Category: News

Ubuntu 15.10 will be available for download from Canonical on 22nd October 2015. The new update brings a host of incremental improvements and benefits for business users and Ubuntu developers-alike.

New in 15.10 (Wily Werewolf)

Canonical’s OpenStack Autopilot now GA

• Full high availability of all cloud controller services, deployed using best practice architecture based on available hardware resources
• Smart automated scale out that re-architects cloud controller services as hardware resources are added
• Full integration of Open Daylight SDN controller
• Choice of Swift or Ceph for object storage

New with 15.10, Canonical is debuting its newly launched Ubuntu OpenStack cloud deployer and management tool – OpenStack Autopilot – the most powerful and easiest way to deploy scale and manage Ubuntu OpenStack clouds without the complexity and costs associated with major cloud projects.

EMC Corporation and VMware announced plans to form the Federation’s new cloud services business by combining their respective cloud capabilities, along with existing Virtustream cloud offerings, under the Virtustream brand. Virtustream will be jointly owned by VMware and EMC and led by Rodney Rogers, CEO of Virtustream. The parties are finalizing a definitive agreement for the transaction. Virtustream’s financial results will be consolidated into VMware’s financial statements beginning in Q1 2016.

Virtustream is expected to generate multiple hundreds of millions of dollars in recurring revenue in 2016, focused on enterprise-centric cloud services, with an outlook to grow to a multi-billion business over the next several years. Virtustream will be a leader in hybrid cloud, one of the largest markets for IT infrastructure spending. The company will provide a complete spectrum of managed services for on-premises infrastructure and its enterprise-class Infrastructure-as-a-Service platform, enabling customers to move all their applications, including mission-critical applications, to cloud-based IT environments. Virtustream will offer a compatible public cloud experience for customers who deploy the Federation Enterprise Hybrid Cloud solution within their business.

SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable hybrid IT infrastructure management software, today launched SolarWinds Server Health Monitor free tool, the latest to join more than 30 free tools from SolarWinds’ comprehensive IT management product family. SolarWinds Server Health Monitor provides IT professionals with detailed visibility into multi-vendor server infrastructure.

"Monitoring the underlying IT infrastructure that supports the health and performance of business critical applications is a necessity for IT pros to ensure business continuity," said Nikki Jennings, group vice president, product strategy, SolarWinds. "Understanding the performance of server infrastructure is a big part of the performance of the entire IT infrastructure, and is a key metric that all IT pros should have clear visibility into. SolarWinds now provides IT pros with a free tool that offers insight into health status and availability of multi-vendor server hardware to pinpoint the cause of performance issues faster."

Citrix today announced that Robert Calderoni, Citrix’s Executive Chairman, has been unanimously appointed interim president and CEO, effective immediately. Mr. Calderoni will continue serving as Executive Chairman on the Citrix Board of Directors. Mark Templeton, current president and CEO, will serve in an advisory role through the end of the year.

The Board’s previously announced CEO search process remains underway, led by a search committee consisting of Mr. Calderoni (committee chair), Godfrey R. Sullivan and Jesse A. Cohn, with the assistance of executive search firm, Heidrick & Struggles.

“On behalf of the Board, I would like to thank Mark for his vision, talent and leadership over the last two decades,” said Thomas Bogan, lead independent director for Citrix. “Mark’s contributions in transforming our company into a $3 billion global technology leader, to our customers, and to our industry have been remarkable, and the entire Citrix team wishes him the very best.”

Time Warner Cable Business Class (TWCBC) is making it even easier for customers seeking a unified approach to their business communications and IT solutions.

By partnering with one provider – TWCBC – customers can simplify operations by utilizing the company’s secure, reliable communications and data network to connect to NaviSite’s managed cloud services. NaviSite, a TWCBC company, offers customized solutions including Application Services, Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Hosting Services.

SevOne, the leading global provider of digital infrastructure management solutions, today announced new advancements to the patented SevOne Performance Monitoring Cluster, a comprehensive suite of solutions that enables today’s largest data center and network operators to harness the power of their digital infrastructure. The release of the 5.5 versions of the SevOne Performance Appliance Solution (PAS) and the SevOne Dedicated NetFlow Collector (DNC), along with the SevOne xStats Adapter for use with OpenStack extends SevOne’s vision to achieve real-time operational insight in software-defined infrastructures to driver smarter business decisions. These releases also feature monitoring infrastructure integrity with automated context; analyzing resource consumption and assuring service availability in OpenStack-enabled environments; and extracting SevOne collected metrics and exporting them to third-party business intelligence tools.

Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and its counterpart, Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), have ushered in a new way of thinking about application and service delivery in today’s mobile economy. The agility provided by SDN and NFV allows digital infrastructures to spin up additional resources on demand, as required by applications. The constraints of the past have been largely eliminated, paving the way for a shift to a software-defined infrastructure to meet more demanding time-to-market pressures.

"Persistent data management was the key feature that we needed to build a leading edge Platform-as-a-Service with Cloud Foundry on top. With Flocker, we found a way to effectively manage and migrate Docker containers and their associated data between servers as real-world operations demand," said Marco Hochstrasser, Head of Swisscom Application Cloud. "Thanks to Flocker, Swisscom has successfully implemented container-based services to achieve new growth opportunities. The integration of Flocker into our new Cloud Foundry PaaS offering has finally made persistent and containerized services on a production level achievable."

A corporate virtual environment usually consists of a dedicated virtual machine protected by a security solution and a network of virtual workstations with so-called agents. A network connection is installed between the dedicated virtual machine and the agents, to allow data exchange during on-demand scanning of files (ODS) or on-access scanning of user applications (OAS). 

MetTel, a leading communications solutions provider for enterprises, and VeloCloud Networks, the Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN company, today announced a strategic partnership that adds VeloCloud SD-WAN capabilities to MetTel’s managed communications offerings. VeloCloud enables assured enterprise-grade performance, security and reliability as part of the MetTel managed SD-WAN and bonded Internet solution.

VeloCloud’s Cloud-Delivered SD-WAN assures enterprise and cloud application performance over the Internet and Hybrid WAN while simplifying deployments and reducing costs.

The joint cloud offering is unique within the SD-WAN market, thanks in part to MetTel’s supplementary security features. By integrating VeloCloud gateways seamlessly with the communications company’s private MPLS network, the enhanced Hybrid WAN solution is made particularly competitive for MetTel customers.

Pluribus Networks, the company that brings the power of virtualization to the network, announced today that it will be demonstrating direct support for Nutanix at this week’s Dell World 2015 conference in Austin, Texas. The demonstration will consist of Nutanix turnkey hyperconverged appliances connected via Dell’s latest generation of 10G/40G Open Network (ON) switches, with each switch running Pluribus’ Open Netvisor Linux (ONVL) to form a complete hyperconverged infrastructure. The demonstration will highlight the deep level of visibility possible with Pluribus Netvisor at the flow level specific to Nutanix, along with fabric automation.

As part of a growing ecosystem of partnerships, Pluribus recently joined the Nutanix Elevate Technology Alliance Program to enable the rapid delivery of cost-effective hyperconverged infrastructures for end-users faced with dynamic business challenges.

“Since Nutanix’s inception, we have provided hyperconverged solutions that make infrastructure invisible so forward-looking organizations can focus on the applications and services that power their business,” said Venugopal Pai, Vice President of Strategic Alliances and Business Development at Nutanix. “Pluribus is demonstrating its understanding of what it takes to fully unlock the power of Nutanix Acropolis, with advanced networking fabric that delivers simplicity and resiliency.”