VMware View 4.6 is Out! And, a new ThinApp Update as Well!

Rock on! I love View, and I love ThinApp! Now, two new updates with cool, new features!

VMware View and VMware ThinApp Updates!

In View:

“While View 4.6 is considered a minor update, I am actually very excited about the new capabilities we have baked in to this version of our award winning desktop virtualization solution. Among the minor bug fixes and USB updates, View 4.6 delivers enhancements to View Security Server. VMware View 4.6 now provides support for external end-users connecting to their View desktop via PCoIP across the WAN. This new support provides for a simple, secure remote connection and authentication as users connect to their desktops outside of the firewall.

With this new native support, View Security Server provides an end-to-end PCoIP protocol session, and also removes the requirement for enterprise-class SSL VPNs (you can still use them with View and PCoIP if that’s what you have in your environment). For businesses this means reduced desktop virtualization infrastructure cost and configuration issues along with lower ongoing support costs. The result is a tightly-integrated and cost-effective desktop virtualization deployment that provides for easy authentication for those of us who work remotely. We think you will agree – it provides a vastly improved remote user experience.”

And in ThinApp:

“VMware ThinApp 4.6.1 improves packaging for Microsoft Office 2010. We are seeing businesses adopt ThinApp as they look to migrate to Windows 7. VMware ThinApp packages applications into single executables that run completely isolated from each other and the operating system for conflict-free execution on end-point devices.”

Microsoft Announces “Office 365” – A “Cloud Computing” Office

MS-Office365OK, this is weird. Just last night, my wife, Belinda, and I were talking about a Microsoft commercial where a “housewife” says “my kids never look right in family photos, I gonna take this to the ‘cloud’!” Riiiight! I asked Belinda, “What ‘normal’ housewife knows about the ‘cloud!?!?'” But, soon, maybe they will! Looks like it ties into what Microsoft is doing overall! Taking more of their software, and taking it “to the cloud!”

Microsoft Announces Cloud-based Office 365

“Two biggest and most profitable products that Microsoft offers are Office and the Windows operating system. The company has announced this week that it is set to start testing a new cloud-based online version of Office that will battle directly against Google Docs in the business market for productivity software.

The new service is called Office 365 and Microsoft says that the new offering makes it easy for workers and users anywhere to access Office productivity solutions and more from virtually any device on virtually any browser. Office 365 is launching in a limited beta program in 13 countries with various organizations soon.

Office 365 will work on devices like smartphones and the iPad reports Reuters. Reuters also notes that Office 365 supports not only IE but Firefox, Chrome, and Safari browsers as well. Microsoft says the new software offering was developed based on close work with existing customers.

‘Office 365 is the best of everything we know about productivity, all in a single cloud service,’ said Kurt DelBene, president of the Office Division at Microsoft. ‘With Office 365, your local bakery can get enterprise-caliber software and services for the first time, while a multinational pharmaceutical company can reduce costs and more easily stay current with the latest innovations. People can focus on their business, while we and our partners take care of the technology.'”

VMware Acquires Zimbra!

My favorite virtualization company has acquired my favorite Open Source e-mail platform!

VMware Acquires Zimbra

“Zimbra is the leader in next-generation, open source email and collaboration. In the last 5 years it has revolutionized private on-premises and public cloud deployments, gaining over 55 million paid mailboxes and joining an elite class of solution providers.
VMware vCloud technology will now be integrated with the core application layer, such as email and collaboration, creating a unique synergy and presenting organizations cost-effective means to deliver world-class experiences within an ultra-reliable virtualization framework.”

VMware Buys Zimbra

One of my favorite companies, VMware… has bouight one of my favorite e-mail platforms… the Open Source Web Based e-mail system, Zimbra!

VMware’s Zimbra Buy All About Simplicity

“Continuing on its mission to bring greater simplicity to users of its cloud platform, VMware has announced its agreement to acquire Zimbra, a provider of e-mail and collaboration software, from Yahoo. In a Jan. 12 blog post on the move, Steve Herrod, chief technology officer at VMware, likened the company’s acquisition of Zimbra to its acquisition of SpringSource last August, saying it is all about simplification. SpringSource simplifies enterprise Java application development, and Zimbra simplifies the deployment of IT services. The acquisition is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2010. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. Herrod mentioned Zimbra’s 55 million users and praised Zimbra’s open-source e-mail, calendaring and collaboration software. He also described how Zimbra can help VMware simplify IT, noting that Zimbra was one of the more popular downloads on VMware’s virtual appliance marketplace. According to Herrod, virtual appliances are virtual machines prepopulated with an operating system and applications that can be downloaded and easily started without installation and with minimal configuration.”

VMware Announces vSphere 4!

VMware has announced a “cloud operating system for the Enterprise.” Sounds cool… I will be watching a webcast on Thursday to get more info.

