FRAMINGHAM, Mass—

“The SaaS model has become mainstream, and is quickly coming to dominate the planning – from R&D, to sales quotas, to partnering, channels and distribution — of all software and services vendors,” said Robert Mahowald, vice president, SaaS and Cloud Services research at IDC. “Enterprise IT plans are rapidly shifting to accommodate the growing choices for sourcing most or all IT software functions, from business applications to software development and testing, to service and desktop management, as SaaS services become available from established vendors and new models for accessing functionality in the cloud creates lower-cost options and more tailored models for consuming IT services.”

Additional key findings from IDC’s latest SaaS research include the following:

• By 2012, nearly 85% of net-new software firms coming to market will be built around SaaS service composition and delivery; by 2014, about 65% of new products from established ISVs will be delivered as SaaS services.
• SaaS-derived revenue will account for nearly 26% of net new growth in the software market in 2014.
• Traditional packaged software and perpetual license revenue are in decline and IDC predicts that a software industry shift toward subscription models will result in a nearly $7 billion decline in worldwide license revenue in 2010. As a result, a permanent change in software licensing regime will occur.
• SaaS segment mix will shift toward infrastructure and application development and deployment/PaaS, and away from U.S. dominance. IDC expects that by 2014, applications will account for just over half of market revenue. This shift will happen in part as a result of increasing IT cloud spending by enterprise IT groups and commercial cloud services providers (cloud SPs) relative to end-user spending.

This IDC study, Worldwide Software as a Service 2010–2014 Forecast: Software Will Never Be the Same (IDC #223628) presents IDC’s first look at worldwide SaaS software performance in 2009 and anticipated performance through 2014.

About IDC

IDC is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 100 countries. For more than 46 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world’s leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

Centralized Monitoring Solution Fills Gap Between the Major Players in Virtualization.

HOFFMAN ESTATES – Ill – July 26, 2010 – Vizioncore Inc., the market leader in virtualization data protection and management solutions, and a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest Software, Inc., today announced the release of Quest® Management Pack for VMware, the first free management pack on the market to extend Microsoft System Center Operations Manager to monitor VMware virtual infrastructure. The solution offers free community support with paid product support as an option.

By standardizing on Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, the end-to-end centralized monitoring framework for physical and virtual IT environments, organizations have been able to significantly reduce overall management costs. Quest Management Pack for VMware extends this centralized monitoring into VMware virtual infrastructures, offering the ability to detect, diagnose and resolve problems affecting the performance and availability of the IT infrastructure.

“Vizioncore is filling a very large gap between two major players in virtualization,” said Dick Csaplar, senior research analyst, virtualization and storage, Aberdeen Group. “Aberdeen research shows that most organizations with server virtualization have used VMware hypervisors running on Windows-based servers. With the Quest Management Pack for VMware, capturing and reporting VMware performance and availability information allows users of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager to get the entire picture of their virtualized environment.”

A process of low overhead collection has enabled the Quest Management Pack for VMware to ensure minimal contention between monitoring and critical workloads that run in the monitoring system, enabling Vizioncore to seamlessly extend support to VMware virtual infrastructures.

“For the thousands of organizations that utilize Microsoft System Center Operations Manager as their primary monitoring framework, extending support to VMware virtual infrastructures makes Quest Management pack for VMware a vital offering,” explained Steve Stover, senior director, product management, at Vizioncore. “We are able to offer for free what many vendors would be charging for, enabling administrators managing virtual infrastructures to simply download this management pack and immediately wrap value around it for the benefit of their organizations.”

Quest Management Pack for VMware is offered by Vizioncore as a freeware solution with optional paid support. Support pricing includes both 1-year and 3-year options, set at $99 USD/socket and $238 USD/socket, respectively.

To download Quest Management Pack for VMware, please go here http://portal.vizioncore.com/

About Vizioncore Inc.

