Ex-XenSource CEO tries another virtualization start-up
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Blog: Pano Logic combines VMware virtualization software on the server with a device to remotely connect users' keyboards, mice and other peripherals.
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What Microsoft characterized this morning as a "new" virtualization strategy looks curiously like its existing one, only now it has a new partner and an acquired company to help bring it about.
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Linux programmer Rusty Russell offers software that could unify some virtualization programming chores.
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The first candidate for the final version of Microsoft's next server operating system is imminent, including a test version of the 'Viridian' virtualization software.
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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has made courting Linux users and those considering the open-source option a top priority and said the sheer volume of innovation that Longhorn development efforts
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The former CEO of NetScreen Technologies has moved on to a new upstart. Can he make the same magic work again?
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(InfoWorld) - Three years after being bought by EMC, VMware is going public.Â EMC announced plans Wednesday to offer 10 percent of its virtualization software subsidiary in an initial public offering (IPO). The offering will "unlock more of VMware's value for EMC shareholders," and help the company "retain and attract the software industry's top talent," EMC Chairman, President, and CEO Joe Tucci said in a statement. "We think now is the point where the planets are aligned and this makes sense," Tucci said on a conference call with financial analysts. WhenÂ EMC acquired VMwareÂ in 2004, it had 300 employees; today it has 3,000, he said. "The growth rate of this company has been phenomenal." EMC plans to file a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in late March or early April for the planned IPO, and the shares could be available for sale some time in the second quarter, said David Goulden, executive vice president and chief financial officer of EMC. The shares to be put on the market will be new shares, not ones already owned by EMC, Goulden said. The proceeds will "provide VMware with the financial resources it needs to achieve its full growth potential and provide EMC with the potential to return a portion of the original investment in VMware to EMC shareholders, while enabling them to continue to enjoy the vast majority ownership in this strategic and fast-growing business," Goulden said. Virtualization, which allows a server to better run multiple applications simultaneously, has helped businesses reduce the number of servers they need, reduce their energy consumption and assist in data center disaster recovery efforts, said Diane Greene, who founded VMware in 1998. She is president of VMware and executive vice president of EMC. "The IPO is a powerful way for us to accelerate our vision of a pervasive, industry standard virtual infrastructure. We see an incredible opportunity ahead of us," Greene said. More than 10 percent of new x86 server workloads are running on VMware virtualization software, and VMware is used by more than 20,000 customers, Greene said. Analysts have recently speculated on whether EMC would spin off VMware, said Gordon Haff, principal IT advisor with research firm Illuminata Inc. "EMC wants to get some of the money while VMware is clearly a hot property," he said. "On the other hand, they clearly want to retain a very large chunk of VMware." EMC's stock (EMC) has been stuck in the $10 to $15 range for the last three years. The IPO was announced after the New York Stock Exchange closed for the day. In after-hours trading, EMC shares rose $0.91 to $14.55. Tucci's comments about unlocking VMware's value "might be less politely phrased as 'hopefully getting the shareholders off my butt,'" Haff said. VMware is an early leader in one of the IT industry's hottest market segments. The company's revenue was up 83 percent in 2006, totalling $709 million, EMC said. The IPO should generate capital for VMware to invest in innovation, said Allan Krans, an analyst with Technology Business Research. Although VMware is the industry leader in server virtualization software, MicrosoftÂ is expected to introduce an update of its Microsoft Virtual Server in the fourth quarter of 2007, which could increase competitive pressure on VMware.
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Blog: As he typically does, the Microsoft chairman will kick off the Las Vegas gadget fest; meanwhile Europe's CeBIT is taking on more of an IT flavor
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New CEO brings passion and an eclectic background as he charts a new course for the Linux developer.
