerant, & cost efficient. Download this white paper based on real customer experiences running Microsoft® Exchange on virtual machines. Specific use cases demonstrate advantages of deploying Exchange on a VMware platform. Exchange administrators who read this white paper will learn how to:

    * Simplify disaster recovery & decrease downtime
    * Increase availability of applications & processes
    * Simplify testing & troubleshooting
    * Reduce maintenance & operating costs
    * Improve provisioning strategies
    * Optimize usage of storage & servers

Download this paper and learn more about:

    * Exchange performance considerations and VMware® Infrastructure
    * Unique technical benefits of running Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 on virtual machines
    * Improved flexibility with Exchange 2007 server roles
    * Improved Exchange design flexibility to meet specific requirements
    * How this strategic approach enables IT to easily adapt to changing workloads & business needs

Podcast: The Benefits of Virtualizing XenApp with XenServer

Posted in: Application Delivery, C-Level, Virtualization by thirdoctet on April 25, 2008 | No Comments

Hear about the benefits of virtualizing XenApp with XenServer.

Download Microsoft Assessment and Planning

Posted in: Deskside, Hands on, Troubleshooting, Virtualization by thirdoctet on April 24, 2008 | No Comments

Care of Microsoft, The Microsoft® Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator (MAP) makes it easy for you to assess your current IT infrastructure and determine the right Microsoft technologies for your IT needs.

MAP is a powerful inventory, assessment, and reporting tool that can securely run in small or large IT environments without requiring the installation of agent software on any computers or devices. The data and analysis provided by this Solution Accelerator can significantly simplify the planning process for migrating to Windows Vista®, Microsoft Office 2007, Windows Server® 2008, Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid), and Windows Server virtualization technologies including Virtual Server 2005 R2 and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator expands upon the assessment features included in the Windows Vista Hardware Assessment Solution Accelerator. These features include Windows Vista assessment, Microsoft Office 2007 assessment, and non-Windows device inventory, using the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP). Reports for these assessment scenarios are localized in French, German, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, and Spanish.

Download the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator

Secure and Agentless Inventory

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning tool provides secure, agent-less and network-wide inventory that scales from small business to large enterprises. It collects and organizes system resources and device information from a single networked computer. Assessment tools often require users to first deploy software agents on all computers to be inventoried, but this tool does not. MAP uses technologies already available in your IT environment to perform inventory and assessments. These technologies include Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), the Remote Registry Service, SNMP, Active Directory Domain Services, and the Computer Browser service. Assessments can be completed on the following Windows platforms:

• Windows Vista
• Windows XP® Professional
• Windows Server 2003™ or Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows 2000 Professional or Windows 2000 Server
• Windows Server 2008

Comprehensive Data Analysis

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator performs a detailed analysis of hardware and device compatibility for migration to Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Office 2007, Microsoft Application Virtualization, and Windows Vista. The hardware assessment looks at the installed hardware and determines if migration is recommended. If it is not recommended then the reports tell you why it is not.

Device assessment looks at the devices installed on a computer and reports availability of drivers for those devices. Device assessment is provided for both Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista migration scenarios.

For customers interested in server consolidation and virtualization through technologies such as Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 R2, this tool helps to gather performance metrics and generate server consolidation recommendations that identify the candidates for server virtualization and how the physical servers might be placed in a virtualized environment.

In-Depth Readiness Reporting

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator generates reports containing both summary and detailed assessment results for each migration scenario. The results are provided in both Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word documents. Reports are generated for the following scenarios:

• Identification of currently installed Windows Client operating systems, their hardware, and recommendations for migration to Windows Vista.
• Identification of currently installed Windows Server operating systems, their hardware, and recommendations for migration to Windows Server 2008 (including a report detailing currently installed server roles).
• Identification of currently installed Microsoft Office software and recommendations for migration to Microsoft Office 2007.
• Detailed assessment and reporting of server utilization gathered using the Performance Metrics Wizard.
• Recommendations for server consolidation and virtual machine placement using Hyper-V or Virtual Server 2005 R2.
• Assessment of client machines, servers, and the technology environment for the implementation of Microsoft Application Virtualization (formerly SoftGrid).  
• Reporting of SNMP-enabled devices found in the environment during inventory.

