Emerson advances Avocent Data Center Planner. Emerson Network Power (EMR) introduced the next generation of Avocent Data Center Planner, a component of its portfolio of DCIM capabilities. The software solution enables data center managers to make informed decisions for the planning and effective management of their data center assets and physical infrastructure. Features of the new release include the ability to gauge real-world power usage, visualization for end-to-end connections, zone management, and Spanish language support. “The ad-hoc data center management tools that were effective in the past are increasingly difficult to maintain in today’s complex environment,” explained Traci Yarbrough, director of product marketing, Emerson Network Power data center solutions. “Avocent Data Center Planner is an effective alternative to legacy management tools because it provides all of the detailed information that is required to efficiently plan and manage the physical infrastructure in one dynamic graphical interface. Customers realize an immediate return on investment because they no longer need to consult multiple point products to make decisions and plan changes. It also builds on our promise of delivering a simple and easy to use DCIM capability.” Avocent Data Center Planner is available worldwide immediately.

VMware opens cloud solution marketplace.  VMware (VMW) announced the VMware Solutions Exchange, an online virtualization and cloud solutions marketplace where customers, partners and developers can converge to help simplify the process of evaluating and selecting business solutions through a centralized, self-service portal. Embracing both private and public clouds, VMware will enable customers to use search tools and directly engage with partners and developers to help ease the process of finding the right solution for their businesses. “With the VMware Solution Exchange, we are offering our robust partner network a new and centralized marketplace to promote their solutions and directly connect with customers to help expedite the sales process,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances at VMware. “For customers, our goal is to empower them to quickly and easily find the resources they need to make purchasing decisions to accelerate their journey to the cloud, while also helping our technology partners deliver and manage joint solutions in a single, self-service location.”

Riverbed selected by MasterBrand Cabinets.  Riverbed Technology (RVBD) announced that MasterBrand Cabinets, Inc. (MBCI), a leading kitchen and bath solutions provider, has deployed 28 Riverbed Steelhead appliances, and Steelhead Mobile client software, across its operations in the United States and Canada and to its developers in India. Looking for a solution that enabled mobile workers and provided employees in remote offices around the world faster access to data and applications, Master Brand Cabinets turned to Riverbed. Its WAN-optimization solutions from Riverbed reduced data traffic by 82 percent and increased bandwidth capacity by four times – and in some cases by as much as six times during peak periods – in its private cloud environment. As a result of its Riverbed deployment, MBCI has been able to avoid upgrading its bandwidth, which will save the company as much as $1.2 million per year (based on adding four to six T1 lines at $800 each per month, across 21 manufacturing sites). At the same time, MBCI has experienced an 82 percent reduction in data across the WAN and increased bandwidth capacity up to six times during peak data periods. “We had two choices – add more bandwidth or invest in WAN optimization,” said Jadd Miller, senior network engineer at MBCI. “We chose the Riverbed WAN optimization solution as it gave us the most value out of our legacy systems, while drastically improving the performance across our WAN. Adding additional bandwidth would have been a partial remedy, since it did not address the latency issues caused by distance.”

VMware unveils three product suites.  VMware (VMW) unveiled three product suites designed to simplify and automate IT management. The company announced enhancements to VMware vCenter Operations and the introduced  new VMware vFabric Application Management and VMware IT Business Management suites. Introduced earlier this year VMware has enhanced vCenter Operations with deeper integration of vCenter Capacity IQ and vCenter Configuration Manager.  The new vFabric Application Management Suite is comprised of two solutions that integrate application disciplines to unite and streamline developer and operations efforts.  The new IT Business Management Suite includes IT Finance Manager, IT Service Level Manager and IT Vendor Manager. ”Cloud computing requires a new way of thinking about the delivery of IT services,” said Cameron Haight, research vice president, Gartner. “Automation is key not only to enable scale, but to keep pace with the rate of change in dynamic environments. And, as the infrastructure itself becomes programmable, management tools and processes must be updated to support an integrated, agile approach that spans across the IT divide.”

