Category Archives: VMware

Java, Java Platform Enterprise Edition, M&A Activity, Rapid Application Development, SocialTwist, VMware, WaveMaker

VMware Sells Some WaveMaker Assets to Pramati

Pramati has acquired certain assets of WaveMaker from VMware. WaveMaker, acquired by VMware in March 2011, is a visual Rapid Application Development (RAD) software platform that will be used to grow and enhance Pramati’s cloud-based Java development capabilities. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

WaveMaker simplifies the process of building enterprise Java applications to boost both developer productivity and quality, without compromising flexibility. WaveMaker applications are cloud-ready, highly scalable, multi-device, and backed by a strong developer community that has doubled to 35,000 active monthly users over the last two years. With its long heritage of mission-critical Java application development, Pramati expects to accelerate this growth going forward.

“The acquisition of WaveMaker is integral to Pramati’s ongoing strategy to efficiently bring together skills, capital, customer relationships and leading technologies that can quickly take advantage of market opportunities,” said Vijay Pullur , President of Pramati. “WaveMaker elegantly enhances our existing Java and cloud development capabilities. Over the years, Gartner and other respected voices have recognized us as a leader in Java technologies. The WaveMaker acquisition uniquely allows us to extend our leadership, while extending the reach of Java to non-expert developers and users.”

WaveMaker uniquely helps its users build standard enterprise Java applications using a visual drag-and-drop paradigm that streamlines development time, significantly reducing written code.

“WaveMaker was designed to bring high-quality Java applications to market quickly and efficiently,” said Charles Fan , senior vice president of R&D, Storage and Application Services, VMware. “Pramati is an established technology company with expertise in cloud and Java technologies. We are delighted that WaveMaker customers are in good hands.”

The addition of WaveMaker underscores Pramati’s support for Java standards in the cloud computing era. The Pramati portfolio of companies includes SocialTwist, a social referral marketing platform focused on customer acquisition and retention, and Imaginea, a technology services company that offers advisory, strategy, product development, and implementation services.

BYOD, End-User Computing, Featured, Miscellaneous IT, VDI, VMware

What’s the Buzz? Recap of VMware Partner Exchange

I am just returning from the VMware Partner Exchange conference (PEX) that was held at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.  While this was a partner vs. customer focused event, there were a few tidbits I felt made sense to share you so here we go….

Awards:

GreenPages was given the Virtualization of Business Critical Applications (VBCA) award for the Americas this year, which was a great achievement.  For those of you not aware, the VBCA program inside of VMware is focused on virtualizing the ‘big boy’ mission critical applications such as Oracle, SQL, SAP, Exchange, etc. that have historically been both technically and politically difficult to virtualize.  In addition, GreenPages was given the same award on a Global scale which was very exciting as it marks the first time that GreenPages has won a global award from any vendor partner!  This also marks the 4th consecutive year that GreenPages has won an award from VMware (2010 – Desktop Virtualization, 2011 – Rainmaker, 2012 – Partner of the Year, and 2013 – Global VBCA). The primary reason we won the VBCA this year was due to several projects which included the virtualization of large applications including a 5500 seat Exchange environment and production databases at a major professional sporting league.

End User Computing Updates:

Horizon Suite v1 will be GA by end of Q1 and will include Workspace, Mirage, and VIEW.

The Workspace product is a combination of what was formally Horizon App Manager and Horizon Data (code name Octopus).  For those that do not know, the App Manager side is meant to be an Enterprise App Store which includes SAML integration to various SaaS applications in addition to being able to launch ThinApp apps and VIEW desktops.  Support for launching XenApp published apps will come shortly after the GA date, figure April/May timeframe.  If you are familiar with Citrix Storefront, this is a very similar concept.  The Data (Octopus) side is one of the ‘dropbox for the enterprise’ apps.

Mirage will be updated to version 4.0 at GA time.  The key feature in this release is individual application layering.  For this, think Unidesk as the concept is very similar but this solution is really meant for physical devices vs. virtual or VDI, at least for now.  There is no real VIEW integration with Mirage yet, but that is coming.  The hold-up is mainly due to performance issues with running Mirage based workloads in a shared VDI environment.  One more interesting tidbit on Mirage is that the license now also includes Fusion Pro.  The purpose behind this is to lay down a Mirage based image to a Mac for corporate use and being able to maintain control/management of that image in a BYOD environment.

