Virtualisation

Microsoft today announced service packs for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but declined to set a release date or a schedule for getting a beta in users' hands.

In an effort to capture what it sees as a growing market for virtual desktops within enterprises, Microsoft is simplifying some licensing agreements and enhancing its virtual-desktop-related software.

VMware has upgraded its ThinApp application virtualisation software in order to incorporate support for Microsoft Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2, according to a company blog. ThinApp 4.5, which VMware is calling the most significant application virtualisation update since its debut in 2008.

VMware has made two new executive sales appointments including former Sun managing director, Duncan Bennet.

Virtualisation was without doubt, the most widely discussed technology last year, and one of the most successfully deployed. And as customers look to rein in costs, and mitigate risk to avoid succumbing to the economic downturn, virtualisation is also proving one of the best opportunities for the channel this year.

Virtual desktops are being touted as a way of delivering applications to any user via any device. So does this brave new mobile world mean curtains for the humble PC? ARN recently brought together a panel of industry professionals to hear their views.

New York City's Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Centers is saving power and money by replacing its desktop computers with thin clients running virtualized operating systems.

Even tech companies need an IT overhaul from time to time. Case in point: Last year, a Canadian software developer (who preferred to remain nameless for the purposes of this story) called my team at Microtek to give its server room a badly needed upgrade.

Cisco, HP and others are waging an epic battle to gain control of the data center, but at the same time they are joining forces to push through new Ethernet standards that could greatly ease management of those increasingly virtualized IT nerve centers.

Faced with the continued commoditization of servers, IT vendors this year will try to differentiate their offerings by moving toward more highly integrated, unified compute platforms.

While Cisco Systems branches out into consumer electronics, video, mobile data and other areas, one of its biggest areas of focus today is enterprise data centers. The dominant LAN provider thinks the transformation of data centers through virtualization calls for new kinds of connections and a broader role for network technology and intelligence. John McCool oversees this push as senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Data Center, Switching and Services group. IDG News Service talked with McCool recently about the company's own role and its partnerships with other vendors in this arena.

Like a formula one driver at the top of his game, HP has shown remarkable consistency as the company negotiated the bends, curves and hairpins of the market over the past year.

VMware is not just any IT company — the winner of the 2009 ARN Software Vendor of the Year has a partner community that runs through the entire channel.

Westcon Group’s first dedicated chief technology officer, Bill Hurley, was initially appointed CIO 12 months ago and is now tasked with overseeing the distributor’s IT organisation while identifying future technologies and capabilities to invest in globally. He caught up with NADIA CAMERON during a recent visit to Sydney to discuss his background, the status of Westcon’s vendor line-up and his emerging IT agenda.

Looming on the horizon are the nimbus, cirrus, stratus and cumulus that threaten to deliver us cloud computing imminently. Promising an end to most of the challenges and frustrations of IT systems as we know them, the concept of cloud computing is thundering through the business community to become one of the most talked about and revered subjects of the day.

Although it may seem like your computing life is all e-mail and browsing, computer users still create files, documents, spreadsheets, boring presentations and all manner of other stored information. Which brings me to the question: Where do you store your data? And are you ready to store your data online in a service hosted by a third party provider?

Cloud computing is at its peak of hype. In fact, it's probably about to jump the shark. Savvy enterprise IT managers know there's little reason to embrace cloud this early in its development.

Gartner released its annual "Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2009" and pride of place goes to virtualization, put right at the top of the list. More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that Gartner placed Cloud Computing directly below virtualization in the second spot.

Revolutionary. Cutting edge. State of the art. These are words and phrases that are bandied around so very many products in the IT field that they become useless, bland, expected. The truth is that truly revolutionary products are few and far between. That said, Cisco's Unified Computing System fits the bill.

The new Sun Fire X2270 and Sun Fire X4270 servers are the fastest x64 servers Sun has ever produced.

VMware vSphere 4, out today, is a big release, with plenty of new features and changes, but it's not your run-of-the-mill major update. The new features, which range from VM clustering to agentless VM backup, are especially significant in that they may mark the moment when virtualisation shifted from the effort to provide a stable replica of a traditional infrastructure to significantly enhancing the capabilities of a virtual environment.

NComputing X550 Desktop