VMware selected by SAP.  VMware announced that SAP has selected the VMware cloud infrastructure and management platform for one of its internal global IT modernization and reorganization projects designed to more effectively support business demand.  Following a successful internal automation and private cloud project, SAP IT has expanded its cooperation with VMware, striving to reach an overall virtualization rate of 80 percent of its global IT infrastructure. ”SAP’s selection of VMware technology for its global IT infrastructure further validates our IT as a Service vision,” said Maurizio Carli, senior vice president and general manager, EMEA, VMware. “SAP has bought into this vision and our technology delivery, investing in an almost complete stack including datacenter, enterprise management and desktop solutions.”

EMC and VMware integrate VPLEX.  EMC announced that EMC VPLEX is now certified by VMware to implement vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC). VPLEX is a  virtual storage technology that federates data located on multiple storage systems that allows storage resources in multiple data centers to be pooled together and accessed anywhere. EMC and VMware working together to certify clustered storage enables a higher level of availability and data mobility. “EMC is excited to accelerate the benefits of cloud computing with stretched VMware vSphere clusters across active/active datacenters,” said EMC’s Chad Sakac, Vice President, VMware Technology Alliance. “Combining industry-leading features in EMC VPLEX and VMware vSphere customers can now achieve simple workload mobility across their data centers while at the same time decreasing management overhead.”

VMware and NVIDIA partner for workstation-class virtual desktop.  NVIDIA and VMware announced a strategic partnership to advance virtual 3D graphics technology and enable the remote delivery of high-end, workstation-class virtual desktops and applications for engineers, artists and scientists. Within a virtualized environment on a remote server the NVIDIA Quadro Virtual Graphics Platform delivers server-based Quadro professional graphics cards via a network connection, providing a high level of graphics horsepower to users on demand. “Working together, VMware and NVIDIA are pushing the traditional boundaries of desktop virtualization by bringing workstation-class 3D Graphics to hosted virtual desktops and universal application access,” said Vittorio Viarengo, vice president, End-User Computing, VMware. “Once only needed by power-users, 3D graphics are fast becoming a requirement amongst all end-users as they use Office 2010, and even the Windows 7 Aero interface. Our partnership with NVIDIA will enable 3D capabilities for power-users as well as a growing number of use cases from any endpoint device, even tablets and thin clients.”

CA and VMware integrate products.  CA Technologies (CA) announced a connector for integrating CA Process Automation, a central component of both CA Automation Suite for Data Centers and CA Automation Suite for Clouds, with VMware vCloud Director. The new capability enables more efficient service delivery and helps to lower costs by automating and orchestrating IT operational processes, such as change, configuration, and financial management, involving VMware vCloud Director. “One of the best ways for VMware customers to increase ROI and avoid creating new technology islands is to integrate their VMware infrastructure investment into their IT service management and other processes using CA Process Automation,” said Roger Pilc, general manager, Virtualization and Automation, CA Technologies. “Taking advantage of our many management solutions via the integration of CA Process Automation and vCloud Director enables customers to achieve automated processes across their data centers and cloud infrastructures, and a common, integrated service view, regardless of whether workloads or business services reside on virtual and physical infrastructure. The connector also helps customers gain end-to-end service control, lowering the risk of human error and improving service delivery efficiency.”

Virtualizing mobile with Samsung

VMware (VMW) announced a new strategic collaboration with Samsung to deliver virtual desktops to mobile devices and enable a new class of “dual persona” mobile devices. Integrating Samsung mobile devices, VMware View and VMware Horizon Mobile will enable seamless and secure use of employee-owned IT devices for accessing both work and personal data.  VMware Horizon Mobile and Samsung smartphones will let enterprises securely manage an employee’s connected mobile workspace (email, applications, data etc.) in isolation from their personal environment.

“VMware’s end-user computing solutions enable customers to break free from more than two decades of complex, device-centric computing, and deliver a more user-centric experience for the connected enterprise,” said Parag Patel, vice president, Global Strategic Alliances, VMware. “Working with Samsung, a leading provider of Android smart devices, our goal is to help IT organizations retain control and security of corporate data and applications while enabling end users to utilize their own wireless devices.”

