Virtualization Articles
Composite Software has introduced version 6.1 of its Composite Data Virtualization Platform. The new release offers improved caching performance, expanded caching targets, data ship join for Teradata, and Hadoop MapReduce connectivity. Composite 6.1 also provides improvements to the data services development environment with an enhanced data services editor and new publishing options for Representational State Transfer (REST) and Open Data Protocol (OData) data services.
Posted February 17, 2012
Ntirety, Inc. announced that it has been successfully audited and certified under the MSPAlliance's (MSPA) Unified Certification Standard for Cloud and Managed Service Providers (UCS). The certification is specifically designed to provide business consumers of cloud and managed services with the assurance that the service provider they hire will meet or exceed the highest principles of quality in areas such as financial stability, facilities, managed services practices, and customer satisfaction.
Posted February 07, 2012
CiRBA Inc., a provider of data center intelligence software, announced support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 in its latest release of CiRBA Version 7.0. CiRBA's new Control Console is designed to provide IT organizations with greater control within virtual and cloud infrastructures. "CiRBA 7.0 gives unprecedented control over efficiency and risk to organizations deploying Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. In a single glance at the console, users can see where attention is required at the VM, host, and cluster level, and CiRBA's new action system provides explicit instructions on what allocations need to change, which workloads need to move and to where, and where new capacity is required," Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO of CiRBA, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted February 06, 2012
Along with thousands of IT professionals, I was in the San Francisco Moscone Center main hall last October listening to Larry Ellison's 2011 Oracle Open world keynote. Larry can always be relied upon to give an entertaining presentation, a unique blend of both technology insights and amusingly disparaging remarks about competitors.
Posted January 11, 2012
IBM has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Green Hat, a provider of software quality and testing solutions for the cloud and other environments. Financial terms were not disclosed. Founded in 1996, Green Hat is jointly headquartered in London, England and Wilmington, Delaware. Upon the acquisition close, Green Hat will join IBM's Rational Software business.
Posted January 04, 2012
The first calendar year following SAP's acquisition of Sybase is coming to a close. David Jonker, director, product marketing - Data Management & Analytics, Sybase, discusses key product integrations, IT trends that loom large in Sybase's data management strategies, and the emergence of what Sybase describes as DW 2.0. 2011 has been "a foundational year," with effort focused on making Sybase technologies work with SAP and setting the stage for 2012, says Jonker. "We believe 2012 is going to be a big year for us on the database side."
Posted December 21, 2011
Aternity Inc., a provider of end user experience management solutions, has announced that Aternity and Unisys Corporation have taken a further step in the collaboration that enables Unisys to integrate Aternity's Frontline Performance Intelligence (FPI) Platform into its managed end-user services solutions. The expanded agreement will enable Unisys to provide tailored options for managed-service solutions based on Aternity's FPI Platform. Through these solutions Unisys can manage performance of applications used by clients' employees.
Posted December 11, 2011
Three columns ago, I started a series of articles pointing out that tough times are a-comin' for the DBA profession due to major disruptive changes in the wider IT world (see "2012 Might Really Be the End of the World as We Know It"). In previous columns, I have told you about how our lives will change due to major technological changes caused by things such as Solid State Disks (SSD) and massively multicore CPUs.
Posted December 06, 2011
UC4, a provider of IT process automation solutions, announced its is shipping a new version of its Application Release Automation (ARA) solution, intended to provide greater visibility into the end-to-end release processes through cross-functional planning, tracking and reporting. The solution is designed to automate the deployment of complex applications from development through production.
Posted October 26, 2011
At OpenWorld, Oracle's annual week-long conference in San Francisco for customers and partners, Andy Flower, president of the Independent Oracle Users Group, spoke with 5 Minute Briefing about the emerging challenges facing IOUG members, the group's plans for the year ahead, including additional training and certification around Exadata, and how Oracle's engineered systems approach is being received. "The overall need for analytics, the growth of data, and the managing and processing of more and more data - those areas are the central themes for us," Flower noted.
Posted October 19, 2011
Cloud computing has taken the enterprise IT world by force. IT managers and CIOs are evaluating private, public and hybrid cloud infrastructures for running corporate applications and services. Many are doing pilots and evaluating large-scale migrations to the cloud, with the hope of not only saving money but increasing services for users.