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(InfoWorld) - Going virtual is becoming a real answer for data center managers, according to a survey of large and small businesses. Fifty-one percent of North American companies are either testing virtualization technology in their data centers or have already deployed it, according to a report released Friday by Forrester Research. Use of virtualization is less in Europe (35 percent either testing or deploying it) and Asia-Pacific (21 percent), but is generally growing nonetheless. Forrester compared results of a 2006 survey to a similar one in 2005 in which 41 percent of companies in North America, 30 percent in Europe and 23 percent in Asia-Pacific were using or testing virtualization. Although the Asia-Pacific number is lower in 2006 than 2005, Forrester notes the survey sample was smaller there than in the other regions. Whether or not they are using virtualization, interest in or even just awareness of virtualization grew in all geographic regions in 2006 from 2005. Virtualization refers to dynamic management of a company's total information technology infrastructure. The most common use of virtualization is in the operation of x86 servers in data centers. Virtualization makes it possible to run multiple software applications and operating systems simultaneously on one physical server. The result is that instead or running at only 15 percent to 20 percent of capacity, when one server runs only one application, servers can run at 80 percent to 90 percent of capacity. Thus, a company could spend less money buying servers. Although virtualization is more likely embraced by large enterprises, awareness of it by SMBsÂ is growing at a faster rate, the survey showed. Awareness of virtualization by Global 2000 large enterprises grew to 92 percent in 2006 from 87 percent in 2005. But awareness by medium-to-large business jumped to 86 percent from 60 percent andÂ to 83 percent from 62 percent by SMBs. Server virtualization software company VMware remains the dominant provider. Fifty-three percent of those surveyed would consider VMware for virtualization, versus just 9 percent for Microsoft's Virtual Server product. Only one respondent mentioned the open-source Xen virtualization software as a choice, while just six mentioned Sun's Solaris operating system, whose virtualization feature is called Containers. EMC, which operates VMware as a subsidiary,Â announced plans this week to launch an initial public offering of VMware stock. Microsoft, which introduced its Virtual Server product in 2004, is expected to launch an updated version later this year. Forrester surveyed 1,267 enterprises with more than 1,000 employees, and 503 SMBs with 100 to 999 employees for its report.
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Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates has been giving keynote speeches at Las Vegas conventions, including the Consumer Electronics Show and the now-defunct Comdex, for decades. Before his last&#160;CES keynote speech&#160;as a full-time company employee, he talked with IDG News Service Executive News Editor Marc Ferranti about his legacy as an innovator, the background behind some of the deals announced at CES this week, and directions for Microsoft.The following is an edited version of the interview:IDGNS: We&#39;ve been tracking your career for some 30 years. One bone of contention has been when people have said that Bill Gates is a business mastermind, but not really an innovator. Can you point out a couple of innovative things you&#39;re particularly proud of?Gates: In terms of what we&#39;re proud of, I think it&#39;s the personal computer that we&#39;re proud of. It was a crazy idea at the time, that we could take the microprocessor and create a software industry around it. There was no software industry. Computing was about big businesses, and what we did in 1975, with me dropping out of school, was to say that we could build an industry that was about empowering people. We could seek out partners to build the hardware. We&#39;d let anyone write software for the work we did, and everything we&#39;ve done, over these 30 years, has been about that vision of personal computing. We were first ones with that vision.And now we&#39;re tackling the new frontiers. We&#39;re bringing TV, we&#39;re bringing new educational experiences, health experiences, onto this device that empowers people in a new rich way. And so it&#39;s pretty broad, the PC industry and our innovations in it -- I don&#39;t think there&#39;s anything in the last 30 years that has had as much impact.IDGNS: In the consumer space, since we&#39;re at CES, can you point out some recent innovations Microsoft can leverage in the next couple of years.Gates: Well the dollars spent on games and Xbox in the U.S. is greater than Sony PS3 and Nintendo Wii combined. Really, that&#39;s because of the innovation in Xbox Live -- connecting people up, letting players find each other, matching them, getting video online. It&#39;s a real breakthrough way of thinking about even the future of TV.We&#39;ve got a million people using our Mediaroom, which is TV delivered over the Internet. Companies like AT&amp;T and 19 other phone companies around the world bet their future on this being the new video platform. And what that means is when you think about news, and you go and use Mediaroom news, you see the things that you care about, the ads are targeted at you.Look at what we&#39;ve done with Surface, directly touching and manipulating things -- that&#39;s gonna be a centerpiece.I can go on and on, there&#39;s so much that has to do with making it natural, bringing these things together and integrating them. We&#39;re the company that&#39;s doing the walk -- a lot of business focus but enough consumer focus that, from the biggest game phenomenon in the world to the biggest instant messaging thing, we have a lot of success that represents the innovation we&#39;re put into it.IDGNS: With increasing competition from abroad, innovation is of increasing importance to American companies. What&#39;s your thinking around the link between innovation and intellectual property?Gates: Well, we&#39;re a company that&#39;s based in the United States, but obviously we&#39;re drawing on engineering talent from all over the world. We&#39;ve got an unbelievable research group in China, we&#39;ve got an unbelievable research group in India, and we&#39;re delivering to consumers all over the world as well. And we file for intellectual property in all of these countries. They&#39;re all in different stages in terms of copyright, or patents, and it tends to be a pretty complicated area.Other countries look at what&#39;s going on in the United States and they say they&#39;d like their engineers to have those same opportunities, those same incentive systems, and so there really is a sense of progress in that. It&#39;s just one of the elements that make sure people are willing to take risks and keep the innovation in this industry the fastest of any industry in the world.IDGNS: You&#39;re going to be talking here about new partnerships for Microsoft&#39;s MSN, Xbox Live and Mediaroom IPTV services that will provide more content to drive Microsoft&#39;s consumer entertainment strategy. Can you talk about what you needed to do -- on the technology side and on the business side -- to make these deals happen?Gates: XBox Live is attracting virtually all the content people because of the volume we&#39;ve got there, and they see this group of very engaged users spending a lot of hours and finding new media in that environment, so that&#39;s made it easy for us. Our announcement with NBC on the Olympics is about our innovations in Silverlight, where you can view interactive content, multiple video streams, so it&#39;s really a perfect match for the Olympics where you have all this different content and yet different people care about different parts of it.IDGNS: As your consumer entertainment strategy comes to fruition, how will your business model change from what it has been in the past? Can you quantify goals for advertising-generated revenue?Gates: We&#39;ve seen good growth in our advertising revenue. That&#39;s an area where Google&#39;s the leader and we need to be very innovative to drive the scale. A huge partnership with Viacom is helping us with that. We&#39;ll be signing up more partners around the world. Taking the advertising platform to scale is very valuable for things like the search property we offer.We participate in a lot of business models. We have consumer software like games that you buy on a one-time basis. We have things that you can pay as a monthly fee, that we run up in our servers, as more of a service type model. We have some software we give away for free. And so, ads are coming in as a big, strong component but I don&#39;t see it replacing the others. We need all modalities to be strong.IDGNS: In your philanthropic work, you&#39;ve focused on fundamental health issues for the developing world. In the tech sector, there have been efforts such as the OLPC, and Microsoft&#39;s efforts to reduce prices in developing countries. But there&#39;s been criticism about these efforts. People have been saying, well, a $200 laptop isn&#39;t going to do a kid much good if he doesn&#39;t live to age five. With this in mind what do you think technology companies -- that need to make profits -- can do to spur development in emerging markets?Gates: Companies make their contribution by both giving some cash to broad areas but also by having their products in their area of expertise be tailored and donated to people who are poor. So in the case of Microsoft, we went and got involved in putting PCs in libraries. We went to Chile to put PCs in the libraries there, so by having a really robust machine connected to the Internet, going through the training, working with the government, getting all the pieces right -- we learned how to do that in the United States -- those projects were incredibly successful.So while I admit for my Foundation the top priority is health, Microsoft is about software. It&#39;s got a product, that&#39;s what the company knows. And that&#39;s where, in its activities around the world, its helping educators, it&#39;s helping kids who have curiosity, and I think that&#39;s fantastic for Microsoft to do that.I&#39;m taking the success that Microsoft had and putting tens of billions of that into the basic needs where breakthroughs can be made -- and there, we&#39;ll be using software. We&#39;ll be using mobile phones, we&#39;ll doing data gathering, so we&#39;ll be using software as a tool to do it. I wish every company was doing as much as Microsoft is to take their expertise and look into that developing world and see what role they can play . We&#39;ve had great impact, great success, and it helps us attract better employees. It makes our employees feel good because we were founded on the idea of empowerment. We&#39;re not just talking about it, we&#39;re out in over a hundred countries delivering it in a significant way.
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Missing Symantec love and price war A few months ago Citrix told us it would use XenSource as a weapon, pushing prices of virtualization software down far below what VMware currently offers. Now we're wondering what happened to Citrix's guts.â¦
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TechWeb - Look for SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 applications to run as a virtualized guest on Longhorn, for starters.
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(InfoWorld) - For a technology that's supposed to make computing easier,Â virtualizationÂ is becoming quite complicated. The Hewlett-Packard Technology Forum that starts Monday in Las Vegas will feature as many as 87 user training sessions on virtualization, more than any other category, organizers say. This is a recognition both that virtualization continues to gain in popularity but also that end users have a lot of questions. The HP Technology Forum (HPTF) is expected to draw 7,000 attendees. It coincides with the HP Software Universe event expected to draw 3,000 people to Las Vegas, though to a different venue than the Technology Forum. Despite the appeal of virtualization as a way to use IT resources more efficiently, the technology adds a layer of complexity that IT managers may not be prepared for and may reduce the anticipated return on investment. The number of virtualized servers deployed by businesses is exploding "like bacteria in a petri dish," said David Gee, vice president of marketing for HP Software. Users say they face the same management issues running a virtual environment as a physical one. "I have to track and monitor who gets access to what, who created it. Are they allowed to do this?" Gee said. Virtualization can make a single physical server act like multiple logical servers, improving server utilization. It allows one server to run multiple software applications simultaneously, reducing the number of computers needed. While virtualization is commonly used in server environments, it's also being used in desktops, storage arrays, networks and for disaster recovery. But using virtualization to consolidate the number of physical servers doesn't mean your management duties shrink proportionally. CA Inc., a maker of IT management software, reported in March that 44 percent of 800 IT professionals surveyed globally "were unable to declare their virtualization deployment a success." The survey, conducted for CA by an independent firm, showed that 28 percent of respondents failed to see the return on investment (ROI) they anticipated, or couldn't determine if they had. Forty percent didn't achieve the cost savings they expected, or couldn't determine if they had. For one thing, companies don't necessarily save on IT staff costs by virtualizing, said Peter Richardson, director of product management at CA. If a company that runs 300 operating systems on 300 servers reduces that to running 10 virtual servers on each of 30 physical servers, it still has 300 OSs, and related software applications, to manage, said Richardson. Moreover, as more virtual servers are added, those 30 physical servers could be running as many as 500 applications. "You could go around universally and ask any client that has virtualized whether they reduced staff and the bottom line is no," he said. Staff isn't reduced because server sprawl continues, even if it's just virtual. Of course, CA is making the point to promote its own virtualization management software, which, Richardson says, manages virtual environments even if there are different brands of servers on the network. Server vendors offer virtualization management software, such as HP's ProLiant Essentials Virtual Machine Management software. There also are a few good niche management software products available, "but there is still no fully cohesive virtual management suite," said Andi Mann, senior analyst with Enterprise Management Associates. The HPTF sessions should answer a lot of questions for HP customers about whether virtualization will live up to its promise, said Scott Healy, chairman of the IT User Group (ITUG), which is co-hosting the HPTF with the user group Encompass. Healy is also a vice president of IT at Sabre Holdings Corp. "The promise of virtualization is when you are able to use servers for different applications at different times without impacting the general availability of your IT resources. Balancing that is a concern for any IT manager," said Healy.
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Surprise! The KVM open-source virtualization software is at the foundation of a desktop virtualization software start-up's business.
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Company has started sharing some APIs with security vendors, in a bid to create better ways of securing virtual machines.
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A forthcoming version of the OLPC's XO laptop could have the ability to boot both Linux and Windows, according to the OLPC's founder.