VMware and Symantec Partner

VMware and Symantec (SYMC) announced an expansion of their strategic partnership to define and architect Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solutions with the goal to provide virtual desktop computing environments for enterprises and IT service providers. The combined DaaS service will leverage VMware View, vCloud Director 1.5, vSphere 5 and Symantec Endpoint Protection and the Altiris Client Management Suite. The solution will provide a service driven cloud infrastructure, security protection from the cloud to the endpoint and end-to-end configuration and control of applications.

“VMware is committed to enabling the delivery of IT as secure, cloud-based services to end users,” said Christopher Young, vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “Through our expanded partnership with Symantec, we can deliver Desktop-as-a-Service solutions for enterprise organizations and service providers that offer the security, management and compliance customers require – all baked directly into a virtual desktop infrastructure and accessible to end users regardless of device or location.”

Symantec V-Ray Enabled Backup Appliances

Symantec also announced the general availability of the Backup Exec 3600 and NetBackup 5220 enterprise backup appliances to help organizations modernize their backup infrastructures and accelerate new initiatives around virtualization. Backup Exec 3600 is an all-in-one backup appliance with integrated client and target data deduplication for protecting virtual and physical machines for medium sized companies. It provides virtual server visibility, key operating system protection, reduce integration complexity and includes Symantec Critical System Protection for total virus malware security protection.

NetBackup 5220 is a scalable backup appliance for enterprise organizations with both client and target deduplication designed to accelerate backups for physical and virtual systems. “Backup is a critical insurance policy for virtual environments,” said Sean Regan, director of product marketing for Symantec’s Information Management Group. “The Backup Exec 3600 and NetBackup 5220 appliances provide organizations with the flexibility to manage data in a way that makes the most sense for their physical or virtual environments, while getting them up and running as fast as possible.”

Symantec NetBackup 5220 series and Backup Exec 3600 series appliances are available now in North America.

EMC boots 500 desktops in 5 minutes.  EMC announced its support of EMC VNX unified storage for VMware View 5. The EMC VNX Family will allow customers to boost performance during “log-in storms” – the period at the start of the workday when large numbers of employees arrive at work and seek to load their virtual desktops.  Early test results have shown the ability to boot 500 VMware View 5.0 desktops on VMware vSphere 5 over NFS to steady state, in 5 minutes. Additionally with EMC FAST Cache customers can significantly reduce the number of drives used in a VMware View environment while providing exceptionally fast boot time performance. ”The EMC VNX Family is designed from the ground-up to optimize virtual environments,” said Eric Herzog, Vice President, Unified Storage Division at EMC. “We’ve seen great results in early testing with VMware View 5, and look forward to helping customers to deploy VMware View 5 in environments ranging from hundreds to thousands of desktops. Applying EMC’s unique FAST technology to a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) enables customers to maximize the full potential of their VMware View deployment.” EMC also announced that it has shattered the performance limits it previously set for strorage throughput and bandwidth in a VMware vSphere 5 environment.  Performance testing of an EMC Symmetrix VMAX storage system with VMware vSphere 5 achieved in excess of 1,000,000 input/output operations per second (IOPS), which is three times the previous ceiling of 364,000 IOPS achieved by utilizing three EMC CLARiiON CX4 storage systems with VMware vSphere 4. Bandwidth testing of a single EMC VNX unified storage system with VMware vSphere 5 achieved a workload of 10GBps, over 3.5 times more than the previous VMware vSphere limit which required three EMC CLARiiON CX4 arrays, illustrating the power of a VNX system.

VCE launches Vblock GRC solution with RSA.  VCE, the Virtual Computing Environment company announced general availability of the Vblock GRC Solution with RSA.  Based on the RSA Archer platform the enterprise Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) solution was validated by VCE to address the challenge of managing risks in virtualized infrastructures. The GRC solution follows VCE’s four-phased approach by architecting business requirements, implementing to discover VMware devices, validating VMware-based controls and managing non-compliance, and governing via a dashboard and reporting for transparency on the security policy and compliance posture of the Vblock platform. “The Vblock GRC Solution with RSA provides an automated way to manage policies, procedures and compliance initiatives across the IT infrastructure,” said Alex Bender, Director, eGRC Programs and Strategy at RSA, the Security Division of EMC. “This foundational approach allows organizations to tie IT into the broader enterprise GRC strategy to help manage risk and demonstrate compliance.”