VIEW will be upgraded to v5.2 and key features here are 3D graphics enhancements including compatibility with some of the new Nvidia server based cards to offload hefty graphics and improve performance.  Additionally, HTML5 rendering of the desktops will come with this release.  This is the AppBlast piece that was shown at VMWorld back in 2011.  Keep in mind that HTML5 has some pretty major limitations so in most cases you’ll still want to deploy the full VIEW client, but in a pinch if you are on some kiosk type machine where installing a client is not possible, then you’ll still be able to get to your desktop and perform basic tasks.  Lastly, scalability is enhanced and will continue to expand with future releases.

VMware also announced official Radware and Riverbed Stingray support and reference architectures for load balancing within a Horizon/VIEW environment.  F5 support has been around for some time already.

vCloud Suite Updates:

This one, I was very disappointed in as I had expected to hear some pretty significant changes to the way the suite is packaged, however this didn’t happen and seems to have been tabled for some reason so nothing to announce here :( .

Cloud Credits:

Some of you may have heard of these already, but they are basically ‘chips’ that a customer purchases through GreenPages which can then be redeemed at any one of VMware’s vCloud VSPP service provider partners for public cloud IaaS services.

Virsto Acquisition:

Not much was said about this at the event other than the initial focus and use case will be on VDI acceleration.  Stay tuned for more detail here as I find it.

BC/DR:

Big topic here was vSphere Data Protection Advanced Edition (VDP-A).  Like regular VDP, this is based on the EMC Avamar engine but is more scalable to support larger environments.  It is missing some key features currently such as replication, but VMware is diligently working to add these features throughout this calendar year.

Integration Engineering Meeting:

I had the pleasure of meeting with some folks from this internal VMware team.  I will simply say this single meeting made the entire trip worthwhile.  I learned quite a bit about the team and how it works so I’ll give you an overview.  First off, in order to be a member of this team you must have a minimum of 10yrs employment by VMware.  Given that VMware has only been around since the late 90s, that requirement greatly shrinks the potential team members, but trust me when I say the guys on this team know their s**t.  Their primary charter is take the point of view of an external customer along with going out and meeting with actual customers and providing very candid feedback to the various product management teams inside VMW.  I love this team because they are a no bull$hit group of people.  If something sucks, they will say it, likewise if something is stellar they will say that as well.  Unfortunately I cannot share details of what we discussed as the majority of it was future/NDA type material but I think it is awesome that this team exists inside of VMware because they really do help make the products better.  As an example, some of you may be aware of the tool recently made available to make the process of applying SSL Certificates to the various VMware architecture components much easier and it was this team that pushed for the tool and helped get it green lighted.

Ok, that’s it for now… Back to work!

 

To learn more about how GreenPages can help you with your VMware environment, fill out this form!

Desktop virtualization, VirtualBox, Virtualization, VMware, VMware View

StratoGen Launches Hosted VMware View Solution

StratoGen, a provider of VMware hosting services, today announced the launch of ViewDesk, a hosted VMware View solution which promises to simplify the deployment of virtual desktops in the cloud.  Available in StratoGen datacenter locations across the US, UK and Asia, ViewDesk offers a cost effective and verified VDI environment for 25 to 500 virtual desktops.

The move comes in response to exceptional demand for desktop-as-a-service solutions built on the latest VMware View platform.

StratoGen ViewDesk  helps organizations to quickly benefit from the operational savings of desktop virtualization by streamlining the deployment of a dedicated VMware View platform and enabling migration from on-site PCs to hosted virtual desktops.

Highlights of the solution include:

  •     Cost effective, verified VMware View infrastructure built to best practice standards
  •     Delivered on enterprise class components from NetApp, HP and Cisco
  •     Scale-as-you-grow platform enables VDI resources to grow with your business
  •     ISO27001 certified security at platform and datacenter levels
  •     Full administrative access provided
  •     Available now at StratoGen cloud locations across the US, UK and Asia.