Introducing VMware vSphere 4 – The Industry’s First Cloud Operating System

“VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, today announced VMware vSphereâ„¢ 4, the industry’s first operating system for building the internal cloud, enabling the delivery of efficient, flexible and reliable IT as a service. With a wide range of groundbreaking new capabilities, VMware vSphere 4 brings cloud computing to enterprises in an evolutionary, non-disruptive way – delivering uncompromising control with greater efficiency while preserving customer choice. As the complexity of IT environments has continued to increase over time, customers’ share of IT budgets are increasingly spent on simply trying to ‘keep the lights on.’ With the promise of cloud computing, customers are eager to achieve the benefits, but struggle to see the path to getting there. Leveraging VMware vSphere 4, customers can take pragmatic steps to achieve cloud computing within their own IT environments. With these ‘internal’ clouds, IT departments can dramatically simplify how computing is delivered in order to help decrease its cost and increase its flexibility, enabling IT to respond more rapidly to changing business requirements. VMware vSphere 4 will aggregate and holistically manage large pools of infrastructure – processors, storage and networking – as a seamless, flexible and dynamic operating environment. Any application – an existing enterprise application or a next-generation application – runs more efficiently and with guaranteed service levels on VMware vSphere 4. For enterprises, VMware vSphere 4 will bring the power of cloud computing to the datacenter, slashing IT costs while dramatically increasing IT responsiveness. For hosting service providers, VMware vSphere 4 will enable a more economic and efficient path to delivering cloud services that are compatible with customers’ internal cloud infrastructures. Over time, VMware will support dynamic federation between internal and external clouds, enabling ‘private’ cloud environments that span multiple datacenters and/or cloud providers. VMware vSphere 4 delivers significant performance and scalability improvements over the previous generation VMware Infrastructure 3 to enable even the most resource intensive applications, such as large databases and Microsoft Exchange, to be deployed on internal clouds. With these performance and scalability improvements, VMware vSphere 4 will enable the 100 percent virtualized internal cloud.”

VMware Sets Virtualization Performance Records for Database and Web Server Workloads

VMware continued its tradition of breaking performance records at the VMworld Europe conference when VMware Chief Technology Officer Dr. Stephen Herrod demonstrated 8,900 database transactions per second and 60,000 disk input/outputs per second (IOPS) on an Oracle Database workload running on a VMware ESX host—the most resource-intensive load ever shown in a virtual environment to date.

VMware Sets Virtualization Performance Records for Database and Web Server Workloads

VMware also recently set a world record in Web server performance—actually beating native performance in a side-by-side comparison of a Web server running on VMware Infrastructure with a similarly configured non-virtualized server.

“In the past, there was a perception that demanding databases such as Oracle were not suitable candidates for virtualization,” said Dr. Herrod. “These record-setting throughputs at near-native performance prove that VMware’s maximum capabilities exceed the server needs of most customers. This makes virtualizing database environments a viable solution for those looking to reduce IT costs by consolidating servers and increasing business continuity.”

VMware Release Open Source Desktop Client – View

VMware’s commitment to Open Source is taking a step up!

VMware goes open source with desktop virtualization

“VMware Inc. has released open-source desktop virtualization software designed to let its business partners optimize thin clients for the delivery of personalized virtual desktops. VMware View Open Client, available for download on the Google Code site since Monday night, helps further VMware’s strategy both for desktop virtualization and open source. VMware CEO Paul Maritz said last September that the company had considered open-sourcing ESX, its server hypervisor and flagship product. This week’s news doesn’t go that far, but it does introduce an open-source component into what is expected to be a fast-growing market for virtual desktops. VMware cited Gartner Inc. research predicting that 50 million user licenses for hosted virtual desktops will be purchased by 2013. ‘We are sharing our source code in VMware View Open Client so vendors can easily optimize devices to create the best virtual desktop solutions,’ VMware desktop vice president Jocelyn Goldfein said in a news release. ‘This … brings us closer to our Universal Client vision, where users can securely and efficiently access rich personalized desktop environments, from any device at any time.’ The open-source software is complementary to the commercial product VMware View, and it will let partners optimize thin clients and other devices for that product, the company said.”

VMware Releases ESXi for FREE!

Wow! VMware has released a version of their bare-metal hypervisor for free! It is VMware ESXi, and it will install directly on your hardware, and can be managed with VMware VirtualCenter Server. It fact it can be managed together with an existing ESXserver cluster. This is cool stuff!

VMware ESXi Information

They have also announced a new version of their VMware Server free product, which installs on top of an existing operating system. More info on that here:

VMware Server Information

“Run all your production applications at near-native performance on VMware’s next-generation OS-independent hypervisor, now available for free. VMware ESXi has the same functionality and performance as VMware ESX but with a 32 MB disk footprint. With the ability to seamlessly upgrade to VMware Infrastructure 3, customers can add the benefits of server consolidation, automatic load balancing and business continuity to VMware ESXi.”

Will Microsoft Virtualization Spur Cloud Computing?

Will the fact that Microsoft is so huge, so powerful, and now getting into virtualization push cloud computing forward?

Will Microsoft’s virtualization spur a lot more cloud computing?

“At this week’s Interop show in New York, speakers argued that Microsoft’s recent moves could give cloud computing a substantial lift. But they also cited needs for Microsoft to streamline its virtualization products and pricing. Microsoft’s recent entrance into data center virtualization could bring big benefits to the cloud computing industry as a whole, especially if Microsoft starts to offer a simple enough product line-up and pricing model, said observers at this week’s Interop show. ‘The biggest [part of] the cloud right now is open source,’ acknowledged Michael Crandell, CEO and founder of RightScale, during a panel session. Yet by and large, panelists seemed to agree that Microsoft’s large installed Windows base could ultimately help to drive much greater industry demand for data sharing between virtualized in-house data centers and outside hosts, including third-party partners. Crandell said he wouldn’t be entirely surprised if at least one open source cloud computing maven in the ‘household name’ category eventually provides Windows-based storage as an alternative for customers.”

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