Riverbed accelerates vSphere replication.  Riverbed (RVBD) announced its Steelhead appliance wide area network (WAN) optimization solutions accelerate VMware vSphere Replication, a new feature of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5. New in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5, vSphere Replication allows virtual machines to be replicated within or between local, remote or cloud-based data centers. Steelhead appliances overcome the challenges of replicating data across the WAN, which include bandwidth constraints, high latency and packet loss. “Riverbed and VMware continue to build and expand our strategic partnership and the solutions we create enable organizations to build high-performance and high-efficiency public, private and hybrid clouds,” said Venugopal Pai, vice president of Global Alliances at Riverbed. “This latest joint solution integrates the best-of-breed Riverbed Steelhead appliance with VMware vSphere Replication to accelerate disaster recovery and reduce the cost of WAN infrastructure.”

CiRBA announces DCI Control 7.  Data Center Intelligence software company CiRBA announced CiRBA DCI – Control, version 7.0 of its analytics software, which provides a new way of visualizing and managing environments, giving infrastructure managers unprecedented control over virtual and cloud infrastructure. The CiRBA Control Console, enables infrastructure managers to determine in a single glance which resources are appropriately placed, configured and provisioned and which are at risk at the VM, host, cluster and environment level. Addressing the needs of infrastructure managers and capacity managers the new time-based views show the current state, as well as historical and predictive views to understand an environment’s status and requirements over time.  ”Automation is critical to streamlining the management of virtual and cloud infrastructure,” said Andrew Hillier, CiRBA CTO and co-founder. “Organizations hesitate to automate certain functions because of potential risks and lack of trust in the actions to be taken. CiRBA’s analytics are recognized as the best in the industry and are trusted by market leading SI’s and technology partners including BT, Cisco, IBM and Intel. CiRBA’s answers incorporate an organization’s unique policies, historical and predicted utilization and expected changes in the environment to ensure placement and allocation recommendations will always comply with SLAs, operational, and business requirements.”

Dell’s vCloud Datacenter. Dell and VMware (VMW) jointly announced the availability of the Dell Cloud based on VMware vCloud Datacenter Services designed to provide a seamless multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems. Aimed at hosting and outsourcing firms, system integrators and service providers Dell and VMware will provide the Infrastructure as a Service choice and leverage automation, workload scalability and multi-level security. The Dell vCloud Data center services will provide options for a public IaaS hosted in a secure Dell datacenter, a private Dell-built cloud on-premise or at Dell data centers, or a hybrid approach that will offer the greatest flexibility to customer requirements. The hybrid cloud will use VMware vCloud Connector to allow management of on or off premise private cloud and Dell’s public cloud offering.

NetApp and VMware Joint Cloud Solution.  NetApp (NTAP) and VMware jointly announced VMware cloud infrastructure and management on NetApp, a new joint solution that enables organizations to evolve to a secure cloud computing model at their own pace, gaining greater flexibility and efficiency without needing to rip and replace their existing infrastructure. The best practices solution is well documented and offers an evolved step from virtualization to a secure private, hybrid or public cloud infrastructure. ”Franklin University is committed to providing our students with the educational resources and tools they need to succeed, and our IT infrastructure is a critical foundation to ensuring that happens,” said Daniel Morgenstern, manager of Windows and Virtualization at Franklin University IT. “With VMware cloud infrastructure and management on NetApp, we were able to move to a secure private cloud that offers unprecedented flexibility to expand in any direction, fluidly move resources, and quickly provision services. As a result, we’ve been able to optimize our resources and focus on delivering the best education to our students.”  See this site for additional information.

