rPath announced a technology partnership enabling application providers to use rPath's rBuilder to create virtual appliances using the rPath Appliance Platform and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell. The agreement promises to reduce complexity and costs of application distribution and deployment, while maintaining the strategic value of investments in application certification. The Novell-rPath collaboration marks an industry milestone, enabling customers to utilize an open-source operating system with a virtual appliance lifecycle management platform.

Siemens Communications introduced the OpenScape Contact Center, a comprehensive voice, unified communications and customer interaction software solution designed to work with virtually any existing telephony environment. It is based on Siemens' OpenScape Unified Communications (UC) Server, which removes the artificial legacy barriers between separate voice, video and unified communications systems to enable a comprehensive suite of UC applications.

Mellanox announced the availability of Virtual Protocol Interconnect (VPI) in its ConnectX' server and storage adapter products. VPI enables I/O infrastructure flexibility and future-proofing for data centers and computing environments. VPI-enabled adapters facilitate any standard networking, clustering, storage, and management protocol to operate over any converged network with the same software infrastructure. VPI also supports port auto-sensing of the fabric (InfiniBand, Ethernet or Data Center Ethernet) and configures the adapter in the appropriate mode easing deployments in both rack and blade environments.

Desktone announced the Desktone Virtual-D Platform, which is designed to enable service providers to offer hosted, subscription-based virtual desktops. Desktone's solution helps enterprises realize the full benefits of centralized virtual desktops without having to build and deploy the infrastructure internally. It reduces desktop TCO, transforming computing costs from fixed CAPEX to variable OPEX. Service providers benefit from optimizing use of their data center assets while delivering a new highly scalable, value-added service to customers.

VirtualLogix announced that its VLX for Network Infrastructure is now available for Power Architecture based processors. Using VLX virtualization software, multiple operating systems may run simultaneously on shared hardware, enabling networking and telecommunication equipment manufacturers to inject new functionalities into existing product lines and extend product lifecycles - while slicing costs by consolidating existing products into a multifunction system.

SMC Networks announced that its 10Gigabit fiber and copper adapters for 10Gigabit Ethernet server connections now have the added benefit of offering virtualization optimization. The 10G adapters still excel at performance, thermal management, standards-compliance and affordability: now the SMC10GPCIe-10BT 10GBASE-T server adapter and the SMC10GPCIe-XFP 10Gigabit optical server adapter both benefit from a driver set that incorporates virtualization optimization software that accelerates network traffic in virtualized environments.

For everyone looking for a solid book on server virtualization using VMware Virtual Infrastructure you can rest easy. Equal parts design guide, best practices, and cookbook this book is full of great background, pertinent info, and ways to make your infrastructure more reliable and secure. If this book were not so thorough I might say it errs on the side of TMI (too much information). However, since it is so complete I believe there is something here for everyone.

Many large SOA deployments faced two major challenges: how to promote service reuse and how to manage the complexity of a heterogeneous, distributed SOA that includes Java, .NET, and various legacy and packaged applications deployed across the enterprise. The solution was to implement service virtualization to make services portable and protocol independent. This session covered the different architectural components of service virtualization - mediation, deployment, governance, and service management - and the standards that made service virtualization possible.

F5 Networks released the results of an online survey that shows the storage virtualization market is set to grow. The study reveals the percentage of U.S. enterprises that use storage virtualization solutions will more than double from 21 percent to 47 percent in the next few years. The survey found that a primary driver for enterprise interest in storage virtualization is reduction in operating expense and capital investment. Underscoring their interest in reducing costs, respondents indicated that 20 percent of IT labor is spent on storage-related activities such as provisioning, backup, and moving data.

Bitam announced it has entered into an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with Tributary Systems (TSI). Under the terms of the agreement, TSI will integrate Bitam's business intelligence solution into their Virtual Integrated Tape and Library Solution ViTAL, an integrated tape virtualization solution, designed for HP NonStop customers. The integrated solution will not only allow storage network managers to view backup and recovery operations with real-time analytical dashboards but also manage their entire IT environment with a business intelligence tool designed for their environment.

