Server virtualization

Microsoft highlights partners in green IT initiatives

Microsoft partners will play a big part in the company’s green IT initiatives, the company said this morning.

Microsoft held a webcast this morning to talk about its environmental sustainability plans, specifically around green IT and virtualization in Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. The company’s plans are two-fold: to reduce the 2% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions that come from software-driven devices, and to use software to cut the other 98%, said Francois Ajenstat, director of environmental sustainability.

“We see a role where software can help us reduce our dependency on energy,” Ajenstat said.

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Virtualization predictions for 2009

With the end of the year approaching, virtualization pundits are coming out with their predictions for 2009. I won’t be coming out with any of my own — I had to sell my crystal ball to buy a few last-minute Christmas gifts — but here’s a roundup of what the experts say to expect in the next 12 months: Continued »

Encouraging news in tough times

I get emails all day long from suppliers and every so often one of them contains something interesting. Last Friday, I received an email from Sepaton, a supplier of enterprise VTL solutions. While Sepaton has an excellent channel program, what interested me — and should interest you — about the email is that it contained results of a survey Sepaton conducted, with these key findings:

Despite the economy, nearly 75% of enterprise respondents expected their data protection budget to stay the same or increase in 2009. There are a couple of reasons for this, in my opinion. Continued »

Half-baked virtualization and you

I spoke on the subject of virtualization rollout strategies in a session at Data Center Decisions in Chicago last week. I started the session with an informal two-question survey of about 80 or so end users in the room. The results from those two questions speak volumes about the ongoing opportunity for resellers.

My first question was: “How many of you have started to roll virtualization out beyond just testing and evaluation?” Continued »

Bad economy good for VMware? And Microsoft?

VMware posted strong financial results yesterday, despite the weak economy and increased competition from Microsoft.

The virtualization market leader took in $472 million in its third quarter — a 32% increase over last year and more than Wall Street expected. Ashlee Vance of The New York Times says VMware has a leg up when the economy is down, because virtualization helps customers cut their hardware and energy costs. But could that also be good news for Microsoft and its competing hypervisor, Hyper-V?

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Cisco to Wall Street: ‘We feel your pain’

Cisco CEO John Chambers kicked off his keynote address at the company’s Financial Analyst Conference with an unusual message: “Ask not what Wall Street can do for Cisco, but what Cisco can do for Wall Street.”

Chambers offered condolence to financial analysts reeling from plunging markets and failing banks.

“We went through a life threatening experience in 2001,” Chambers said, not referring to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center but the ravaging of the tech markets. “We truly understand what you and you’re colleagues are going through.”

Then he flipped the script on analysts.

“If there is anything we can do, we will be there for you.”

With that out of the way, Chambers assured analysts that Cisco’s long-term growth prediction of 12 to 17% is on track despite the economic downturn. Continued »

With EDS in the family, HP slashes jobs; looks to large enterprise domination

Hewlett-Packard (HP) said Monday that it will reduce its workforce by 7.5 — or nearly 25,000 jobs — as it restructures to work Electronic Data Systems (EDS) into the fold. The $13.9 billion acquisition of EDS closed in August.

HP CEO Mark Hurd said the job reductions are one part of an overall plan that will include other changes in the company, including consolidation of IT, procurement services and real estate. The restructuring will take place over the next three years.

“You can’t scale and grow properly if you don’t have an appropriate cost structure,” Hurd said Monday during an HP financial analyst meeting. Continued »

Microsoft, Citrix rumors: Here we go again

 VMworld 2008 kicks off Monday and all through the blogs,  lots of creatures are stirring with tales of a soon-to-be-announced Microsoft buyout of Citrix.
 this little gem earlier. That blog, in turn, links to this John Dvorak podcast which also touches on the subject.

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Microsoft’s virtualization party

Microsoft wants customers and partners to know that it’s really, really REALLY ready to virtualize. So it’s hosting its “Get Virtual Now” event Monday.

It’s invited a few dozen of its best-friend vendors (if that’s not an oxymoron) to Bellevue for its big day.  Among the Platinum sponsors the usual suspects are well represented. Intel? Check. Dell? Hewlett-Packard? IBM? Hitachi Data Systems. Check, check, check and check. That makes sense. The server guys will claim their boxes are Hyper-V ready or Hyper-V capable or Hyper-V elite. Whatever the label is, it means little except in marketing terms.  (”Hey HP, what’s technologically different between this server today and your server last week? Nothing?” And so it goes.)

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Surprise, surprise: Dell ignores partners yet again

It’s official: Dell’s practice of ignoring channel partners in its news announcements is a trend.

For the third time since May, Dell made no mention of its resellers during a major* news announcement. And as any journalist will tell you, if something happens three times, that’s a trend.

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