EMC launches VSI 5.0.  EMC introduced the next generation EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) 5.0.  VSI 5 is a free VMware vCenter plug-in that let’s IT achieve simple and efficient data center operations, and accelerate their trip into the cloud. With this version of VSI, EMC is providing an end-to-end integration with VMware vCenter that dramatically simplifies management of virtualized storage with the ability to map virtual machines to storage and to self service storage provisioning across EMC Symmetrix VMAX and EMC VNX families of storage platforms from VMware vCenter with full support for VMware vSphere 5. ”VMware vCenter plays an important role in simplifying IT management, streamlining operational efficiency and ultimately driving down costs. IT vendor’s like EMC who is investing in its Virtual Storage Integrator plugin to extend the power of VMware vCenter is signaling it not only understands customers’ needs to be able to have a VMware administrator see, map and provision storage from one single console but also that it intends to protect their investments in EMC platforms,” said Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst, ESG.

Wyse launches Z class thin client family. Wyse Technology announced the Wyse Z90D7 and Z90DW thin clients are now shipping. Wyse also introduced two new Linux-based members of its Z class family – the Wyse Z50S and Wyse Z50D. The Z class clients are available with AMD G-series Fusion accelerated processing units, which allows it to support the most processing-intensive applications including 3-D modeling. The new models support gigabit Ethernet, wi-fi and are compliant with the ENERGY STAR version 5.0 Thin Client specification. “Being able to combine power and performance in such an easily-managed device is something we are extremely proud of,” said Param Desai, Sr. Director, Product Management, with Wyse Technology. “With the availability of Wyse Z class we’ve more than doubled the performance capabilities of competing top-of-the-line thin clients with similar energy requirements.”

F5 and VMware combine to help migration and desktops.  F5 Networks (FFIV) announced enhanced capabilities for data center-to-data center live migration and desktop virtualization deployments. Combining F5 BIG-IP products, vSphere and EMC’s VPLEX Metro customers have a globally coherent active-active storage virtualization platform.  F5 also introduced capabilities to help customers further accelerate virtual desktop environments. “Our technology partnership with F5 continues to produce value for joint customers seeking to implement dynamic virtual desktop infrastructure solutions,” said Raj Mallempati, Director, End-User Computing Product Marketing at VMware. “Through focused integration efforts, we’re able to offer organizations the ability to perform live migrations between data centers and efficiently scale VMware View virtual desktop deployments. BIG-IP solutions extend the capabilities of VMware View solutions, helping customers further automate and configure application and desktop delivery infrastructures to ably support their cloud environments.”

Fusion-io unveils ioCache virtualization. Fusion-io (FIO) announced their ioCache solution customized to deliver Fusion Powered performance for the virtualization of even data-intensive enterprise applications in VMware environments, including environments that use vMotion. Featured in this solution is a new purpose-built ioMemory product dedicated to accelerating Fusion’s ioTurbine virtualization caching software. When deployed in a VMware environment, Fusion’s ioTurbine software dynamically provisions ioMemory capacity and I/O performance across multiple virtual machines (VMs) by using Fusion’s VSL OS Subsystem to house and serve data for each VM. Key benefits of ioCache include acceleration of virtualized applications, increased VM density per physical server, lowered I/O demands on the external storage, lower software licensing costs associated with fewer physical servers and lowered operational costs associated with data center floor space.”“As enterprises continue to try to meet growing demand to process more data faster through cloud infrastructures and virtualization, we believe that Fusion’s new ioCache solution will serve as a fundamental building block that provides the scalable data caching required in these environments,” said David Flynn, Fusion-io Chairman and CEO.

Radware and Vmware joint Plug-in solution. Radware (RDWR) announced a powerful, new solution that allows VMware vCloud Director users to simplify provisioning of virtual applications to include virtual ADC resources.  The joint solution enhances Radware’s vDirect plug-in which interoperates with vSphere to enable services provisioning with vCloud Director, allowing VMware vApps users to provision both application resources and a fully configured Radware virtual application delivery controller (vADC). By combining vDirect — an ADC management plug-in — with VMware vCloud Director, IT managers can provision vApps while also provisioning virtual application delivery services with the needed capacity according to the VMware vCloud Director organization SLAs. “Radware vDirect integrates with VMware vSphere to provide customers a transparent and seamless way to align Radware’s ADC fabric with VMware vCloud Director,” said Dan Chu, Vice President, Cloud Infrastructure and Services, VMware. “VMware vCloud Director end users – especially those incorporating a -cloud and IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) strategy – will benefit from vDirect as they can use the solution to accelerate the delivery and consumption of virtual IT services and deploy workloads on shared infrastructure with maximum agility.”