Karl Robinson, VP of Sales said “Most businesses are aware that a hosted desktop solution delivers significant increases in IT manageability, security and performance. With the launch of our ViewDesk platform we have taken the complexity out of implementing desktop virtualization by delivering a verified solution built to the highest standards. Organizations deploying  ViewDesk will immediately enjoy much higher levels of availability and agility in desktop services when compared to on-site desktop estates. ”

For further information please visit http://www.stratogen.com/products/hosted-desktop.html

Backup, Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity, Unitrends, VMware

Unitrends Updates Backup and Recovery Suite

Unitrends today announced Unitrends Release 7.0, the next generation of software powering its physical and virtual backup and recovery appliances. Unitrends 7.0 bolsters data protection in virtualized and cloud environments, while providing an expanded range of platform and enterprise application support

Unitrends’ portfolio of physical (Recovery Series) and virtual (Unitrends Enterprise Backup™) appliances provide unified data protection across heterogeneous environments. Powered by Unitrends 7.0, these solutions now give companies unprecedented flexibility for optimizing backup and recovery in virtualized and cloud environments, with new capabilities including:

  • Hot-hot replication and retention – Simplifies disaster recovery by eliminating cumbersome and expensive two-step disaster recovery operations. This capability keeps disaster recovery sites active, online and continuously updated – expediting disaster recovery processes and preventing data loss due to backup windows.
  • Private virtual machine spin-up – Enables companies to instantly spin up a virtual machine in the cloud to add another layer of redundancy to their disaster recovery infrastructure. This capability can keep businesses running and data accessible even when on-premise locations experience total outages.
  • VMware® SAN direct backup and recovery – Reduces backup windows, recovery time objectives (RTOs) and local area network traffic by performing fabric-based backup and recovery of virtual machines residing on SAN storage.
  • Application-aware VMware backups – Enables increased application-aware integration for VMware host operating system (HOS)-based backups and ensures application consistency during and after the backup.
  • Private one–click recovery – Enables instant recovery for VMware on the replication target and direct bare metal recovery and system recovery at the off-site premise location.
  • Cloud-sourced deduplication – Increases cloud storage capacity and improves data retention by extending deduplication functionality to data in the cloud.

In addition to enhanced data protection in virtualized and cloud environments, Unitrends 7.0 also includes expanded enterprise application and platform support. In addition to SQL Server® and Microsoft® Exchange support, Unitrends now offers Oracle and Microsoft Office SharePoint support for native application protection – extending its robust, feature-rich data backup and recovery functionality to even more enterprise-level applications. Unitrends 7.0 also includes agent push simplification, which deploys install and upgrade Windows® agents from the backup appliance – decreasing total cost of ownership and lowering time-to-value.

“Having the ability to protect data across physical, virtual and cloud environments is essential to companies today, and our mission has always been to enable our customers to do this easily and affordably,” said Dr. Mark Campbell, chief strategy and technology officer at Unitrends. “Unitrends 7.0 extends our legacy by providing a broad range of capabilities that make it easy for companies to expedite backup and disaster recovery processes, ensure continuous access to data and maintain business operations regardless of what is happening around them.”

For more information on Unitrends and its enterprise-class data protection solutions for heterogeneous environments, see www.unitrends.com.

Asia/Pacific Rim, Kuala Lumpur, StratoGen, Virtualization, VMware, VMware Infrastructure

StratoGen Opens New VMware Datacenter in Asia

VMware hosting provider StratoGen today announced the opening of its highly optimized cloud datacenter in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The datacenter extends StratoGen’s capability to support its global customer base by providing premium VMware hosting facilities in this rapidly expanding region. The datacenter is fully ISO27001 certified with N+1 resilience on all systems.

Designed from the ground up to meet enterprise cloud requirements, the new facility follows the template of StratoGen’s European and US datacenters by providing the highest levels of scalability, performance and security. Network latency to every major market in the Far East is exceptionally low and as with all StratoGen datacenters, the on-site security, power and cooling systems are fully certified to ensure clients mission critical data is always available.

“The entire team at StratoGen are delighted to be bringing our award winning VMware hosting solutions to Asia” commented Karl Robinson, Vice President of Sales. “We have seen strong customer demand for a strategic datacenter in the region to allow our clients to seamlessly build out their infrastructure on a global basis. We are very proud to be one of a select few providers that offer a truly global cloud hosting solution.”