Vizioncore Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: QSFT), a leading IT management vendor. Vizioncore is the market leader in virtualization management, enabling organizations to reduce complexity and improve operational efficiency by redefining how data management, monitoring and administration are performed in virtual environments. The combination of Vizioncore virtualization expertise and Quest Software leadership gives customers a single vendor for managing dynamic environments that combine physical and virtual resources, either on-premise or in the cloud. For more information, please visit http://www.vizioncore.com/ or http://www.quest.com/.

SHARE in Boston program to address key concerns of enterprise IT professionals.

CHICAGO, Jul 23, 2010 – Cost management and virtualization top the list of enterprise IT concerns, according to the SHARE survey that will be released at SHARE’s bi-annual conference, SHARE in Boston, August 1-5.

SHARE conducted the survey of more than 160 of IBM’s top customers to review the current state of enterprise IT in terms of where companies are putting the most resources and focus. Results of the study provide industry analysis to help SHARE better shape its programs and events for the greater member — and enterprise IT — community. The information also provides valuable insights to IBM and ISVs (independent software vendors) about issues that concern their customers the most. The survey was conducted during June and July 2010.

“Companies were asked to rank their top 5 concerns, and cost management, especially when it comes to cost reduction and avoidance, continues to be top of mind for these companies,” said Al Williams, the President of SHARE. “The survey reinforces why one of the themes for SHARE in Boston — IT and the Bottom Line — is so important. It’s not enough to just cut costs — the successful enterprise IT professional knows there is a need to demonstrate IT’s value and how it can provide a competitive advantage every day.”

Virtualization ranked as the second biggest concern, with server virtualization the primary focus, followed by storage virtualization and then network virtualization. Cloud computing, another theme for SHARE in Boston, ranked seventh, with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) identified as the most prominent focus in the cloud, followed by Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS).

Here are the top ten issues from the survey:

1. IT Cost Management
2. Virtualization
3. Improving IT’s value and deriving competitive advantage from IT
4. Enterprise security
5. The aging and demographics of current IT staffs
6. Business continuity planning
7. Cloud computing
8. Regulatory compliance
9. Reinvigorating/repurposing the mainframe
10. Data center energy management

More than 600 technical sessions at SHARE in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center, August 1-5, are focused on the 2010 conference themes — Enterprise Virtualization & Cloud Computing, and IT and the Your Bottom Line. SHARE conferences provide enterprise IT professionals with the latest information and newest innovations in the marketplace. SHARE in Boston attendees at the Hynes Convention Center will meet enterprise IT experts, learn about the latest developments and solutions in the industry, and build relationships with peers experiencing similar challenges.

About SHARE

SHARE is an independent, volunteer-run association providing IBM customers with user-focused education, professional networking and a forum to influence the information technology industry. Since 1955, SHARE has enabled IT professionals to achieve business results through a combination of credible, relevant programs and peer opportunities. SHARE currently counts more than 2,100 organizations among its active member ranks.

The majority of IT departments now use cloud-based applications, with users reporting better security and lower costs.

22 July 2010 – London: Mimecast®, a leading supplier of cloud-based email security, continuity, policy control and archiving, today announced the results of the second annual Mimecast Cloud Adoption Survey, an annual research report examining attitudes to cloud computing services amongst IT decision-makers in UK and US businesses. The survey, conducted by independent research firm, Loudhouse, reveals that a majority of organisations (51 percent) are now using some form of cloud computing service, and the levels of satisfaction amongst those companies is high across the board. Conversely, companies not yet using cloud services cite concerns around cost and security.

The survey shows that of those businesses using cloud services, 74 percent say that the cloud has alleviated internal resource pressures, and 72 percent report an improved end-user experience. 73 percent have managed to reduce their infrastructure costs, while 57 percent of say that the cloud has resulted in improved security. However, not everyone is convinced. 74 percent of IT departments still believe that there is always a trade-off between cost and IT security and 62 percent say that storing data on servers outside of the business is always a risk.