Egenera announced the availability of VMware virtualization on Egenera systems with full support from Egenera and its resellers. Under the companies' original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement announced in 2007, customers can purchase VMware Infrastructure 3, the data center virtualization and management platform, with the Egenera BladeFrame system, a platform designed to support large-scale virtualized deployments of critical applications with high levels of availability and scalability.

xkoto announced it has strengthened its management team, adding three executives with extensive experience in enterprise software and systems. Joining xkoto are John Hamilton, Senior Vice President of Sales and Services; Dermot O'Grady, Chief Financial Officer; and Charlie Ungashick, Vice President of Marketing. Momentum continues to build at xkoto, which received $7.5 million in financing late last year, established its corporate headquarters in Waltham, Massachusetts, and expanded its research & development operations in Toronto.

HP announced it plans to support Citrix XenDesktop upon its availability in May across its industry-standard HP ProLiant server and HP Compaq thin client product lines. Citrix XenDesktop is a comprehensive desktop delivery solution that allows companies to virtualize Microsoft Windows desktops in the data center and deliver them on demand to office workers in any location. Using XenDesktop can simplify desktop management, enabling customers to provision new users far more quickly, improve data security and save up to 40 percent over the cost of installing and managing desktops on traditional PCs.

Aonix announced the release of PERC Ultra 5.1 with support for Wind River Linux. The characteristics of Java found in PERC Ultra to address the scalability, manageability, reliability, security, and performance needs of networking and telecommunications equipment providers are also addressed with the security enhanced and carrier grade Linux provided by Wind River making these products natural companions.

Nimbus Data Systems in partnership with Arastra, Force10 Networks, Fujitsu, Fulcrum Microsystems, Mellanox Technologies, Neterion, and NetXen, announced the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Storage Alliance, an ecosystem of adapter, switch, and storage system developers united by a common goal: to increase awareness and enterprise deployments of 10 Gigabit Ethernet as the superior storage networking infrastructure for server virtualization and enterprise-wide storage consolidation given its proven interoperability, low cost, common management, and high performance.

Sigma Resources & Technologies announced it has integrated its test automation solution with the VMware Lab Manager and has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. The new relationship will enable end-user customers to leverage the integrated power of Sigma's SigmationTF testing framework and VMware's lab automation and other virtualization products to accelerate the development and deployment of bug-free applications and make the transitions between physical and virtual aspects of IT smoother.

DataCore announced that St. Marien Amberg Hospital has implemented SANmelody as the storage foundation that supports its information systems and PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication System) project running on a VMware environment. The virtual infrastructure not only offers high availability, better performance and lower management costs, but also halves the electricity and cooling costs by using less hardware to do more work. 'By using a combination of DataCore storage and VMware server virtualization, we have laid the foundation for an IT environment of the future,' said Dr Dietmar Braeuer, head of information technology at St. Marien Amberg Hospital. 'More flexibility, more functionality and performance, less hardware.'

Aspen Technology announced that aspenONE version 2006.5 uses the latest Microsoft technologies to simplify IT rollout and management. The integration of aspenONE with Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft Office Excel, and SoftGrid Application Virtualization supports IT standards, speeds time to deployment, and extends the reach of aspenONE within operations for improved manufacturing performance.

Windward IT Solutions announced its certification as a VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC). Virtualization is the key transforming technology to enable customers to cut IT infrastructure total cost of ownership by up to 70% in the face of soaring electrical and data center space expenses. As a VAC partner, Windward provides professional services that transform VMware technologies into powerful solutions.

Server virtualization firm, Parallels, has been deployed by provider of hosting services in Europe, Cobweb, as a provider to use Parallels Automation with the hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels noted, ''We are pleased that Cobweb is using the full potential of our Parallels Automation solution to centrally manage a wide variety of hosting services. This deployment demonstrates how Parallels Open Platform is helping service providers deliver advanced business applications using the software-as-a-service (SaaS) delivery model.''

The rapid rise of virtualization technology made it a vital component of any Enterprise IT strategy. And the technology triggered dramatic changes in product offerings and business practices to support virtualized operational models. These breakneck speed developments lead to a plethora of solutions, with the attendant confusion that typically surrounds fast moving technologies. In this session Brian Stevens outlined trends in virtualization technologies and examined their potential impact on, and benefits for, future Enterprise IT deployments. Topics included tradeoffs between open source and proprietary solutions, hardware integration efforts, deployment models, and long-term, high-volume serviceability/security considerations.

Disaster Recovery 2.0 (DR 2.0), incorporated new technologies that helped organizations better prepare for a disaster, at a lower-price point. One of the main aspects of implementing a solid DR plan was adding virtualization capabilities. Virtualization was already a mainstream tool for many IT administrators to consolidate applications within their data center. In the near future, virtualization will live up to its hype - not only will it enable high availability within servers, but also desktop virtualization, which can lead the way to more use of thin client PCs. This session's speaker discussed DR 2.0 and how virtualization acts as a key enabler.

Virtual Iron announced that YuuZoo is deploying Virtual Iron's solution across its content management system and mobile content distribution platforms in Singapore and the United States. The firm expects benefits from the software, including reduction of its server environment by almost half, streamlined management of its computing environment, easy provisioning and set-up of systems for new users, and cost-efficient business continuity capabilities. YuuZoo is working with ICSP Solutions out of Singapore to deploy the Virtual Iron solution.

Analysts at Tier1 Research (T1R) find in a new report that the managed hosting sector has experienced growth in the past 12 months - in excess of 30% - driven by several trends. These trends include virtualization, business continuity services and security technologies, driven both by enterprise demand and regulatory compliance. Despite the dipping economy in the US, there has been increased managed hosting adoption by SMBs and mid-tier enterprises in both the US and Europe. Rackspace, Savvis, AT&T and Verizon Business have been the biggest beneficiaries of this market growth.

Adaptec announced that all seven products in the Adaptec Series 5 Unified Serial (SATA/SAS) Controllers have been certified with VMware ESX Server 3.02 and 3.5 through AppLabs. This certification ensures that system integrators and IT professionals can deliver the performance and scalability of Adaptec Series 5 RAID controllers combined with the features available with VMware Server ESX 3.02 and 3.5, such as expanded storage options and SATA support. As virtualized storage environments, like those offered through VMware, continue to grow within enterprise IT infrastructures, Adaptec RAID controllers are positioned to deliver I/O performance, along with scalability and reliability, within this expanding market.

Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) announced the release of its latest research report titled, 'Virtualization and Management: Trends, Forecasts and Recommendations.' EMA and its research director Andi Mann continue to identify trends, adoption patterns and pervasive marketing hype around one of 2008's technology stories.

At Marathon Technologies, we service a range of industries that must have their applications up and running at all times, or as we call it: vAvailable. vAvailable is the integration of virtualization and high availability technologies to create a cost-effective solution that ensures applications won't go down. With virtualization technologies, high availability has now launched well between today's alternative solutions such as clustering. This session will define vAvailable and this is a huge step between today's alternatives. Mr. Melnick will discuss a new standard for application availability using virtualization technology that embraces Windows and business process applications.

There has been much speculation about the security posture of virtualized environments. One identified vulnerability is the 'hypervisor' threat in which a hacker can break out of a guest OS and onto the host OS of a server. How great a danger is the hypervisor threat? What security barriers should IT erect before and after they implement their virtual environment? Virtual security expert Hezi Moore will help attendees separate the virtualized wheat from the real chaff.

As computer grids are becoming more wide spread in commercial data centers, the bottlenecks in application performance move from raw processing to searching, storing and retrieving the data. In-Memory Data Grid (IMDG) technology solves this fundamental problem by acting as super-efficient application accelerator, taking advantage of unused resources readily available on the grid - disk, memory, IO - to put the data in memory of the same computer that performs the calculations. The talk will explore how IMDG can be easily integrated with existing enterprise grids to create data-aware grid applications and provide application performance acceleration while improving application scalability and reliability.

As governments and corporations intensify their focus on reducing energy demands and greenhouse gas emissions, pressure to improve data center energy efficiency will continue to grow. We believe that the following four Rs must play an essential role in the development of any initiative to create a green data center: Regain power and cooling capacity, Recapture resiliency, Reduce energy costs and Recycle end-of-of-life equipment. Successful organizations will make these four Rs their mantra. And in doing so, their ongoing efforts to think green will help keep their companies operating in the black.