Posted October 19, 2011
Red Hat, Inc. has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Gluster, Inc., a provider of open source unstructured data storage solutions, for approximately $136 million in cash. With this acquisition, Red Hat says it will improve how enterprise IT manages the explosion of big data, whether on-premise or spanning into the public cloud; and expand into a critical part of enterprise infrastructure, delivering open storage solutions that protect customer investments as they approach the new era of computing.
Posted October 17, 2011
ParAccel, a provider of a high performance analytic database, and MicroStrategy, a provider of business intelligence software, have announced that they have extended their strategic partnership. The alliance builds upon a recent announcement that ParAccel's analytic acceleration technology will be a core component of MicroStrategy's social media analytics applications as well as a high performance option for MicroStrategy Cloud customers. To support these applications, ParAccel has invested dedicated resources, provided comprehensive access to its software, and committed to delivering specific product enhancements that will optimize the integration of ParAccel's analytic engine with MicroStrategy's products and offerings.
Posted October 04, 2011
Virtualization is such a broad term and a hot topic among IT professionals. However, just because your organization has conquered server virtualization, or is well underway with confidence, if you proceed with the same desktop virtualization practices, you will be setting yourself up for failure.
Posted September 14, 2011
For many organizations, data is not only crossing into the hundreds of terabytes, but into the near-petabyte (PB) and multi-petabyte range. In a new survey sponsored by Oracle and conducted by Unisphere Research among members of the Independent Oracle Users Group (IOUG), "The Petabyte Challenge: 2011 IOUG Database Growth Survey," close to one out of 10 respondents report that the total amount of online (disk-resident) data they manage today - taking into account all clones, snapshots, replicas and backups - tops a petabyte.
Posted September 07, 2011
At an event for customers, partners and industry experts in Redwood Shores that was also presented live online, Oracle announced Oracle VM 3.0, the latest release of its server virtualization and management solution. According to the company, Oracle VM 3.0 is suitable for all data center workloads and features new policy-based management capabilities, advanced storage management via the Oracle VM Storage Connect plug-in API; centralized network configuration management, improved ease-of-use and Open Virtualization Format (OVF) support.
Posted September 07, 2011
At the recent VMworld conference, Symantec Corp. announced new enhancements to Backup Exec 2010 designed to provide greater visibility into physical and virtual environments with a single backup solution.
Posted September 06, 2011
NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a provider and integrator of advanced communications, networking and IT solutions, announced that its NEC Express5800/R320b fault-tolerant servers, which are powered by the six-core Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, now support VMware vSphere for virtualization.
Posted September 06, 2011
At VMworld 2011 yesterday, VMware, Inc. announced a new database provisioning and operations solution designed to deliver a database as a service model for the enterprise. Described as an extension of VMware's Cloud Application Platform strategy, VMware vFabric Data Director aims to give IT the ability to control and manage a growing set of heterogeneous databases through policy-based automation, while streamlining application development via a self-service provisioning model for developers to rapidly access the database services needed for modern applications. Built on VMware vSphere, vFabric Data Director will also extend the benefits of virtualized infrastructures to the database tier, optimizing resource utilization for increased operational efficiency and cost savings.
Posted August 30, 2011
Composite Software announced that Carfax, the vehicle history expert, has developed and deployed a data abstraction layer using the Composite Data Virtualization Platform that will provide the company greater agility in managing its rapidly changing reporting environment. The first deployment consisted of publishing logical views to support reporting for the company's finance, sales, marketing and business development organizations.
Posted August 23, 2011
Gluster, a provider of scale-out, open source storage solutions, has introduced the Gluster Connector for OpenStack, which provides scalable and highly-available VM storage functionality for OpenStack. "The Gluster Connector for OpenStack enhances the storage options that are available for OpenStack," John Kreisa, vice president of marketing at Gluster, tells 5 Minute Briefing. By enabling users of the OpenStack framework to now use GlusterFS as the primary storage model, OpenStack users can have both file and object in one common storage model, explains Kreisa.
Posted July 29, 2011
CA Technologies has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Watchmouse B.V. (WatchMouse), a provider of SaaS-based monitoring for cloud, mobile and traditional web applications. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. "As companies extend more applications to their customers through the web and smartphones, the performance of those applications is having a greater impact on revenue, customer loyalty and brand value," says David Dobson, executive vice president, CA Technologies.
Posted July 29, 2011
There is no doubt that virtualization is radically changing the shape of IT infrastructure, transforming the way applications are deployed and services delivered. Databases are among the last of the tier 1 applications to be hosted on virtual servers, but the past year has seen a huge wave of increase for production Oracle, SQL Server and other databases on VMware platforms. For all the benefits of virtualization, including cost-effectiveness, there are some impacts on the IT staff involved. Unfortunately for the DBAs virtualization often means losing control and visibility of their systems, which can ultimately hinder their ability to deliver database-oriented business solutions. While in the past DBAs had perfect visibility to the physical servers hosting the databases, the virtualization layers and the tools to manage them are typically out of bounds to them. While all the excitement of late has centered on VMware and other virtual machine systems, the DBAs have a valid reason for skepticism.
Posted July 27, 2011
HP is offering a series of new software solutions designed to improve collaboration among application development and delivery teams. The new HP ALM software solutions include HP Service Virtualization 1.0, HP Application Lifecycle Intelligence (ALI), and HP Agile Accelerator 5.0. "Without a performance management system, it's difficult to measure success," Matthew Morgan, senior director of worldwide product marketing at HP Software, said at a press and blogger briefing at launch day for the product line. Application metrics "should be digitized and automated, and not sit on an Excel desktop."
Posted July 25, 2011
Oracle has announced Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.1. The latest release provides capabilities to increase the usability and flexibility of the product by introducing a new virtual machine cloning facility, enhanced large system support, improved remote access, and expanded platform and application support. "By significantly enhancing the world's most popular cross-platform virtualization software for the second time within a year, Oracle is clearly demonstrating its commitment to both the desktop virtualization market and the open source community," said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president, Linux and Virtualization Engineering, Oracle.
Posted July 20, 2011
BMC Software and Unisys Corporation have formed a joint initiative to deliver and manage advanced cloud solutions. The two companies are basing their joint solutions on BMC's second-generation Cloud Lifecycle Management (CLM) offering combined with Unisys' cloud advisory, implementation and management services portfolio. The BMC and Unisys initiative will address strategy, planning, design, implementation and operational management of cloud computing solutions to make it possible for customers to realize both immediate and long-term business value through a disciplined approach to cloud computing.
Posted July 15, 2011
A longtime supporter of Linux and open source technologies, IBM has also become a leading proponent of Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and is a founding member of the recently-formed Open Virtualization Alliance. With 2011 marking IBM's centennial, as well as the 20th anniversary of Linux, Jean Staten Healy, director for Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, reflects on the ways each has contributed to the other, and the promise offered now by open virtualization to help customers ensure cost efficiency and avoid vendor lock-in in virtualized environments. "As it happened with Linux, the need for virtualization technology will continue to grow, and open virtualization solutions based on KVM will become more and more important to customers looking for choice and cost benefits," Staten Healy observes.
Posted July 13, 2011
A longtime supporter of Linux and open source technologies, IBM has also become a leading proponent of Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and is a founding member of the recently-formed Open Virtualization Alliance. With 2011 marking IBM's centennial, as well as the 20th anniversary of Linux, Jean Staten Healy, director for Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, reflects on the ways each has contributed to the other, and the promise offered now by open virtualization to help customers ensure cost efficiency and avoid vendor lock-in in virtualized environments. "As it happened with Linux, the need for virtualization technology will continue to grow, and open virtualization solutions based on KVM will become more and more important to customers looking for choice and cost benefits," Staten Healy observes.
Posted July 13, 2011
CA Technologies announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held Interactive TKO, Inc. (ITKO), a provider of service simulation solutions for developing applications in composite and cloud environments, for $330 million in an all-cash transaction. "The addition of ITKO to CA Technologies will extend our ability to deliver a complete set of capabilities to help our customers and partners to increase their adoption and value from cloud-based applications," says David Dobson, executive vice president, Customer Solutions Group, CA Technologies.
Posted July 11, 2011
Oracle has announced the first Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition. The aim of the new Oracle VM Template for MySQL is to help eliminate manual configuration efforts and risks by providing a pre-installed, pre-configured and certified software stack that includes Oracle VM Server for x86, Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and MySQL Enterprise Edition. "By using the Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition, organizations do not have to spend the time downloading, installing, configuring and testing all the components together before deploying in production," an Oracle spokesperson tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 06, 2011
Symantec Corp. has introduced the latest version of Symantec ApplicationHA, Symantec's high availability solution for VMware virtual environments that supports customers' ability to virtualize their business-critical applications. As customers move from virtualizing peripheral applications to more core mission-critical apps, virtualization adoption declines because they tend to be more cautious and risk-averse, Don Angspatt, vice president of product management for Symantec's Storage and Availability Management Group, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "No one wants to stake their career on whether SQL, Oracle, SAP, and Exchange can be running all the time and be up all the time in a virtualized environment."
Posted June 27, 2011
Composite Software has introduced Composite 6, a new version of its flagship data virtualization software that provides "big data" integration support for the Cloudera Distribution including Apache Hadoop (CDH), IBM Netezza and HP Vertica data sources. In addition, Composite 6, which is now completing beta test and will be commercially available in July, includes performance optimizations, cache enhancements, new data governance capabilities and ease-of-use features. "Data virtualization is emerging as an ideal solution for managing today's complex data integration challenges," says Jim Green, CEO for Composite Software.
Posted June 24, 2011
QueplixCorp., a provider of data integration and data management products, has introduced the new Data Quality Manager for QueCloud, enabling companies to create and maintain data consistency throughout the data migration, integration and management lifecycle with a single cloud-based platform. As a central component of the QueCloud dashboard, Data Quality Manager is tightly coupled with the solution's core data integration and data management functionality.
Posted June 21, 2011
Talend, a developer and distributor of open source middleware, has announced Talend Cloud, a cloud-enabled integration platform that provides a unified integration platform for on-premise systems, cloud-based systems and SaaS applications. Based on Talend's Unified Integration Platform, it also provides a common environment for users to manage the entire lifecycle of integration processes including a graphical development environment, a deployment mechanism and runtime environment for operations and a monitoring console for management - all built on top of a shared metadata repository.
Posted June 21, 2011
Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.1 delivers live migration capabilities to the SPARC T-series server family, including SPARC T3, UltraSPARC T2 Plus and UltraSPARC T2 based servers, allowing customers to quickly migrate running domains from one physical server to another, eliminating application outages and server downtime. In addition, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack provides full lifecycle management of Oracle VM Server for SPARC.
Posted June 15, 2011
Confio Software, maker of the Ignite8 performance analysis software tool, has introduced IgniteVM, targeted specifically at DBAs to monitor and ensure database performance in a VMware environment. IgniteVM provides visibility beyond the database and into the virtual server layers, reducing the risk of database performance issues and helping to enable a successful physical to virtual (P2V) transition. With IgniteVM, which is focused squarely on the DBA and the DBA management team, Confio aims to reduce risk and increase visibility by combining the essential database response monitoring available in Confio's Ignite8 tool with non-intrusive VMware visibility.
Posted June 15, 2011
Composite Software has announced the certification of its flagship data virtualization product, the Composite Information Server, with MicroStrategy 9. MicroStrategy's business intelligence software enables companies to analyze the volumes of data stored across their enterprise to make better business decisions. In addition to the certification, Composite Software has also signed a global marketing alliance agreement with MicroStrategy, which includes a range of joint marketing programs. "In a time of extreme business change, business users need agile approaches to information," says Robert Eve, executive vice president of marketing of Composite Software.
Posted May 31, 2011
The service management world of today is all about linking business services to the underlying IT infrastructure, creating an effective bridge between the business and technology. In theory, this provides a clear window into the IT environment to increase accountability, productivity and efficiency. Effective service management also provides business context, so IT can take action to avert service-impacting events by understanding business priority. However, current business service management (BSM) does not provide enough guidance about how to manage services proactively and effectively. This issue is now more important than ever, because on the horizon lurks an exciting new arena for service management-virtualization and cloud computing.
Posted May 25, 2011
Oracle has announced Sun Ray Software 5.2. The latest release of Oracle's server-hosted desktop software is intended to be simpler to install and configure, and features improved video, audio, smart card, Virtual Private Network (VPN), and network resiliency. Sun Ray Software is part of Oracle's desktop-to-data center virtualization portfolio, enabling customers to virtualize and manage their full software and hardware stack, from applications to disk.
Posted May 12, 2011
MicroStrategy Inc., a provider of business intelligence software, announced it has begun shipping the latest release of its BI platform, which includes data visualization capabilities. MicroStrategy 9.2 includes a feature called Visual Insight, which is designed to allow business people to answer business questions on their own, avoiding the lengthy process of report specification and design. Users can access data from a full spectrum of data stores, ranging from massive enterprise data warehouses, to distributed departmental databases, to financial databases, to data that resides on the individual's desktop computer and in Excel spreadsheets.
Posted April 26, 2011
Unisys has announced its Unisys Hybrid Enterprise framework, a comprehensive methodology and set of services for helping organizations manage multiple IT delivery models - both traditional and cloud-based - within a consistent computing environment managed as a single entity.
Posted April 11, 2011