StratoGen are offering their full product portfolio from the datacenter on day 1 to include:

  • Public cloud hosting, allowing clients to cost effectively scale out their hosted VMware infrastructure from a single VM to complex multi-site environments including firewalls, load balancers and much more.
  • Private cloud hosting, offering organizations dedicated, scalable computing resources without the need to buy, configure or maintain the underlying infrastructure.
  • Disaster recovery, helping to eliminate the risk of data loss and business catastrophe using a tried and tested disaster recovery solution built on VMware Site Recovery Manager.

All services include a 100% uptime service level agreement. A free migration service is available.


Actuate Corporation, ActuateOne, Big Data, Partnerships, VMware

Actuate, VMware to Deliver Faster Insights from Big Data in the Cloud

Actuate Corporation is partnering with VMware to provide a cost-effective way for companies to gain insight from any source of Big Data in hybrid cloud environments, by deploying seamless, dynamic and accessible business information solutions.

ActuateOne is designed to support private, public and SaaS (software as a service) cloud deployments by eliminating the need for hard-coded configuration, thereby enabling fast and easy deployment with VMware solutions. VMware solutions provide multiple benefits to IT administrators and users. VMware virtualization creates a layer of abstraction between the resources required by an application and operating system, and the underlying hardware that provides those resources.

Customers can extend the reliability and agility offered by the new VMware vFabric™ Data Director™ to their virtualized ActuateOne cluster, by provisioning and managing the data sources visualized in an Actuate dashboard as well as the vFabric Postgres database that manages the Encyclopedia Volumes of that ActuateOne deployment. This multi-layered coupling of ActuateOne upon VMware simplifies IT management tasks, while ensuring the highest levels of mission-critical availability, security and scalability for any Actuate / VMware deployment.

“We are pleased to be working with Actuate to provide our customers with a solution for analyzing and visualizing large data sets that reside in hybrid cloud environments,” said Fausto Ibarra, Senior Director, Product Management, VMware. “With VMware vFabric™ Data Director, VMware vFabric Postgres and ActuateOne, organizations can securely and efficiently extract actionable insights from their data to make informative business decisions.”

“Actuate’s technology scales linearly across any number of virtual instances, interfacing well with VMware solutions, and further delivering on the Actuate promise of better insights for better decision making by more people in the organization,” said Wenfeng Li, Vice President of Product Development at Actuate. “ActuateOne sources multiple instances of Big Data, merging it with traditional relational data via our data integration features, and then presents this blended content as interactive, customizable visualizations to large numbers of simultaneous users.”

ActuateOne – Actuate’s BI platform and suite of interactive applications built on open source BIRT – has already earned VMware Ready™ status. The VMware Ready designation signifies that ActuateOne has gone through VMware’s advanced testing and evaluation process to certify product compatibility. As part of the partnership, Actuate and VMware demonstrated linear scalability of ActuateOne in conjunction with VMware vSphere®, vFabric™ Data Director™, and VMware vFabric Postgres.

Together, the solution delivers three unique capabilities:

  • An efficient and secure approach to using shared infrastructure for
    servicing highly frequent requests
  • A standardized, portable, and extensible approach to enable workloads
    to be deployed across multiple clouds without manual configuration
  • Agile access to shared infrastructure for provisioning workloads in
    demand

 


Open Source, PaaS, RabbitMQ, Redis, VMware

AppFog Adds Redis, RabbitMQ Support Across Cloud Providers

AppFog today announced support for Redis and RabbitMQ, two of the most in-demand and widely used solutions for developing enterprise-class, web scale applications.

Used by both enterprise developers and those building cutting-edge, new start-up technologies, Redis is an open source RAM-based key-value memory store providing significant value in a wide range of important use cases. The popular and powerful NoSQL database has become a coding staple for developers worldwide and depended on for scalability by companies with websites serving a massive number of customers and users. Redis has also been the most-requested feature across all developers. Used by companies ranging from GitHub to Blizzard and from StackOverflow to Flickr, Redis has become a best practice for all looking to create solutions with excellent performance.

“Redis has become a required go-to tool for developers looking to solve performance issues for their applications,” said Krishnan Subramanian, Founder and Principal Analyst at Rishidot Research. “Interestingly, it is recommended to add Redis to your stack to take advantage of it in cases where your existing database is of no use. As a critical component of many highly performant stacks, Redis is rapidly becoming the standard for memory-based key-value stores.”

RabbitMQ is an open source enterprise message broker solution, enabling robust and easy-to-use messaging for applications. The messaging queue software provides support for a wide range of languages, platforms and third-party services. Supported by VMware, RabbitMQ is used by a huge number of developers and companies to develop robust and reliable applications.


EPP, Miscellaneous IT, VMware

You Down with VMware’s EPP? Yeah You Know Me

By: Rob O’Shaughnessy

Remember the last time you were at Chuck E. Cheese, whether you were there with your kids or by yourself (maybe you like Jasper T. Jowls rhythm guitar or you just like the pizza) and you wanted to play skee-ball or whack-a-mole.  To pay for those and the other arcade games, you didn’t just shove a dollar bill into the machine, but rather, you had to use the Chuck E. Cheese tokens.  Remember those? They were brass coins with Sir Chuck’s face on it.  You probably still have some in your change drawer next to that Canadian dollar you’ll never use.  For Chuck E. Cheese it was their own currency that you could use to purchase Chuck E. Cheese products and the more tokens you purchased the better discount you received on Chuck E. Cheese goods.  It’s a simple concept and I guess VMware must have talked to Nolan Bushnell because VMware has started their own token-based purchase program that can be used to buy VMware licensing just like a kid would use a 1000 tokens to purchase a fuzzy head troll.

VMware has always offered two licensing purchase programs that were on opposite sides of the spectrum.  There is the VPP (Volume Pricing Program) which is geared towards small to medium sized end users that requires a minimum purchase of $25K MSRP.  On the other side, VMware offers their ELA (Enterprise License Agreement) for large organizations looking to spend upwards to a million dollars or more on VMware licenses.  But what about the middle class customers who didn’t have a licensing program that provided discounts to fit their needs.  Now for those types of end users looking to spend between $250K to $1M and didn’t want to jump into an ELA and are too big for VPP, well VMware now has you covered.  Introducing the new EPP (Enterprise Purchase Program!!!).  I just rambled on about Chuck E. Cheese tokens.  Can you guess what VMware is doing?

VMware just announced their new EPP which is a purchasing program designed for mid-level end-users that offer discounts and greater flexibility without the complexity that sometimes comes with an ELA.  It’s a vehicle that allows end users to buy tokens that are redeemable online for a broad range of VMware product licenses and associated production support and subscription (SnS) during a three-year period and is suited for those looking to make a strategic and long term investment with VMware.  Basically, it’s a program designed to fit a customer who may be too big for a VPP program and too small to sign up for an ELA—the middle guy/gal.

EPP is a token-based program where end users purchase a set of tokens which can be redeemed for most VMware software licensing products.  SnS is automatically added where applicable.  The token to dollar ratio is frozen on a per deal basis and the MSRP is $100 per token.  So we’re talking about a minimum order of 2,500 tokens to get into EPP which is $250,000. The tokens last for 3 years and there is no refund for unused tokens.  End users can distribute their tokens among their projects or departments giving them flexibility to choose their own products whenever they want.

Basically an end user would purchases a bunch of tokens and these tokens go on the MyVMware portal allowing one to redeem these tokens to pick and choose whatever licensing products they need.  The end user doesn’t have to go to their reseller to get a quote and place a licensing order.  With EPP, it’s prepaid and one just redeems the licensing they need off their portal.  Just like a kid at Chuck E. Cheese can run around using his or her tokens to pay for arcade games until he or she runs out or throws up and is forced to go home.  I suppose that since Chuck E. Cheese sells beer, this could also happen to an adult.  Here’s a little caveat though, tokens can’t be used for PSO, renewals or anything else besides software and SnS.  Customers can add tokens to an active contract at any time (minimum of $50K worth for additional tokens).

Features:

An end user would purchase tokens from a VMware partner (like us) as a sku and a quote would be created depending on how many tokens are needed.  There are different skus for different discount levels.  The more tokens one buys, the better discount they get on the token ranging between $250K – $600K.  The end user can then redeem their tokens on their MyVMware portal for VMware licensing products.  The SnS starts when the end user redeems a license and is co-termed to the end of the program term.  EPP grants access to future products ensuring one gets the “latest and greatest.” The license is immediately delivered.  When end users redeem their tokens the license keys are delivered to the MyVMware account.  Once an EPP is started, the end user has 3 years to use their tokens.

So what are the benefits to you, the end user?

For one it’s the Discounts.

EPP offers significant discounts specifically designed for mid-tier enterprise customers. The more tokens purchased the better discounts received on the tokens.

Mix & Matching Anytime. EPP provides the flexibility to mix and match VMware products.  It allows one to purchase any combination of SW licenses within the 3 year term of the EPP.   The flexibility to purchase any time gives you the ability to adapt to fluctuating business and project needs.  If more licenses are required and the tokens have run out, additional tokens can be purchase at the original discounted price.

Easy Management allows the tokens to be redeemed by anyone in the company designated by the customer’s “Fund Owner” (who is an individual in the company who enrolls in EPP and has the authority to purchase, receive and redeem EPP tokens in the MyVMware portal…basically the Nucky Thompson of the company.)  Say the desktop group needs more View licenses. The Fund Owner can set them up to have their own set of tokens to make a purchase. EPP provides access to Future VMware products.

Last, Quick Processing because since EPP is a sku, it can be processed as quickly as VPP and doesn’t require processes required to purchase an ELA.

How EPP Works:  3 Steps

1.)    An end user enrolls in the VPP online enrollment portal at www.vmware.com/go/purchasenow  New customers are required to enroll in either VPP, VPP & EPP, or EPP Only.  EPP Only option is for customers previously enrolled in VPP.  When enrolled, the end user will receive a VPP membership number and approved company name.

2.)    The end user receives a proposed purchase order from their reseller.  The proposal includes the: A.) Estimated amount of tokens that the end user would use over a 3 year term, B) the EPP discount, and C.) EPP Sku.  The end user then communicates the approval of the purchase order to their reseller.

3.)    After the EPP order is processed, tokens will be available on the end user’s MyVMware portal.  End Users can redeem the tokens for SW products receiving the licensing immediately.  When redeeming the tokens the Fund Owner must name a reseller who helped them with the redemption.

The EPP on MyVMware Site:

All the information to redeem tokens after the purchase has been made is on the end user’s MyVMware site.  The site includes an interactive GUI tool that allows the Fund Owner to manage and redeem the tokens.  The Fund Owner(s) will purchase VMware licensing products with their tokens.  The price of the product is on the site and will automatically include the SnS.  The Fund Owner can also create sub funds for different departments to use.  For instance they can create a bucket of funds for the desktop group or the server group and provide access to the site so those users can redeem their bucket of tokens for their own products.  The Fund Owner can transfer tokens between sub funds if a group happens to run out or a group has a surplus they’re not using.   The portal includes charts that detail how many tokens are left and a countdown on how much time is remaining on their EPP.

This is definitely a new and unique way of purchasing VMware.  If you’re interested in learning more about EPP please contact us.

ISO/IEC 27001, New York, StratoGen, Virtualization, VMware

StratoGen Adds New York VMware Hosting, Offers Discount

StratoGen today announced the immediate availability of its latest cloud location in New York, promoting it with an offer of a 33% discount for clients that sign up before the end of November 2012.

“We are really excited to bring our unique VMware hosting solutions to the East Coast.” said Karl Robinson, Vice President of Sales. “Everything we do is driven by the needs of our clients and this expansion is no different.  We built the platform to extremely high standards to ensure our clients’ business critical applications perform exceptionally well and are available 100% of the time. Our no compromise approach meant utilizing top end NetApp SANs and HP Blade systems to give the kind of performance that will leave others reeling.”

StratoGen cloud locations offer an enterprise grade service allowing customers to self-manage their hosted VMware infrastructure through the StratoGen control panel. In addition to deploying elastic servers or VMware appliances; clients can use the control panel to integrate with their local systems (including corporate authentication), build out complex networks, firewalls and even site to site VPNs.

StratoGen also holds SSAE 16 Type II data center certification and ISO 27001 security credentials.