Note   The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Solution Accelerator will generate localized reports for Windows Vista migration, Office 2007 migration, and non-Windows devices if the Display Language, configured on the computer generating the reports is set to German, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Sun Microsystems and VMware Announce OEM Agreement to Add VMware Virtualization to Sun x64 Server and Storage Portfolio

Posted in: Green Technology, Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on February 28, 2008 | No Comments

CANNES, France VMworld Europe, February 27, 2008 Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: JAVA) and VMware Inc. (NYSE: VMW) today announced an OEM agreement to expand their virtualization offerings. Starting today, Sun is offering the VMware Infrastructure product suite on Sun hardware systems with full support from Sun. This helps enable customers to capitalize on the high performance, scalability and energy efficiency of Sun’s x64 servers while leveraging VMware’s ground-breaking virtualization solutions to improve asset utilization, operational efficiency, and business agility. The agreement also benefits systems integrators and channel partners by providing a fully supported, seamlessly integrated solution from these two leading technology providers.

“When it comes to innovative design, performance and scalability, Sun is an x64 industry leader,” said John Fowler, executive vice president, Sun Microsystems. “With today’s announcement we’re expanding our virtualization portfolio and giving customers who want VMware virtualization software a great hardware platform for maximizing their utilization and their IT investment.”

“The benefits of lower capital and operating expenses, business continuity, security, and a greener datacenter are driving strong demand for VMware virtualization software on Sun x64 server and storage systems,” said Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware. “This new milestone in our ongoing relationship with Sun gives customers what they want: a combination of advanced technologies that deliver strong business value.”

Sun and VMware will continue their robust qualification program of VMware products on Sun systems. The companies will also work to ensure that the Solaris Operating System (OS) will continue to be a first-class guest operating system on VMware virtualization software, and VMware Infrastructure will be a first-class datacenter virtualization run-time and management stack on Sun x64 systems. The two companies plan to also collaborate on system management configuration, deployment and monitoring for each other’s products.

Selected Sun x64 servers are available for a free 60-day trial as part of Sun’s Try-and-Buy program, which includes a free 60-day evaluation of VMware Infrastructure. More information on the Try-and-Buy program and eligible systems is available at: http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy/products.jsp. Sun also offers its own complete virtualization portfolio that includes unified software management tools and virtualization of operating systems, servers, storage, desktops and chips – both inside and outside the box. More information on Sun’s desktop-to-datacenter virtualization portfolio is available at http://www.sun.com/virtualization.

In conjunction with today’s announcement, Sun will showcase Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 2.0 during the VMworld Europe conference. This solution leverages VMware ESX Server and VMware VirtualCenter to allow customers to securely access centralized desktop environments over a variety of network connections. Today’s agreement ensures frontline support and allows customers to purchase the complete solution directly from Sun, including Sun Ray virtual display thin clients, Sun VDI Software 2.0 and VMware virtualization software. More information on Sun Virtual Desktop Solutions is available at: http://www.sun.com/datacenter/consolidation/virtualization/desktop/index.jsp.

For more information on the VMware/Sun relationship, go to http://www.vmware.com/sun.

Novell to Acquire Data Center Management Leader PlateSpin

Posted in: Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on February 26, 2008 | No Comments

WALTHAM, Mass. , Monday, 25 February 2008 – Novell today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire PlateSpin Ltd. This acquisition will extend Novell’s leadership position in the next-generation data center by providing the only solution to dynamically deliver business critical services across both physical and virtual infrastructures. PlateSpin offers extensive solutions for the management of heterogeneous workloads that encapsulate data, applications and operating systems residing on a physical or virtual host. These solutions improve the speed and quality of server consolidation, data center relocation and disaster recovery. Novell and PlateSpin will deliver unparalleled support for mixed infrastructure environments offering products for complete workload lifecycle management and optimization for Linux*, UNIX*, and Windows* operating systems in the physical and virtual data center. The combined solutions will deliver superior value by helping customers reduce costs, improve service levels and respond to fluctuating business requirements.

“Flexible, automated management tools that fully leverage server resources and allow the movement of workloads are necessary for optimizing the data center,” said Stephen Elliot, research director, Enterprise Systems Management Software and ITMS at IDC. “Over the next three years, heterogeneous virtualization architectures will be the norm for most IT organizations; as such they must purchase data center management solutions that offer an ongoing opportunity for lowering operational costs as well as integrating and managing VMs across both server and storage infrastructures for greater control and visibility between hardware and the virtual software tiers.”

Optimizing the Data Center
The acquisition of PlateSpin will allow Novell to offer customers a full solution stack with a powerful virtualization platform and a best-in-class heterogeneous management solution. Together, Novell and PlateSpin will solve many of the data center challenges that customers face today, including:

• Relocation: PlateSpin provides a completely integrated product suite that automates the assessment and migration phases of data center initiatives, like server consolidation, data center relocation and hardware upgrades, to help customers reduce costs, power consumption and space in the data center.
• Protection: PlateSpin’s disaster recovery solutions offer affordable workload protection that leverages virtualization technology to protect both physical and virtual servers in the data center, for improved security and business continuity.
• Provisioning: Using PlateSpin’s technologies, customers will have a single approach to imaging and configuring physical and virtual workloads regardless of platform. This eliminates the manual install process and dramatically reduces the time to provision new server workloads. It will also enable customers to address changing resource requirements at peak demand times as well as in test lab scenarios.
• Optimization and Management:Novell and PlateSpin optimize the balance between physical and virtual infrastructure by automatically monitoring and making infrastructure adjustments based on server availability and workload demand. By automating the process and increasing the visibility into how workloads use physical and virtual resources over time, customers will be able to increase server utilization and optimize their data centers by better addressing common workload movement challenges.

The acquisition of PlateSpin will enable the heterogeneous data center with support for leading operating systems and virtual platforms. It will also further enhance Novell’s leadership in open source virtualization by providing tools that easily enable customers to move physical workloads to Xen*-based virtual machines running on SUSE® Linux Enterprise as well as other virtual platforms provided by VMware*, Citrix*, Microsoft* and others.

Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell, said, “The PlateSpin acquisition will be a cornerstone of our two-pronged enterprise Linux and IT management software strategy. With the addition of the PlateSpin product portfolio, Novell will be uniquely positioned to deliver the next generation infrastructure software that is at the core of the data center. Together, we will have the most comprehensive workload management solution that allows customers to monitor and analyze what to virtualize, provide the tools to seamlessly virtualize and unvirtualize workloads, automate the management of workloads, and provide the leading open source platform from which to run virtualized work.”

Stephen Pollack, founder and CEO of PlateSpin, said, “PlateSpin’s ability to manage workloads is unparalleled and is an essential part of making the data center truly respond to the needs of the business. Combined with ZENworks® Orchestrator and virtualization from Novell®, we are very excited about the synergies that this acquisition will give to customers.”

Read the entire press release at www.platespin.com.

Citrix Unifying App, Server, And Desktop Virtualization

Posted in: Application Delivery, Deskside, Virtualization by thirdoctet on February 17, 2008 | No Comments

Care of Joseph F. Kovar, CMP Channel (source) – Citrix Systems (NSDQ:CTXS) is taking the next step towards unifying its application, server, and desktop virtualization technologies with new enhancements to several of its products.

Citrix, of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. next week is expected to rename its flagship Presentation Server application virtualization software as XenApp. The move follows a similar move to rename its server virtualization application as XenServer and its desktop virtualization application as XenDesktop.

Citrix acquired server virtualization software vendor XenSource in a $500 million deal last year.

The name changes brings consistency with Citrix’s other virtualization products, said Bill Hartwick, senior director of product marketing for Citrix’s Virtualization Systems group. “It also drives home the value of the technology,” Hartwick said. “It’s now expanded to become part of an overall virtualization solution.”

In order to start making its various virtualization applications work better together, Citrix also expects to introduce Citrix Workflow Studio, a software package that composes the workflows of XenApp, XenServer, XenDesktop, and NetScaler, the latter of which accelerates the delivery of Web-based applications, Hartwick said.

Citrix Workflow Studio also makes it easier to integrate Citrix products with third-party technologies, he said.

As an example of how it is used, Hartwick said to imagine hiring a new employee. The company could use Citrix Workflow Studio to design a workflow to automatically provision the employee’s desktop and applications. Scripts could be set up so that a manager could handle the provisioning without intervention from the IT department, he said.

Pricing for Citrix Workflow Studio has yet to be determined. It is expected to be ready for technical preview in the second quarter of this year, with shipment expected by year-end, Hartwick said.

XenApp, XenServer, XenDesktop, NetScaler, and Citrix Workflow Studio are being brought under a single new umbrella brand next week, Hartwick said. That brand, Citrix Delivery Center, emphasizes Citrix’s plans to help customers transform their data centers into delivery centers which use virtual infrastructures to deliver customer applications and data, he said.

Sumit Dhawan, director of product marketing for Citrix’s Desktop Delivery group, said that XenDesktop is currently under technical preview, with over 5,000 copies having been downloaded since December 1. A full-feature beta version is expected to be released this quarter, with the final release expected next quarter, Dhawan said.

In the 90 days since Citrix closed on the acquisition of XenSource, customers and partners have downloaded over 30,000 copies of XenServer, Dhawan said. Over 1,600 of Citrix’s 5,000-plus legacy channel partners have already been trained to take XenServer to customers.

A new version of XenServer, XenServer 4.1, is expected to be available in the near future, Dhawan said. New to XenServer 4.1 will be increased support for storage on arrays and appliances from Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Network Appliance (NSDQ:NTAP), and performance enhancements when working with XenApp, he said.

Citrix is also planning to unveil XenServer Platinum Edition, which features automatic provisioning of application workloads, Dhawan said. It is expected to be available shortly after the release of XenServer 4.1, and have a list price of about $5,000, which allows application workloads to be provisioned on an unlimited number of virtual servers on one physical server, as well as on three other physical servers, he said.

NetApp automates VMware snapshots, storage provisioning

Posted in: Industry News, Storage, Virtualization by thirdoctet on | No Comments

By Beth Pariseau, Senior News Writer, SearchStorage.com.

Network Appliance Inc. (NetApp) is adding a SnapManager software module for virtual servers and automated storage provisioning as part of a series of upgrades to its software portfolio.

The new SnapManager for Virtual Infrastructure (SMVI) software module is similar to NetApp’s SnapManager modules for applications, such as SAP and Oracle. The products create an interface for setting data protection schemes that is meant to run in the idiom of the application being protected and through an interface on the application server itself. SnapManager products also run on virtual, as well as physical servers.

NetApp has supported snapshots of virtual servers, but these updates make the snapshots more complete and granular, according to NetApp vice president of solutions marketing Patrick Rogers. “SnapManager support means snapshots will operate inside the hypervisor environment, and snapshot and recover the entire VM, similar to the way SnapManager does backup and recovery on SQL and Exchange servers,” Rogers said.

NetApp is also adding a Provisioning Manager. This application allows administrators to create storage policy groups with predetermined settings, such as RAID levels and snapshot schedule, and automates provisioning of new hosts according to their assigned policy groups. There are no predefined limits to the number of policy groups supported. “It’s similar to provisioning VMware and other virtual machines,” according to Rogers.

For now, Provisioning Manager won’t automate virtual server provisioning, something at least one NetApp customer said he’d like to see soon. Tom Becchetti, storage engineer for a large medical manufacturing company , said the ability to delegate certain provisioning tasks after automating the initial setup of volumes will come in handy. But where it would really work best, he added, is for rapidly provisioning virtual hosts.

Continue reading the complete article at its source.

Sun Microsystems Announces Agreement to Acquire innotek, Expanding Sun xVM Reach to the Developer Desktop

Posted in: Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on February 13, 2008 | No Comments

SANTA CLARA, CA February 12, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced that it has entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire innotek, the provider of the leading edge, open source virtualization software called VirtualBox. By enabling developers to more efficiently build, test and run applications on multiple platforms, VirtualBox will extend the Sun xVM platform onto the desktop and strengthen Sun’s leadership in the virtualization market. This software is available for all major operating systems at www.virtualbox.org and www.openxvm.org.

With over four million downloads since January 2007, innotek’s open source VirtualBox product has been quickly established as one of the leading developer desktop virtualization platforms. Now, as part of the Sun xVM portfolio, VirtualBox will have the support of Sun’s global development community, field resources and partners to make VirtualBox even more compelling to developers and end users, driving greater adoption across a broad set of communities. VirtualBox enables desktop or laptop PCs running the Windows, Linux, Mac or Solaris operating systems to run multiple, different operating systems side-by-side, switching between them with just a click of the mouse. This allows software developers to more easily build multi-tier or cross-platform applications, or power-users to take advantage of applications that may not be available for their base operating system of choice.

“VirtualBox provides Sun with the perfect complement to our recently announced Sun xVM Server product,” said Rich Green, executive vice president, Sun Software. “Where Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the datacenter, VirtualBox is ideal for any laptop or desktop environment and will align perfectly with Sun’s other developer focused assets such as GlassFish, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and soon MySQL as well as a wide range of community open source projects, enabling developers to quickly develop, test and deploy the next generation of applications.”

VirtualBox is open source, and can be freely downloaded without the hassle of payment or frustrating license keys at virtualbox.org or openxvm.org. The download is less than 20 megabytes and the software is easily installed on any modern, x86 architecture laptop or desktop system running Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris operating systems, in just minutes. Supported guest operating systems include all versions of Windows from 3.1 to Vista, Linux 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, Solaris x86, OS/2, Netware and DOS.

The Sun xVM family of products uniquely integrates virtualization and management to help customers better manage both physical and virtualized assets across heterogeneous environments. Previously announced products in the Sun xVM line include Sun xVM Server and Sun xVM OpsCenter. Sun xVM Server is a datacenter grade, bare-metal virtualization engine with advanced features such as live VM migration and dynamic self-healing, and can consolidate Windows, Linux and Solaris operating system instances. Sun xVM Ops Center is a unified management infrastructure for both physical and virtual assets in the datacenter. Sun has announced partnerships and endorsements for xVM with Microsoft, RedHat, Intel, AMD, Symantec and Quest Software. More information about Sun xVM solutions can be found at: http://www.sun.com/xvm.

The agreement to acquire innotek follows Sun’s announcement on January 16 of a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database. These acquisitions reaffirm Sun as the largest commercial open source contributor.

The stock purchase agreement to acquire innotek is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to be completed during the third quarter of Sun’s 2008 fiscal year. The terms of the deal were not disclosed as the transaction is not material to Sun’s earnings per share.

About innotek

innotek is an internally funded software company located in Stuttgart, Germany with offices in Dresden, Berlin and the Russian Federation. Its team of international specialists has focused entirely on the development of high-tech system software. innotek has been at the forefront of PC virtualization technology since 2001 and now staffs Europe’s largest and most experienced team of PC software virtualization experts with numerous Fortune 500 and government customers.

About Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Sun Microsystems develops the technologies that power the global marketplace. Guided by a singular vision — “The Network is the Computer” — Sun drives network participation through shared innovation, community development and open source leadership. Sun can be found in more than 100 countries and on the Web at http://sun.com.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo and Java are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the US and other countries.

Read the entire press release at sun.com.

Citrix Delivery Center Helps Customers Transform Datacenters into Delivery Centers

Posted in: Application Delivery, Industry News, Virtualization by thirdoctet on February 11, 2008 | No Comments

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. » 2/11/2008 » Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, today announced Citrix Delivery Center, a new overarching product family brand for its market-leading application delivery infrastructure solutions. The Citrix Delivery Center product family features four primary product lines: Citrix XenServer™, Citrix XenDesktop™, Citrix® NetScaler® and Citrix XenApp™ – the new name for Citrix Presentation Server™. Citrix also unveiled a new tool called Citrix Workflow Studio designed to help customers unlock the full power of Citrix Delivery Center by orchestrating communications across multiple Citrix products as well as third-party solutions.

The new Citrix Delivery Center brand reflects the growing need for IT organizations to transform static datacenters into dynamic “delivery centers.” By definition, datacenters have historically been static warehouses of applications and data, oriented more toward long-term production projects than highly-responsive, on-demand service delivery. Unfortunately, this outdated model makes it extremely difficult to keep pace with today’s fast-paced business environment where companies must contend with a constant barrage of new applications, new devices, new competitive pressures and an increasingly mobile workforce. In an era where businesses run on applications, the ability to deliver applications and desktops to any user, anytime, anywhere from a secure central location is rapidly becoming a core focus for most IT organizations. By providing an end-to-end infrastructure for application delivery, Citrix Delivery Center is the first solution on the market to address this challenge across all applications, all networks, and all users.

“In today’s volatile business environment, the traditional deployment of applications leaves a lot to be desired by enterprise organizations,” said Michael Rose, Research Analyst with IDC. “With the increasing number of mobile workers, computing locations, applications and user scenarios, an application delivery infrastructure enables a dynamic and flexible way of providing applications to users. Citrix Delivery Center presents a unique way to help orchestrate the critical pieces of the infrastructure required for true application delivery.”