Virtensys PCIe-Sharing solutions.  Virtensys announced two new Virtensys VIO-4000 models: the VIO-4010 and the VIO-4012. These new products incorporate the Virtensys  PCIe sharing technology and Micron Technology’s high-performance RealSSD P300 and P320h enterprise solid state drives to help organizations remove I/O bottlenecks and extend the scale of today’s virtualized data centers. The VIO-4010 allows up to 16 servers to access a pool of shared SSDs, with each server accessing their own partition of high-performance storage. Acting as a’host cache’ it can be an extension of the hosts’s memory for swapping related functions. ”Virtensys provides data center administrators with innovative new ways to experience the benefits of enterprise SSDs through their consolidated infrastructure models,” said Gary Gentry, general manager of the enterprise division of Micron’s NAND solutions group. “By leveraging Micron’s SATA and PCIe solid-state solutions, Virtensys is able to provide customers with a fast, reliable and power efficient approach to virtualized storage.”

A screen shot of the VMware vCloud Service Provider Locator on the vCloud web site.

To open VMworld 2011 in Las Vegas VMware launched several new vCloud offerings and a new extension of its Cloud Application Platform strategy, vFabric Data Director.

Global Connect for vCloud

VMware (VMW) announced several new vCloud offerings to help enterprises connect and manage cloud services from the large network of service providers. VMware announced Global Connect, an optional feature of the vCloud Data center service announced in 2010, that will let customers use cloud services from multiple providers across geographies as if they are a single, virtual cloud. First to the table for service providers are Bluelock, SingTel and Softbank Telecom. The network of service providers is expected to span 25 data centers in 13 countries by the end of 2011.

“We have standardized on a hybrid cloud model because it is the only approach that provides the flexibility we need and meets strict data location requirements,” said Dr. Stuart Lee, Head of IT for the University of Oxford, UK. “Proven VMware vCloud technology at the University and at VMware vCloud service providers enables us to not only meet changing demands, but also reduce costs and improve data governance.”

New Connector, Gateway, DR services and Toolkit

VMware announced  vCloud Connector 1.5 with a new faster, highly reliable data transfer architecture that will reduce the time it takes to transfer workloads, while automatically retrying and resuming transfers interrupted by network problems. A new online destination was launched where enterprises can find vCloud service providers — vcloud.vmware.com.

Four partners announced plans to introduce cloud-based disaster recovery services built on the recently announced vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 – FusionStorm, Hosting.com, iland and VeriStor. Sold as a pay-per-use model they will present a simple and cost-effective way to protect corporate data and applications, while reducing or eliminating costs associated with building dedicated failover sites.

VMware announced an updated version of its vCloud Architecture Toolkit, which serves as a repository for documentation, design guides and best practices for building cloud environments. Additions in the updated version include examples of vCloud and hybrid cloud environments as well as updates to reflect new vSphere 5 and vCloud Director 1.5 releases.

vFabric – Database as a Service

Vmware announced a new database provisioning and operations solution designed to deliver a database as a service model for the enterprise. The vFabric Data Director will manage a set of heterogeneous database through policy-based automation, while streaming application development via a self-service provisioning model for developers to rapidly access the database services needed for modern applications. Building a cloud platform for applications VMware has leveraged the Spring community of Java developers and enabled access to VMware infrastructure services, third parties and an Open Platform as a Service (PaaS) framework through Cloud Foundry.

“Making it easier for Tier 3’s Enterprise Cloud customers to manage the complexities of their data is core to our Database as a Service strategy,” said Jared Wray, Founder and CTO, Tier 3. “VMware vFabric Data Director overcomes many of the challenges our customers face in moving to self-service databases in the cloud and represents a real step forward in technology that empowers Database as a Service.”

