Alternative Technology announced an agreement to distribute Marathon Technologies everRun fault-tolerant, high availability software for physical and virtual server environments. Marathon's everRun software is for IT professionals at midsize companies and enterprises who want to prevent outages and data loss in their physical and virtual infrastructures. everRun provides fault-tolerant, high availability for Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2003 to deliver uninterrupted availability, data protection, and rapid recovery through a 'one-click' operation.

Citrix says that Dell has started pre-installing XenServer on PowerEdge servers at the factory for worldwide distribution. It said XenServer Dell products are the only virtualization solutions to integrate Dell's OpenManage agent technology, which is supposed to make customer feel comfortable.

VMware announced that VMware Site Recovery Manager, a pioneering product for disaster recovery management and automation, will be available for order next week with general availability expected to follow within 30 days. VMware Site Recovery Manager, which is part of VMware's suite of management and automation products for the datacenter, leverages virtualization to simplify business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with executing disaster recovery.

SAS unveiled a new solution based on VMware virtualization to monitor, manage and optimize IT operations across all physical and virtual environments. SAS IT Intelligence for VMware Infrastructure will enable customers to better align IT resources with strategic business goals.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit en banc heard oral arguments Thursday in the Bilski case, which, if their honors get to feeling radical and rule broadly, could outlaw not only business methods patents in the United States but - by extension - void all existing software patents and patent applications. It could take the court maybe nine months and into a new administration to decide.

StoneFly announced its entry into VMware's Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) and Hardware Certification Programs. In addition, StoneFly announced that the StoneFly StoneFusion6.X operating system now offers enhanced support for virtual server environments, including the latest versions of VMware ESX. As StoneFly's Intelligent Network Storage Platform, StoneFusion comes standard with each StoneFly IP SAN and offers comprehensive storage services, including built-in support for the VMware iSCSI initiator for speedy integration of networked storage with virtual servers.

Does virtualization mean the end of the OS? There appear to be basically two views on how virtualization will affect the future development of operating systems and computing environments in the personal computing space. One camp believes that virtualization functionality will be present within the operating system. The other camp believes it will be outside the operating system, perhaps in the form of a hypervisor or thin virtualization layer that resides 'below' the OS and governs access to hardware.

Virtualization is a strategic initiative at Dell and so we have spent considerable time planning and seeking the requirements of hundreds of our customers of all types and sizes and across many geographies. What we found was pretty revealing, although not particularly surprising: virtualization has matured to the point where it is not just viewed as a red-hot, 'solve everything' technology, but as an effective means for our customers to meet specific business needs and objectives.

Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, AMD has not added anything new to its antitrust charges against Intel - just some color - mostly black redactions - even after riffling through the 145 million pages of discovery that Intel turned over to it. According to AMD, 'Intel has made sure that the written record tells little of the story.' The case has now reached the deposition stage and what's new this week is the revelation that AMD wants the right to take 48 times more depositions than the federal standard allows.

ScaleMP announced details of its channel partner program. The program, designed to assist channel partners in providing server solutions for their customers' high-end computing needs, offers resellers and system integrators the necessary tools to bring the recently launched ScaleMP vSMP Foundation Standalone to their customer base. vSMP Foundation Standalone is based on the Versatile SMP (vSMP) architecture, which aggregates two dual-socket industry-standard x86 servers into a powerful four-socket shared memory system.

Virtualization Journal now reaches more than 60,000 online readers with monthly digital editions and weekly newsletters. The premier issue of the magazine's print edition, which debuts on May 6, 2008, at JavaOne in San Francisco, as a media sponsor of this event, will be available on newsstands worldwide. Article submission inquiries can be directed by email to editorial(at)sys-con.com and the world's most targeted advertising opportunities can be explored by contacting ad vertising(at)sys-con.com, or by phone 201 802-3021.

A new scalable virtualization server is now available from Dell and based on the Quad-Core AMD Opteron processor, AMD announced. Enterprise customers interested in consolidating server infrastructure may turn to two new virtualization servers from Dell utilizing Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors, including the Dell PowerEdge R905 which set a new standard in VMmark performance testing with 60 virtual machines. The new Dell servers take advantage of AMD Direct Connect Architecture to reduce bottlenecks, minimize latency and increase the performance of virtualized applications to maximize the benefits of virtualization.

Seanodes released the results of a third-party survey of IT professionals that shows that the transition from direct attached storage to networked storage is dictated by needs that come with server virtualization, such as VM migration, elevating costs and complexity, while taxing performance and management. The survey, with respondents including network and systems administrators and other IT personnel from organizations of all sizes, sheds light on how virtualized infrastructures raise the levels of stress and demand on networked storage, creating a tenuous situation of economic sustainability against the high costs of improved storage performance.

FalconStor announced FalconStor Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) for VMware Site Recovery Manager. VMware Site Recovery Manager is a pioneering product for disaster recovery management and automation. Part of VMware's suite of management and automation products for the datacenter, VMware Site Recovery Manager simplifies business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with implementing disaster recovery.

VMware announced that VMware Stage Manager, a product for accelerating and automating the delivery of applications from staging to production, is now available for order. Joining VMware's suite of management and automation products for the datacenter, VMware Stage Manager automates the process of transitioning application environments in the virtual datacenter through the stages of the release process - from integration to testing to staging and to user acceptance - before being released into production. Now, instead of having to keep track of multiple instances of configurations throughout these stages, IT managers using VMware Stage Manager can automate the application release process so changes and updates are automatically managed and controlled. This simplifies management, minimizes errors, and speeds application delivery.

GemStone announced that three of the top ten Wall Street Banks have selected GemStone Systems as their single provider of distributed data management technology in the last 90 days. Each is a seven figure enterprise license deal with a multi-year commitment to deploy GemFire, GemStone's Enterprise Data Fabric product, on 1000s of nodes, running hundreds of applications, managing terabytes of data across geographically dispersed data centers.

NetApp announced support for VMware Site Recovery Manager, a product from VMware for disaster recovery management and automation. This support provides customers with a disaster recovery solution built with VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware Infrastructure, and NetApp FAS storage systems. In addition, both companies will also offer an improved customer experience with the Virtualization Escalation Team (VET), a new joint customer support group.

Ericom and BOSaNOVA announced a partnership in which all BOSaNOVA Linux, CE and XPe thin clients will include Ericom's PowerTerm WebConnect clients for Desktop Virtualization and Server Based Computing. With Ericom's PowerTerm WebConnect, BOSaNOVA thin client users will have secure and centrally managed access to applications and desktops running on Windows Terminal Servers, Virtual Desktops (VDI), Blade PCs and legacy host systems. This alliance empowers organizations with a full-featured virtualization solution that reduces the cost and complexity of traditional desktop management.

Desktone announced that it has created the Desktone Service Provider Partner Program to enable service providers in the IT hosting, IT outsourcing and datacom businesses to offer desktops as a service (DaaS) based on the Desktone Virtual-D Platform. The company also unveiled that Hewlett-Packard's Flexible Computing Services (HP FCS) signed on as the first member of Desktone's Partner Program.

LeftHand Networks announced its support for VMware Site Recovery Manager. VMware Site Recovery Manager is a pioneering product for disaster recovery management and automation. Part of VMware's suite of management and automation products for the data center, VMware Site Recovery Manager simplifies business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with implementing disaster recovery. LeftHand Networks' certified Storage Replication Adapter allows customers to deploy a complete disaster recovery (DR) solution that automates DR for systems and storage across virtualized environments.

Micron Technology announced that Egenera has designed Micron's line of energy-efficient Aspen Memory products into its Egenera BladeFrame platforms to reduce data center power consumption. Egenera is experiencing up to a 17 percent reduction in server memory power consumption by utilizing Micron's 1 Gb-based 1.5-volt DDR2 Aspen Memory modules in its platforms.

Microsoft, which spent $6 billion on aQuantive and was chasing Yahoo for its ads before it came to a dead stop, has been supporting - as in helping write - legislation in New York and Connecticut that would regulate the data that companies like Yahoo and Google collect for targeted advertising. The New York bill, which Google, Yahoo, AOL and Facebook oppose, would let consumers opt-out of tracking.

Virtualization stresses existing management systems by introducing increases in the speed, scale, and complexity of the information technology environment. With its EVM Suite, ManageIQ enables enterprises to overcome these challenges with management and automation designed for virtualized environments. ManageIQ's agent free, non-invasive solution assures comprehensive discovery of virtual resources, without the time, expense, and disruption of agent and driver-based approaches. Continuous tracking of virtual resources, and EVM's in- depth analytical capabilities speed problem resolution and help eliminate resource management issues like VM sprawl.

DataCore announced that it has accepted a $30M equity investment from Insight Venture Partners and Updata Partners. Insight Venture Partners is a private equity and venture capital firm focused on the global software and Internet industries. Updata Partners is an information technology-focused venture capital firm whose general partners have been active as investors and operators in the IT industry for more than two decades.

As oil headed in the direction of $200 a barrel this week, VMware claimed that its virtualization widgetry has saved users 39 billion kWh since 1998, more power than it takes to heal and cool Denmark a year. It calculates the savings at $4.4 billion.

VMware and Lenovo announced an agreement to increase the adoption of VMware virtualization in China. Lenovo will sell, distribute and support the VMware Infrastructure 3 platform on Lenovo server systems. This partnership enables businesses and organizations in China to leverage both the performance and scalability of Lenovo servers with VMware virtualization to reduce operating expenses, improve business continuity, strengthen security and reduce their power consumption and carbon footprint.

Dell will take a big giant step out ahead of HP and IBM in the virtualization sweepstakes when it announces that it is OEMing PAN, Egenera's data center virtualization and management software. Egenera, which has been doing virtualization way longer than most people, claims PAN is the epitome of what IDC calls 'Virtualization 2.0,' the next step beyond simple VMware-style single server virtualization replete with scalability, faster provisioning, high availability, disaster recovery and resource balancing.

Dell builds appliances that it sells to OEMs like Google's search box. Its latest effort is the OEM CR100 server, a simple, stripped-down, entry-level platform, built with PowerEdge R200 technology. The short-depth 1U is good for a two-year lifecycle.

SunGard announced a partnership with VMware. This strategic partnership will help organizations leverage VMware's proven virtualization platform with open access to SunGard's vast infrastructure, providing secondary data center facilities. Ensuring availability and recoverability of applications, systems and technology in the face of disruptions is a requirement for today's organizations. While 24-48-hour recovery windows were commonplace five years ago, many business leaders now require IT to recover systems in less than eight hours, with even more aggressive recovery time objectives (RTOs) coming soon.

DataCore announced that JMR Construction has become a DataCore SANmelody customer courtesy of DataCore partner Integral Networks. VMware and DataCore serve as a way forward for the DataCore partner and customer alike. The combination provides a cost effective alternative that made it practical for JMR to save by not having to invest in additional, physical servers.

Emulex announced that EMC has qualified the Emulex LightPulse LPe12000 family of 8Gb/s Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) for the EMC CLARiiON, EMC Celerra and EMC Symmetrix networked storage system families. Emulex 8Gb/s HBAs, which are available from EMC through EMC Select, provide customers with new performance, advanced virtualization and security features, while maintaining backward compatibility with existing 4Gb/s and 2Gb/s Fibre Channel products.

3PAR announced that a recently released report by the Taneja Group defines and analyzes a new category of next-generation Fibre Channel storage systems from vendors including 3PAR. The report forecasts revenue growth for next-generation Fibre Channel storage systems for the period between 2007 and 2011 and identifies shifts in the Fibre Channel storage market that Taneja believes are largely responsible for driving revenue growth for this new segment.

Dell announced its broadest lineup of dedicated virtualization solutions ever. More than a dozen new servers, tools, and services simplify the deployment and management of virtualization in Enterprises of any size.

Neocleus announced that it has completed more than 18 months of work to enhance the Xen hypervisor to work on endpoints such as desktops and laptops. Neocleus will contribute these enhancements to the open source community to accelerate the adoption and development of a new generation of enterprise endpoint solutions. To create the hypervisor, Neocleus enhanced the Xen Open Source server-oriented hypervisor and transformed it into an endpoint-oriented hypervisor.

Neocleus announced the culmination of 18 months of innovation and research by unveiling its strategy and approach for addressing the security, performance and IT manageability requirements of enterprise endpoints across a distributed network. The Neocleus strategy provides businesses with a new paradigm for endpoints such as desktops and laptops that changes the way business is conducted and resources are secured, to allow IT departments to maintain unprecedented control of their distributed IT assets and to give end users the complete flexibility they need to do their work.

ClearCube announced that its software business is being spun-off and launched as an independent new company called VDIworks. Built on five generations of proven success within enterprise production environments, VDIworks delivers comprehensive, flexible software management platforms for creating, deploying and managing virtual desktop infrastructure. ClearCube, on the other hand, will continue to provide its complete solutions for centralized desktop computing, including end-to-end desktop virtualization. As independent companies, both ClearCube and VDIworks will maximize their business potential and gain the flexibility to meet the rapidly growing demands of their respective target markets.

MonoSphere announced Storage Horizon 3.7 with a range of analytical capabilities, which reduce the complexity and time required to manage today's heterogeneous storage environments. Storage Horizon 3.7 includes enhanced support for VMware environments, a new automated chargeback capability, advanced analytics, advanced analysis of storage consumed by databases, and adds support for EMC Celerra and IBM DS and ESS arrays.

Virtutech announced that General Dynamics C4 Systems, a business unit of General Dynamics, is deploying Virtutech Simics for the ground segment of the U.S. Navy's Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) program. The ground system will be provided by Lockheed Martin, prime contractor for the MUOS program.

VirtualLogix introduced VLX vHA, a solution that enables high-availability (HA) assurances for communications equipment utilizing virtualization. Tightly integrated with its real-time virtualization solution for network equipment, VLX for Network Infrastructure, VLX vHA increases system availability without the cost and scalability restrictions of traditional solutions. VLX vHA also meets the needs of high-end systems with demanding availability requirements that want to overcome the design challenges presented by new multicore processor-based systems.

Ericom announced the availability of Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect for Oracle VM, a desktop virtualization (VDI) solution based on Oracle's server virtualization software. Ericom PowerTerm WebConnect for Oracle VM harnesses the power of the companies' respective virtualization products to deliver secure, on-demand, and centrally managed access to virtual desktops and applications.