Scalent Systems announced availability of Scalent V/OE version 2.5, with enhanced workload and image portability functionality. Scalent delivers portability of Windows and Linux server images and associated provisioning of network connectivity & storage access across virtual and physical machines in real time, without costly and time-consuming conversions. Scalent V/OE supports multiple vendors' hypervisors and physical hardware, assuring customers the freedom of choice without sacrificing performance.

Qumranet previewed its Solid ICE Multi-Site desktop virtualization solution, which will offer the benefits of centralized desktops to enterprises with globally dispersed users in branch offices and remote sites. Solid ICE Multi-Site employs Qumranet's SPLICE technology, which enables an IT administrator to manage and maintain all the virtual desktops enterprise-wide from one central location.

CodeWeavers announced the release of CrossOver Mac 7.0 and CrossOver Linux 7.0. Both version of CrossOver 7.0 will include support for Microsoft Office 2007 (including Outlook 2007), newer versions of Quicken, and the Adobe CS and CS2 line of products, particularly Photoshop.

It's no secret that data centers are faced with exponential storage growth, increasing operational costs, power and cooling limitations, and the need to provision and bring new applications online more rapidly to support critical business needs, many customers look to virtualization strategies to ease the management burden. SRM technology can address the demands and management complexities that virtualization presents. Virtualization, by definition, can apply to operating systems, applications and storage arrays. This session will identify and elaborate on the various virtualization categories, and talk about how SRM technology can enable IT organizations to manage storage in the virtual enterprise.

SOA Software and iTKO announced a combined solution for continuous management and quality assurance across the entire design, development and change lifecycle of SOA (Service-Oriented Architecture) applications. The integrated offering includes iTKO's LISA Testing, Validation and Virtualization suite, and SOA Software's Policy Manager and Service Manager solutions.

GigaSpaces Technologies and RightScale announced their alliance to provide an integrated solution for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Ideal for data-intensive and transactional applications, the joint solution offers an affordable end-to-end stack for easily deploying and scaling applications running on Amazon Web Services. By integrating the GigaSpaces eXtreme Application Platform (XAP) with RightScale's automated cloud computing management platform, customers will have unparalleled automation, simplicity and performance in scaling-out applications in the cloud.

Traditional recovery infrastructures have failed to keep pace with requirements for recovery speed and integrity at a reasonable cost. Learn why organizations are now leveraging server virtualization to protect servers in their network that have commonly been left under-protected. Find out how workload protection technologies enable organizations to implement a disaster recovery plan that is more affordable and flexible than traditional options, while improving testing and recovery time and point objectives (RTO and RPO).

As virtualization becomes more widely deployed, and enterprises look for new ways to leverage this revolutionary technology, the consumption and delivery of this technology is changing. It is no longer one-size-fits-all and confined to a specific area of the data center, but instead is proliferating within the data center and out to the user via the desktop and applications. This session will provide IT organizations with a short - and long - term roadmap by focusing on the new delivery models for virtualization (including embedded hypervisors and managed services), what's available today and what can be expected in the future, and best practices for deployment.

Storage virtualization introduces a level of abstraction that sits between application servers and physical storage resources to provide centralized volume management and non-disruptive data mobility. These capabilities help storage managers improve productivity, capacity-utilization and service levels. Its unique position between application servers and storage resources demands the highest levels of availability, performance and data integrity. This session will review the benefits of virtualization and how it improves productivity, capacity utilization and service levels. It will also discuss how second generation, network based storage virtualization can be used to meet the demands imposed by its central position in the I/O stack.

As the adoption of virtualization technology in the data center increases, organizations are encountering new challenges associated with planning and managing rapid growth in virtual infrastructure. Without effective planning and forecasting, organizations often fail to realize the full benefits of virtualization and achieve a sub par return on investment. After investing in virtualization, some organizations learn the hard way that they have merely replaced their physical server sprawl with a virtual sprawl. This session will discuss the important role of ongoing capacity and workload planning, forecasting and reporting in helping organizations successfully manage future growth.

Parascale, the four-year-old firm with the Cloud Storage system software layered on the Linux XFS file system, the Linux operating system and the Internet Protocol networking protocol stack, has hired Sajai Krishnan out of NetApp to be its CEO. He ran NetApp's mid-market StoreVault business focused on network storage appliances and used to be a Booz Allen VP and a partner in its Communication, Media Technology practice.

NEC announced a partnership with SYNNEX. The partnership underscores NEC's commitment to expanding the delivery of dynamic IT infrastructure solutions in North America. NEC's extensive portfolio of IT products and international recognition for quality give SYNNEX VARs across North America the ability to partner with a single brand to meet a wide variety of customers' data center needs.

As part of IBM's 'Project Big Green' offerings, IBM announced new storage virtualization software, its System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) 4.3 software, to manage and consolidate volumes of business data.

I/O is a key element of server architecture, but its virtualization is only now starting to be addressed. Without I/O virtualization, the amount, type and physical connectivity of server I/O are all fixed. In order to achieve true flexibility in server usage, these fixed resources must become dynamic. This enables an on-demand usage model for non-virtualized servers, including failover with shared spares, and server pool scaling. It is also an important complement to virtual machine technology, providing flexible dedicated I/O pipes for virtual machines. This presentation will compare different approaches to I/O virtualization and discuss the applications of the technology.

Ceedo Technologies has developed patent-pending virtualization technology that takes a suite of standard off-the-shelf Windows applications, and virtualizes them in real-time, creating a portable virtual desktop, which launches on any Windows host PC with no need to pre-install any software, drivers or agents. Ceedo's portable virtual desktop runs on top of and leverages the exiting Windows OS on the host PC, thus eliminating the licensing costs, footprint and performance penalty of a full virtualized OS, and works fully in user mode, enabling operation on locked-down PCs. Ceedo's technology enables the most cost-effective solutions for many enterprise scenarios such as remote access, disaster recovery, and creating a managed enterprise 'island' on employee-owned and subcontractor-owned PCs. Ceedo provides the Enterprise IT with tools to fully customize the user interface, remotely deploy new applications, and update existing applications.

IDC and Gartner have boosted their worldwide PC growth projections for the year. IDC thinks shipments will be up 15.2% to 310 million units compared to last year, not 12.8% like it said it March and Gartner puts the number at 12.5% rather than 10.9%.

CiRBA announced the release of Version 5.0 of its virtualization and consolidation analysis software. With Version 5.0, CiRBA enables organizations to build dynamic models of their virtual and physical infrastructure to continually identify opportunities to improve performance, optimize VM placements, and minimize operational risk. Version 5.0 automatically updates analyses to give IT daily control over virtualized infrastructure so that business-critical systems are optimized and safe in spite of the constant change and associated risks that are inherent within virtualized data centers.

While virtual machines continue to proliferate in enterprise data centers with great results, high-powered physical servers aren't going away. Most enterprise data centers are in fact 'blended environments,' with some application services running on VMs, while often more mission-critical applications continue to run on physical servers. This session will explore approaches to manage both virtual AND physical servers in exactly the same fashion - creating truly resilient environments regardless of platform.

Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software is a highly successful software company specializing in virtualization and security. Green Hills Software's INTEGRITY is the first operating system or virtualization technology to be accepted for EAL 6+ Common Criteria IT Security evaluation; the level required to protect assets from hostile and well-funded attacks. Green Hills' INTEGRITY PC technology, using the unique Padded Cell virtualization architecture, enables IT organizations and equipment manufacturers the ability to deploy completely secure systems while supporting environments such as Windows and Linux.

The Federal Trade Commission has decided to formally investigate Intel for antitrust for pushing AMD to the wall with its sales incentives, an answer to a prayer AMD has been saying for years now. AMD supposedly only brought its mammoth private antitrust suit against Intel in a Delaware federal court in 2005 because no American regulators would investigate Intel.

Surgient announced that Insuresoft selected the Surgient Virtual Lab Management Platform to accelerate its software delivery cycles. Integrated with HP Quality Center, Surgient enables Insuresoft to improve the efficiency of its software test Q/A cycle and more quickly deliver its products and services to customers.

Lanamark announced limited availability of its flagship software solution Lanamark Suite. The company also announced a Lanamark Early Access Program (LEAP) for value-added resellers, consultants and system integrators.

Tresys announced the availability of Tresys VM Fortress - a patent-pending secure desktop virtualization technology for organizations seeking strong security and operational integrity. VM Fortress gives organizations with high-end security needs the ability to utilize desktop virtualization without compromising protection by strengthening the guest operations system and the virtualization software itself to withstand the most threatening of compromises. VM Fortress provides a level of security high above most conventional requirements, which enables mission-critical organizations to leverage desktop virtual machine (VM) technology.

The need for a way to more effectively manage and reduce the complexity of end points has never been greater. While virtualization technologies offer a breakthrough approach to reduce the complexities of managing end points, there are different ways organizations are leveraging this technology. This session discusses the distinct differences between how organizations are approaching virtualizing end points and the benefits each implementation offers for gaining the performance, security and control needed to manage end points for today's dispersed organizations.

Managing Web Services in production is no easy task. Ensuring that services follow corporate security and SOA governance requirements, monitoring compliance with individual SLAs, preventing one client from degrading the performance of others and ensuring services built today will work in the future are a few of the challenges. Web service virtualization provides a separate layer that isolates business and operational rules, enabling you to quickly configure virtual Web services while enforcing business and operational policies. This services layer augments Web services management (WSM) tools and registries, making all the services in the enterprise more efficient and consistent.

PlateSpin provides a unified suite of solutions to help enterprises adopt, manage and extend their use of server virtualization in the data center. PlateSpin's patent-pending workload profiling and portability technology liberates software from hardware and streams server workloads (data, applications and operating systems) over the network between physical and virtual infrastructures. The freedom to drag and drop workloads onto the physical or virtual hosts where they will run most efficiently ensures the best fit between server resource supply and application workload demands. Global 2000 companies use PlateSpin solutions to lower costs, boost operational efficiencies and solve today's most pressing data center challenges including server consolidation, hardware migration and disaster recovery.

3PAR is a provider of utility storage, a category of highly-virtualized, tightly-clustered, and dynamically-tiered storage arrays built for utility computing. Organizations use utility computing to build cost-effective virtualized IT infrastructures for flexible workload consolidation. 3PAR Utility Storage gives customers an alternative to traditional arrays by delivering resilient infrastructure with increased agility at a lower total cost to meet their changing business needs. As a pioneer of thin provisioning - a green technology developed to address storage underutilization and inefficiencies - 3PAR offers products designed to minimize power consumption and promote environmental responsibility. With 3PAR, customers have reduced the costs of allocated storage capacity, administration, and SAN infrastructure while increasing adaptability and resiliency. 3PAR Utility Storage is built to meet the demands of open systems consolidation, integrated data lifecycle management, and performance-intensive applications.

Parallels announced the hosting implementation of Parallels Server for Mac, a server virtualization solution for Intel-powered Apple Mac systems. Parallels Server for Mac is a powerful and easy-to-use hypervisor solution for server virtualization that runs on any Intel-powered Apple hardware, including Xserve and Mac Pros that support running Leopard Server or Tiger Server. Product launch partner (mt) Media Temple is already utilizing Parallels Server for Mac with the Leopard VPS hosting solution; the (xv) Xserve-Virtual server.

VMware announced that Chitale Dairy has used VMware's datacenter virtualization and management platform, VMware Infrastructure, to consolidate its two widely separated datacenters into one, while improving application availability and reliability. Chitale Dairy, which produces about 400,000 liters of milk per day as well as cream, butter and yogurt, faced operational challenges with 10 physical servers spread across two datacenters in a town 500 kilometers from the nearest city. In its remote location, the company found it expensive and challenging to source and retain qualified IT support staff while also grappling with server sprawl.

In February 2007, APC and MGE UPS Systems combined to form a $3.5 billion (2.4 billion) Critical Power and Cooling Services business unit of Schneider Electric. The Critical Power and Cooling Services division offers the industry's most comprehensive product and solution range for critical IT and process applications in industrial, enterprise, small and medium business and home environments. The company's solutions include APC's InfraStruXure data center architecture, the comprehensive integrated power, cooling, and management solution. The company's products also include APC and MGE-brand uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), along with APC-brand precision cooling units, racks and design and management software.

SUSE, which is packaged up with Xen, has started supporting VMware's Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), Vmware's brand of paravirtualization. Novell worked on the widgetry with VMware for nine months and modified the SUSE kernel to support VMI, a communication mechanism between the guest operating system and hypervisor.

Parallels announced that ActiveHost will offer Windows virtual private server (VPS) packages based solely on Parallels products. The new offering will be delivered by the newly created ActiveVPS division of ActiveHost. ActiveHost is using Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, Parallels Plesk Control Panel and Parallels Business Automation software to provide its customers with a complete platform to manage their own VPS resources and billing account information.

Red Hat is a trusted open source provider. Red Hat offers enterprise customers a long-term plan for building infrastructures on the quality and innovation of open source. Combining open source operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with applications, management, and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Suite.

Citrix is losing its sales boss John Burris to one of the open source contingent's few publicly traded companies, the struggling Sourcefire, creator of Snort, the security software, whose $15 IPO price has pretty been shaved in half since its debut in March of 2007.

Virtualization is the future of IT management, but what exactly does that mean to your organization? CIOs around the world recognize that virtualization could be the answer to combating skyrocketing costs associated with managing their IT infrastructure; however, many are still left wondering how to implement a long-term, sustainable virtualization strategy. In this session, BMC Software CTO, Tom Bishop, will explain how IT organizations can realize the full value of virtualization through aligning IT with business priorities and automating IT processes.

At this year's Virtualization Expo event, learn how Intel's latest virtualization technology advancements are designed to increase performance while simplifying IT management, reduce the number of physical servers and balance compute workloads on virtual machines. Maximize the flexibility of your assets and get more from every system. All without costly datacenter expansion.

Red Hat is beta testing its JBoss Enterprise Application Platform as a solution on Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). It's a way to tickle enterprise adoption of its Java application server. EC2 offers developers, enterprises and startups a web-scale compute infrastructure with virtually unlimited capacity and pay-as-you-go pricing. And of course clouds right now are very chi-chi.

Businesses that virtualize can increase efficiency and reduce costs by eliminating low- performance/low-efficienc y servers. Less well-known, but equally important, is the parallel advantage of streamlining the legacy power and cooling systems that support virtualized environments. This presentation will discuss how new power and cooling technologies and effective data center planning and design are saving additional electrical costs, sometimes even more than the original savings from virtualization. Learn how to help manage the complexities of a virtualized environment by answering the not-so-obvious questions 'Where should I locate my next server?' and 'Where should I migrate my applications to maximize efficiency?'

Certeon's S-Series Application Acceleration Appliances provide solutions with Application Intelligent Networking to deliver application acceleration, security and scalability from the desktop to the data center. Certeon's patent-pending S-Series appliances accelerate all WAN traffic and are optimized for distributed content delivery and collaboration applications such as: enterprise content management, work flow and process management, Web portals and search. S-Series appliances are the only solution to securely accelerate encrypted traffic (SSL) with the same performance improvements as unencrypted traffic. The appliances minimize network traffic to improve application response times, while maintaining end-to-end security. The result is the highest productivity possible for all remote branch office employees.

Likewise Software announced that it has been named as category award-winning finalist in the second annual Red Hat Innovation Awards. Red Hat selected six finalists in the second annual Red Hat Innovation Awards, designed to recognize the outstanding use, innovation and extension of Red Hat solutions by customers, partners and the open source community. One Red Hat Innovator of the Year will be selected from the six finalists during the Red Hat Summit, taking place June 18-20, 2008 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Mass.