 Postgres support

vFabric Postgres will be the first edition of vFabric Data Director, supporting the PostgreSQL database. Future plans will include extending the common provisioning and operations model to a broad range of commercial and open source databases. vFabric Data Director will be available for download in the third quarter of 2011 at a list price of $600 per virtual machine for databases managed by vFabric Data Director.

Micro Cloud Foundry

On Tuesday Vmware announced the immediate beta availability of Micro Cloud Foundry as a free download at micro.cloudfoundry.com. Calling it the industry’s first open Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution, Cloud Foundry delivers access to frameworks and a rich ecosystem of application services from VMware, third parties and the open source community. It allows end-to-end applications to be developed locally with a complete version of Cloud Foundry running on a developer’s Mac or PC. Micro Cloud Foundry will be able to enhance developers’ abilities and options to build, test and deploy their applications while offering symmetry with other instances of Cloud Foundry in enterprise datacenters and public cloud service providers.

“Today VMware is taking another significant step forward in delivering a modern cloud application platform ideal for the hybrid cloud environment, by delivering industry’s only PaaS solution that can be run on an individual developer’s laptop,” said Jerry Chen, vice president of cloud and application services, VMware. “Micro Cloud Foundry gives developers a full cloud development environment that combines all the flexibility of local development with the ability to deploy and scale their applications anywhere in the future. Micro Cloud Foundry gives developers the ability to build cutting edge cloud applications while exploring the latest developer frameworks and application services without configuration hassles.”

Available as a downloadable virtual machine image, Micro Cloud Foundry is compatible with VMware Fusion for Mac OS X and VMware Workstation and VMware Player.

vSphere 5

VMware announced the general availability of VMware vSphere 5, the foundation of its cloud infrastructures suite. The new version delivers nearly 200 new and enhanced capabilities and can now be configured with up to 1 terabyte of memory and 32 virtual CPUs.  New flagship features in version 5 include Auto-Deploy, Profile-Driven Storage and Storage DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler), which extends data center resource management. Customers can define policies and establish the operating parameters, and VMware vSphere 5 does the rest.

vSphere 5 features a new High Availability (HA) architecture that is scalable and will protect against unplanned downtime. The new version is also the first edition built exclusively on the ESXi hypervisor.

“With the release of VMware vSphere 5, VMware is helping customers accelerate their journey toward a more efficient and automated cloud infrastructure,” said Bogomil Balkansky, senior vice president, cloud infrastructure products, VMware. “The enhancements and new innovations we’ve introduced in VMware vSphere 5 provide a robust, reliable platform for business applications, enabling customers to effectively respond to the growing needs of their business and giving them confidence in their IT transformation.”

The product licensing model will evolve in version 5, to lay the foundation for a more cloud-like IT cost model based on consumption and value rather than physical components and capacity. VMware vSphere 5 is currently available and will range from $83 per processor to $3,495 per processor.

The annual VMware event VMworld will take place August 29 through September 1 at the Wynn in Las Vegas. VMware will have photos and videos on the event website, a number of meetups, lots of blog coverage, and can be tracked on Twitter on the #vmworld hashtag.

IBM Turns 100. On Thursday IBM marked the 100th anniversary of its founding on June 16, 1911. To celebrate the milestone, the company is releasing a book, “Making the World Work Better: The Ideas That Shaped a Century and a Company,” debuted a new film, “Wild Ducks,” and rang the Opening Bell at the New York Stock Exchange.  IBM will embark on a year-long initiative celebrating its centennial to engage with business leaders, academia, clients and local communities in the 170 countries in which they do business.  Besides the book and movie IBM will expand community service grants by 140 percent over the previous year, hold forums to spur conversations about future advances in science and technology, partner with universities around the wold for IBM Lecture Series, and in September they will present THINK: A Forum on the Future of Leadership.  Additional information about the centennial can be found on www.ibm100.com.   Answer: June 16, 1911 to June 16, 2011.  Question: What is 36,525 days?

