VMbytes

Virtualization Journal thought it was time to go in search of industry insights into this fast-growing new IT market, and so we asked some of its new and up-and-coming executives for their thoughts on some of the trends emerging already in 2008. First, in view of the memo released recently by the SVP of its Server and Tools Business, Bob Muglia, we asked about what Microsoft’s intentions might be. Is it going to try and play catch-up with VMware in 2008 by acquiring Citrix, for example?

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In the midst of Microsoft’s initial assault wave on virtualization leader VMware this week, VMware announced the public beta of its Stage Manager management software, stuff that’s supposed to accelerate the delivery of new or updated applications from staging to production. Microsoft claims its management capabilities are a lot better and broad-based than VMware’s - or will be. Ditto Sun. Stage Manager proposes that you use virtual rather than real servers to roll out software. For one thing it’s cheaper and safer.

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Long about 2009, when - make note - Microsoft is really supposed to have Windows 7, the Vista rev, penciled in, its vaunted, if still unreleased, Hyper-V hypervisor is supposed to cease being an add-on and get sucked up into Windows Server. At that point Microsoft and market leading VMware are, for once, supposed to be at the same starting line at least as far as cross-chassis virtualization goes. Microsoft is rumored to be planning to support at least 20 blades in two chassis of 10 blades each - although those numbers are probably low-balling it - and that’s something VMware can’t do yet though by next year if should.

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(Source: Borland) Don’t let distributed development, SOA and shifting methodologies sabotage software quality…or turn your QA teams into IT managers! Virtualization can provide a better alternative to physical testing. Learn how to get more out of virtualized testing by integrating it within testing processes.

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Virtual Iron announced a new European distribution agreement with IT products distributor Tech Data/Azlan. The agreement expands Virtual Iron’s existing European channel and makes its solutions available to a highly qualified group of value-added resellers in France, Spain, Portugal, Scandinavia and the United Kingdom. It also opens up the server virtualization market in Europe by making an easy-to-use and easy-to-afford enterprise-class alternative broadly available to end-users.

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Cisco announced an innovative family of data center-class switching platforms, the Cisco Nexus Series, to meet customer demands for next-generation mission-critical data centers. As the data center transitions to a more services-centric model, the network plays a pivotal role in orchestrating virtual IT resources and scaling workloads. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Series was designed with this environment in mind, delivering the infrastructure chapter of Cisco’s Data Center 3.0 vision.

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Based on its recent analysis of the blade network switches market, Frost & Sullivan said that it is presenting Blade Network Technologies (BNT) with the 2008 North American Product Innovation of the Year Award. The Award specifically recognizes BNT s innovative development of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) blade switches that will help data centers improve their efficiency and performance. The company developed this 10GE blade switch technology for virtualization and server consolidation, bandwidth-intensive and high performance applications.

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Train Signal is pleased to announce the release of its new training videos for VMware ESX Server. The high-quality computer training course gives IT students and professionals more than 15 hours of instructor-led training on the rapidly growing server virtualization product, VMware ESX Server.

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Versatile announces the acquisition of Sagent Solutions, a provider of bundled virtualization products and services that address the full range of IT infrastructure needs. Sagent Solutions is based in Somerset, New Jersey and is focused on the rapidly growing need of enterprises to leverage the cost and efficiency benefits of virtualizing their IT infrastructures. It provides an extensive suite of services in the areas of desktop, server and storage virtualization, which will expand the menu of applications available to Versatile’s customers. Further information on Sagent Solutions and its products and services can be found at www.sagentsolutions.com.

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Jack Spine writes “A robotics researcher at Accenture has given a demonstration of a ‘Pocket Supercomputer’ — a phone behaving like a thin client. It can be used to send images and video of objects in real time to a server where they can be identified and linked to relevant information, which can then be sent back to the user. ‘The camera on the phone is used to take a video of an object — such as a book … By offloading the processing from a mobile device onto a server, there are few limits on the size and processing power available to be used for the storage and search of images.’ To pinpoint the features necessary to identify an object, the image is run through an algorithm called Scale-Invariant Feature Transform, or SIFT, a technology developed by academic David Lowe. The software extracts feature points from a jpeg and makes a match against images in the database. If a match exists then the software on the server retrieves information and sends it back to the user’s phone. A ‘three-dimensional’ image of an object can also be uploaded onto the phone, to look at the virtual object from different angles. The motion-tracking technology Accenture uses for this is a free library of algorithms called Open Computer Vision.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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