vmware

What happened to embedded hypervisors?

Here's the basic question: where does the hypervisor--the software layer that underpins server virtualization--live and who owns it? Is it just part of the server or is it just part of the operating system?

For now, to be sure, it's often something that IT shops purchase from a third-party--we're mostly talking from VMware here. However, pretty much everyone expects that over time this foundational component will be increasingly built-in--even if the higher-level value-add management and virtualization services that make use of it are explicitly purchased from a variety of sources.

Virtualization vendors have often considered this an … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 903: Moons over my HAM radio

While we inadvertently promote a chain restaurant's free luncheon, we also talk a lot about space. Which annoys Brian Cooley to no end. We talk about Google Mars, and contacting the ISS and the NASA-sponsored Singularity university. But he gets his revenge when he announces the retirement of the inventor of the BMW-butt.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 903

Google Earth adds Mars roving http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10154741-52.html

Google privacy counsel facing criminal charges http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09%2F02%2F02%2F2337207 https://www.privacyassociation.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1745&Itemid=228… Read more

VMware delivers personalized desktops on wheels

Have desktop, will travel.

VMware unveiled Tuesday its open source virtual desktop client VMware View Open Client, designed to provide users with constant access to their personal desktop on almost any device.

VMware View Open Client aims to provide organizations with the ability to host user desktops within their respective datacenters and allow their users to access their personal desktops from a variety of devices at any given time.

Jocelyn Goldfein, general manager of VMware's Desktop business unit, said in a statement:

Now we are sharing our source code in VMware view Open Client so vendors can easily optimize … Read more

Virtual Windows 7 not the same thing

Emboldened by my success in getting Windows 7 to run on a Mac Mini using Boot Camp, I decided to press my luck. So Wednesday night, I took my Windows 7 beta disk home and set out to load it onto a virtual machine on my iMac.

Having used Parallels successfully in the past to run Vista, I decided to give VMware's Fusion a try--my first experience with the product. Getting up and running was relatively straightforward, a process aided by the fact that VMware lets you enter information such as your password and product key at the outset--handling … Read more

VMware quarterly earnings jump, beats estimates

VMware reported Monday a 25 percent jump in fourth-quarter revenues and an increase in its quarterly net profit, despite recessionary times gripping the economy.

The virtualization software maker generated fourth-quarter revenues of $515 million, up by double digits over the same time a year ago. That performance beat analysts expectations of $512.3 million, according to Thomson Reuters.

VMware posted fourth-quarter net profits of $111 million, or 29 cents a share, compared with profits of $78 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 26 cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters.

"… Read more

Desktop virtualization picks up the pace

Analyst Brian Madden identifies desktop virtualization as a major 2008 virtualization theme:

If you could sum up the year with a single theme, that theme would be "desktop virtualization is here to stay." I don't want to go so far as to say that desktop virtualization is mainstream, but 2008 saw Microsoft, VMware, and Symantec getting serious about it, and Citrix fighting to keep the lead (it'd) established via XenApp over the past decade.

I concur.

"Desktop virtualization" isn't a single thing; it's really a shorthand for a variety of approaches, the … Read more

VMware hires away Borland CEO

Tod Nielsen just can't hold a job.

Actually, peripatetic is the better description. VMware on Tuesday named Nielsen to be its chief operating officer, his sixth different company since the millennium.

Nielsen had been Borland's chief executive since November 2005. Before that, the garrulous 43-year-old held executive roles at Oracle, BEA Systems, and Microsoft. He also served a stint as CEO of Crossgain, before a noncompete snit with Microsoft forced him to step aside. BEA later acquired Crossgain.

In the role of VMware's COO, a newly created job, Nielsen will be reporting to CEO Paul Maritz, his … Read more

VMWare VI4 renamed to vSphere

For those interested in where VMWare's Virtual Infrastructure is heading, there was interesting news out of a Minneapolis VMWare User Group (VMUG) meeting yesterday: apparently VMWare is making it official that VI4 is now vSphere.

From Jason Boche's blog:

Today at the Minneapolis VMware User Group (VMUG) meeting, VMware employees disclosed to a group of 150+ attendees the new name for the next generation of Virtual Infrastructure many have been referring to as VI4 or VI.next. The new name is VMware vSphere. I value and respect the various relationships I have with VMware and thus before posting … Read more

VMware does the desktop

When I put together an overview of VMware's virtualization portfolio in May of this year, my focus--like the company's--was on their products that establish a virtualized infrastructure, and then manage and automate virtual-machine life cycles on top of that infrastructure.

It's not that VMware didn't have desktop products. In fact, its first product, still popular among developers, was VMware Workstation. And in practice, it has the default back-end server virtualization used for virtual desktop infrastructure installations. I went on to write that:

For many companies, this desktop portfolio would be an enviable product lineup in its … Read more