VMware introduces vFabric 5. VMware (VMW) announced VMware vFabric 5, an integrated application platform for virtual and cloud environments. vFabric 5 combines application services with the Spring development framework to provide the core application platform for building, deploying and running modern applications. New in this edition is a licensing model that allows enterprises to purchase application infrastructure software based on virtual machines, rather than physical hardware CPUs, and to pay only for the licenses in use. “Cloud computing is reshaping not just how IT resources are consumed by the business, but how those resources are purchased, licensed and delivered,” said Tod Nielsen, President, Application Platform, VMware. “While application infrastructure technologies have advanced to meet the needs of today’s enterprise, to date, the business models have remained rigid and out of date. With the introduction of VMware vFabric 5, VMware will inextricably link the cost of application infrastructure software to volume utilized by the organization and the value delivered back to the business, helping all organizations advance further toward a cloud environment.” VMware vFabric 5 will be generally available in late summer 2011.  It will be offered in two versions:  VMware vFabric Standard at $1,200 per VM and VMware vFabric Advanced at $1,800 per VM.

Nimsoft expands NetApp support. Nimsoft announced enhanced monitoring capabilities for NetApp resources, enabling enterprises and service providers to optimize the performance and availability of their critical data center assets while driving down operational costs and maximizing service levels. Nimsoft Monitor for NetApp provides administrators with comprehensive and detailed performance metrics to track and improve performance, including detailed monitoring of file systems, data movers, storage devices, physical enclosures, and network connections. “B2net has more than 1.5PB of mission critical client data under management,” said Jason Clark, Managing Director at B2net, a NetApp Reseller and Partner of the year. “The scale of this environment and the number of vital business services that rely on our NetApp platforms meant we needed a monitoring platform that could give us a single unified view for managing the performance of our clients highly complex and performance-intensive computing infrastructure.”

VMWare to acquire Digital Fuel.  VMware (VMW) announced its intention to acquire Digital Fuel, a leader in IT financial and business management SaaS solutions. Digital Fuel products enable transparent analysis of a range of IT financial metrics from physical and virtual systems to people and application costs to compute, storage, and networking resources, even when sourced from public cloud service providers. “New levels of financial visibility and control in cloud environments will enable CIOs to engage with the CFO, line of business stakeholders and others around how IT investments translate to real business value,” said Boaz Chalamish, VP and General Manager at VMware. “As an authority on helping organizations navigate the business operations of IT, Digital Fuel will add a significant capability to our portfolio, broadening beyond operational management to include business-centric capabilities.” This is the third acquisition for VMware in just a few months, following Shavlik Technologies and SlideRocket.

LayeredTech achieves PCI DSS 2.0.  Layered Technologies announced it is compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard 2.0 (PCI DSS). Layered Tech has provided PCI-compliant hosting and managed services before and are now compliant with DSS 2.0 requirements which look at additional guidance and evolving requirements to address emerging threats and changes in the market. To adhere to these extensive data security standards they offer PCI-compliant monitoring, vulnerability scans and change management processes to an advanced suite of network administration and server management services. “Layered Tech actively participates in the proceedings of the PCI Security Standards Council, and in addition to maintaining a continual state of compliance, we leverage our relationships with Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs) in the industry to ensure we have a solid understanding of changing evaluation requirements,” said Layered Tech President Brad Hokamp.

CenturyLink prices $2 billion of debt securities. To fund the payment of the cash portion of its pending acquisition of SAVVIS, CenturyLink has combined cash on hand along with the financing of approximately $2 billion in newly issued and senior notes. The funds will also go towards refinancing of the credit facility debt of SAVVIS and to pay fees and expenses incurred in connection with the merger. Barclays Capital Inc., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Wells Fargo Securities, LLC are joint book-running managers for this offering.

SGI ships over 500 Altix UV systems. SGI announced that they have surpassed the milestone of having shipped over 500 SGI Altix UV high performance computing (HPC) systems since it began commercial delivery in June 2010. Numerous government agencies and universities around the world are listed as customers, with one of the most recent systems being ordered by LRZ, the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre in Munich.  The SGI Altix x86 platform allows scaling up to 256 physical cores and 2 terabytes of memory.  SGI announced that they will be unveiling groundbreaking solutions next week at the 2011 International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany.