virtualisation - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• OVF: A standard for virtualisation's future

  Quick: What part of IT datacentres' operations hasn't been transformed by virtualisation?

• The tricky math of server virtualisation ROI

  Server virtualisation is supposed to save buckets of cash, largely from server reduction. After all, consolidating some 20 physical servers to three host servers means less hardware, power and cooling, and management overhead.

• Open source hot area for 2009

  Open source, virtualisation and identity management will be areas to watch in 2009, according to Sun Microsystems ANZ vice president and managing director Duncan Bennet.
  Bennet, who posted the observations in a video to customers, says open source will be important in the economic slow down.

• Unisys' Chris Hoff on virtualisation and cloud computing

  Chris Hoff, chief security architect for the systems and technology division at Unisys and an advisor on the Skybox Security customer advisory board, is one of the biggest critics of vation security out there. Not because it isn't important - but rather because it is vital and needs to mature rapidly.
  Here, Hoff explains how a lack of real understanding of virtualisation makes it very difficult to secure the technology.

• Red Hat promises open-source virtualisation technology

  By 2012, more than 90 percent of enterprises are expected to use open source technology in direct or embedded forms, according to research firm, Gartner.
  Contrary to some perceptions that open source businesses are unprofitable, Red Hat has achieved significant earnings in this area, according to Gery Messer, president of Red Hat Asia Pacific.

• Server withdrawal

  With the onward march of virtualisation into new sectors, server virtualisation remains top of IT managers’ agendas, with Gartner reporting such projects can reduce TCO costs by 25 per cent.
  These were considerations for CIOs Quinton Hall of Tourism Holdings Ltd (THL) and Aubrey Christmas of the Employers and Manufacturers Association (EMA) Northern.

• CA makes virtualisation push, stays above VMware vs. Microsoft fray

  CA, a vendor that made its name with tools for managing complex data centers long before virtualisation became a household word, will announce a group of products aimed squarely at the new-world data centre and its growing ranks of virtual machines. Can CA convince customers that it's a knowledgeable and steady kind of Switzerland for virtualisation tools, while VMware and Microsoft continue to throw marketplace slugs?
  Hewlett-Packard is taking a similar approach with success thus far. But it may not be easy.

• Has VMware lost its edge?

  It's always a sad day when the founders of a company leave. This sends quite a few mixed signals.

• Experts discuss intersection of cloud and virtualisation

  Do two technology trends, the rise of server virtualisation and the advance of cloud computing, go together like peanut-butter and jelly, or more like tuna fish and pistachio nuts?
  It depends on who you ask, but in general, virtualisation is seen as complementary to cloud computing but not a necessity.

• Take control

  To quote Joni Mitchell's lyrics to Big Yellow Taxi, sometimes you really don't know what you've got till it's gone. This sentiment could well apply to many organisations that followed the move to client-server architecture in the 1990s.
  Although client-server computing provided greater flexibility to end users, the terminal era that preceded it had one significant advantage - centralised control. By distributing computing resources out to the end user, IT managers also distributed their problems.

• Microsoft starts virtualisation hype blitz

  Microsoft is working hard to gin up some excitement about its "virtualisation launch" event on September. 8. Given that virtualisation has been out of the paddock for quite a while and that Microsoft's own hypervisor is actually out on the market, it's hard to figure why Microsoft should be re-launching virtualisation as a concept.

• Fiat alive & kicking thanks in part to tech policy

  An IBM survey has found that CEOs feel that their companies are slow in responding to organisational challenges, including new ways to take advantage of technology.
  So what are CEOs doing about it? According to CIO: "Sixty-nine percent say they are making extensive changes to their company's business models. Many of these changes will capitalise on virtual technologies and real-time feedback."

• Virtualisation vendor rhetoric gives clues for coming year

  In the old days-when people read news on paper, used phones they couldn't talk loudly on while sitting next to you on the train, and figured "virtualisation" probably meant to make something less real-late summer was known in the news business as "silly season".

• Budget blowback: Virtualisation isn't that easy

  There are a lot of things that are simple in principle that are a lot more complicated in reality. International relations. Poverty. Even virtualisation may be a topic where your ideas and everyone else's ideas of how to solve other people's problems may not mesh up.

• Virtualisation software will help optimise IT for business

  CIOs who have converted to virtualisation are keen to praise its cost benefits and preach the green benefits of its power savings, but for many the major benefits are yet to be realised. The virtualisation process provides massive opportunity to align IT with the business, and CIOs who are ahead of the virtualisation curve are taking that opportunity.
  Most CIOs who have gone down the virtualisation route are still in the process of virtualising their server farm. The early adopters are going beyond that, using the virtualised structure to be more responsive to the business. They are also the first who are considering how to manage being victims of their own success and how to continue to be responsive to the opportunities offered by virtualisation.