Today, many organizations hear the term virtualization and still only think of the technology used in a datacenter. While this might be where virtualization started and has received a lot of attention, the next wave of virtualization is happening in connected devices through embedded technologies. When applied, virtualization allows organizations and developers working with front-end connected devices such as mobile phones, set-top boxes and WiMax base stations, to experience business benefits such as reduced bill-of-material costs, faster time-to-market and richer, more functional designs that feature reduced power, improved security and greater reliability. One of the strongest business drivers for virtualization in the embedded space is connectivity - the more devices converge and require connection to something else, the more virtualization becomes an ideal solution. As a new frontier in virtualization, however, many questions still surround its application in embedded systems and the specific business benefits companies can expect to gain.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Service closed the windows on this year's crop of temporary H-1B visa Tuesday, a week after it opened. It's refused to say for the moment how many applications it got but you can safely assume it's a lot. The cap is 65,000 visas for skilled workers (with a requisite bachelor's decree) and an extra 20,000 for those with masters degrees and PhDs from US universities. Both are oversubscribed.

FalconStor announced global enhancements to the FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS), Continuous Data Protector (CDP), and Virtual Tape Library (VTL) solutions. All are powered by an optimized FalconStor IPStor virtualization platform, resulting in better storage efficiencies and storage management through thin disaster recovery, proficient virtual appliances, and accelerated storage application performance.

You wouldn't know it, but virtualization has been around for quite some time. Virtually [sic] everything in the IT space has some notion of virtualization associated with it from microprocessors, to networks, to storage, and finally to servers. But, have you noticed that many of these are focused on infrastructure and IT related benefits such as utilization or decreased costs? What about business value? How do they enable realization and acceleration of business objectives? In this session discussed higher orders of virtualization, namely application and data virtualization, and how they complement traditional IT focused virtualization techniques to turn infrastructures into competitive advantages.

Stoneware announced LiveCD for webOS in their next release of webNetwork due in May of 2008. The release of LiveCD for webOS will allow organizations to turn their existing desktop hardware into a webOS thin client using a bootable CD, DVD, or USB drive based on Ubuntu's Linux distribution. Workstations booting from the LiveCD for webOS will load a read-only image of Ubuntu's Linux. The Linux image will establish network connectivity and load the user's Virtual Web Desktop in the workstation's browser. Enterprise users will be capable of accessing all of their web, Windows, and hosted applications through the thin client workstation.

NetWrix announced that it has broadened its scope in the IT change management solutions by offering two new products that simplify the ability to manage virtual machine environments while supporting both the VMware Infrastructure 3 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager platforms. Titled Change Reporter for VMware Infrastructure 3 and Change Reporter for Virtual Machine Manager, the new software products are designed to expand the capacity to audit, manage, monitor, analyze and report any changes made to virtual machine environments. The new products will become a part of the integrated NetWrix Change Management Suite.

IPv6 readiness and virtualization management proved to be key issues in the second annual Federal IT Trends Survey, conducted by IT management solutions provider ScienceLogic. Over 100 federal agency IT managers, systems administrators and network engineers were polled on various topics within federal IT, including Green IT solutions, virtualization and FISMA compliance. Surprisingly, only 65 percent of agency IT personnel surveyed say that IPv6 is important to their operations - making this issue second to last on the list of priorities covered by the survey.

For the past four years, Acronis has sponsored the annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC) -- and 2008 is no exception. Acronis donated licenses valued at $100,000 of its Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server, Acronis True Image Echo Workstation, Acronis Universal Restore and Acronis Snap Deploy for use in both the national competition, as well as for regional competitions held across the country earlier this year.

Violin Memory announced it has successfully tested the Violin 1010 memory appliance with the FalconStor Network Storage Server (NSS) from FalconStor Software. The Violin 1010 memory appliance and the FalconStor NSS can be integrated within a solution to meet the high performance, virtualized data storage demands of enterprise data centers.

Infoblox and Riverbed Technology announced virtualized core network services appliances for the branch office. The solution, which will include a virtual instance of Infoblox's core network services software running on the Riverbed Steelhead WDS appliance, will be deployed at remote and branch offices and improve core network services performance and management, while enabling the consolidation of servers and lowering costs.