Introducing Citrix Delivery Center
The Citrix Delivery Center product family ties together the company’s four key application delivery infrastructure systems. Customers will continue to have full flexibility and choice to buy individual products or combined solutions within the family or take advantage of them as an end-to-end application delivery solution. The Citrix Delivery Center product family includes:

• Citrix XenServer – The XenServer product line is an enterprise-class solution for virtualizing application workloads across any number of servers in the datacenter as a flexible aggregated pool of computing resources. With the new Platinum Edition, XenServer also becomes the first and only solution on the market to address both virtual and physical servers, making the entire datacenter more dynamic (see today’s separate press release on the latest edition of this product).
• Citrix NetScaler – The NetScaler product line is a purpose-built web application delivery solution that accelerates application performance up to five times while improving security and reducing web infrastructure costs. In addition to delivering web applications for thousands of corporate customers, NetScaler is also the delivery infrastructure of choice for most of the world’s largest consumer websites, touching an estimated 75 percent of all Internet users each day.
• Citrix XenApp – The company’s flagship application virtualization product line, previously known as Presentation Server, is the industry’s de facto standard for delivering Windows-based applications with the best performance, security and cost savings. With more than 70 million users and 99 percent of the Fortune Global 500 as customers, the XenApp product line uses state-of-the-art client and server side virtualization to deliver applications to office and mobile workers from a single centralized location. The new XenApp name was chosen to better reflect the product’s core focus on application virtualization, and to underscore the importance of providing customers with an end-to-end virtualization system that incorporates servers (XenServer), applications (XenApp) and desktops (XenDesktop).
• Citrix XenDesktop – XenDesktop is the industry’s first comprehensive Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) system – moving beyond the limitations of existing products to ensure the simple, secure and cost effective delivery of Windows desktops to any office worker with an unparalleled user experience.

The Citrix Delivery Center product family also includes all Citrix solutions that go to market as part of the above four product lines, including Citrix Access Gateway™, Citrix EdgeSight™, Citrix Password Manager™, Citrix Provisioning Server™ and Citrix WANScaler™. These products, which enhance the value of application delivery for all applications and desktops and serve as key differentiators to the four primary Citrix Delivery Center product lines, will continue to be available both as standalone solutions.
“This shift in thinking about the traditional datacenter as more of a dynamic delivery center makes perfect sense for organizations’ evolving IT environment, where technologies such as virtualization make infrastructure much more complex than in the past,” said Davood Ghods, Agency Information Officer for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. “The promise of a product such as Citrix Delivery Center is that it provides a complete set of application delivery technologies that work seamlessly together, something that any IT organization would love to have.”

Workflow Studio Enables a Truly Dynamic Delivery Platform
Tying it all together, the new Citrix Workflow Studio provides an orchestration tool that wraps commands from virtually any product and presents them as graphical objects that can be easily linked together on a visual workflow canvas. Using Workflow Studio, administrators will be able to integrate previously disconnected processes far more easily across multiple Citrix Delivery Center products, allowing them to work together as a single cohesive system. This also makes it much easier for customers to integrate Citrix solutions with third-party products to automate end-to-end application delivery processes.

Highly extensible and open, Workflow Studio is built on Microsoft .NET, PowerShell and Windows Workflow Foundation technologies. This extensible design also makes it easier for customers to link Citrix products into broader systems management solutions from partners like HP, IBM and Microsoft to ensure that all of the Citrix Delivery Center products function seamlessly within large enterprise environments.

“In the early 1990s, Citrix inspired an entire industry to think differently about how a new generation of applications should be delivered.  Over the years, we have continued to raise the bar on application delivery with innovative new products that help customers keep pace with new application types, user scenarios and business challenges,” said Wes Wasson, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, Citrix Systems. “Today, Citrix offers the industry’s most comprehensive portfolio of application delivery infrastructure solutions, featuring a broad range of world-class products that extend from the datacenter to the desktop. We are excited about Citrix Delivery Center and its potential for transforming datacenters into delivery centers for customers around the world.”

Pricing and Availability
The individual products in the Citrix Delivery Center family can be purchased today in any quantity and combination to fit the exact requirements of each unique customer. A tech preview of  the new Workflow Studio solution will be available in Q2 2008.  

Citrix XenApp will be the new product line name for all versions of Presentation Server going forward. The Citrix Presentation Server name will remain on all existing product, documentation, support and marketing tools specific to the 4.5 and earlier releases of the product.

About Citrix
Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS) is the global leader and the most trusted name in application delivery infrastructure. More than 200,000 organizations worldwide rely on Citrix to deliver any application to users anywhere with the best performance, highest security and lowest cost. Citrix customers include 100% of the Fortune 100 companies and 99% of the Fortune Global 500, as well as hundreds of thousands of small businesses and prosumers. Citrix has approximately 6,200 channel and alliance partners in more than 100 countries. Annual revenue in 2007 was $1.4 billion.

Care of citrix.com.