Highlights from the research:

Cloud services are now the norm:

• The majority of organisations now use cloud-based services. The report found 51 percent of organisations are now using at least one cloud-based application. Adoption rates amongst US businesses are slightly ahead of the UK with 56 percent of respondents using at least one cloud-based application, compared to 50 percent in the UK. This is a significant rise from the 2009 survey, when just 36 percent of US businesses were using cloud services.
• Two thirds of businesses are considering adopting cloud computing. Encouragingly for vendors, 66 percent are now considering adopting cloud-based applications in the future. Again, US businesses are ahead of the UK in their attitudes to the cloud with 70 percent considering cloud services, compared to 60 percent in the UK.
• Email, security and storage are the most popular cloud services. 62 percent of the organisations that use cloud computing are using a cloud-based email application. Security and storage are the next most popular, used by 52 percent and 50 percent of organisations with at least one cloud-based service respectively. Email services are most popular with mid-size businesses (250-1,000 employees) with 70 percent of these organisations using the cloud to support this function. Smaller businesses (under 250 employees) are most likely to use the cloud for security services, with larger enterprises (over 1,000 employees) most likely to make use of cloud storage services.

Cloud attitudes split between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’:

• Existing cloud users are satisfied. Security is not considered to be an issue by existing cloud users: 57 percent say that moving data to the cloud has resulted in better security, with 58 percent saying it has given them better control of their data. 73 percent of current cloud users say it has reduced the cost of their IT infrastructure and 74 percent say it has alleviated the internal resource pressures upon the department.
• Security fears are still a barrier. Three quarters (74 percent) of IT departments agreed with the statement ‘there is always a trade-off between cost and IT security’, suggesting that many organisations feel cloud solutions are less secure than the more expensive, on-premise alternatives, simply due to their lesser cost. 62 percent believe that storing data on servers outside of the business is a significant security risk.
• IT is concerned that adopting cloud will not initially result in cost savings. 58 percent of respondents thought that replacing legacy IT solutions will almost always cost more than the benefits of new IT.
• Cloud concerns stem from a lack of clarity. One reason for the negative perceptions of cloud services among non-users seems to be a lack of clear communication from the industry itself. 54 percent of respondents said the potential benefits of cloud delivery models are overstated by the IT industry.

Supporting quotes:
“It is great to see that cloud computing has now been embraced by the majority of organisations,” commented Peter Bauer, CEO and co-founder of Mimecast. “The fact that more than 50 percent of businesses are now using cloud-based applications – with two thirds currently considering adopting them – is hugely encouraging for the industry and a clear indication that IT is increasingly willing to innovate in order to get better value for money, increased reliability and greater control of their data.”

“The research shows that there is a clear divide within the IT industry on the issue of cloud computing,” commented Peter Bauer, CEO and co-founder of Mimecast. “While those organisations that have embraced cloud services are clearly reaping the rewards, there are still a number who are put off by the ‘cloud myths’ around data security and the cost of replacing legacy IT. It is now up to cloud vendors to educate businesses and end users to ensure that these concerns do not overshadow the huge potential cost, security and performance benefits that cloud computing can bring.”

About the research
The Mimecast Cloud Adoption Survey was carried out by Loudhouse Research on behalf of Mimecast in June 2010. The survey polled over 500 IT professionals from a range of businesses and organisations based in the UK and USA.

The full report can be downloaded here: http://www.mimecast.com/barometerresearch2010

About Mimecast
Mimecast (www.mimecast.com) delivers SaaS-based enterprise email management including archiving, discovery, continuity, security and policy. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud, Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing total end-to-end control of email. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2003, Mimecast serves approximately 3,000 customers worldwide and has offices in Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and the Channel Islands.

Cloud enablement leader, Parallels, today responded to the demands of small businesses by adding seven Cloud services to the Application Packaging Standard (APS) catalog.

Parallels estimates that the small business need for Cloud services will grow to nearly $19 billion by 2013 and service providers must develop a full service offering to meet this considerable opportunity and “Profit from the Cloud”. With the recent incorporation of licensing capabilities in the APS 1.2 specification, service providers can now quickly and easily license, manage and offer applications that small businesses need and demand.

The latest applications allow small businesses to access essential tools like video conferencing, VoIP, client management, project management, mobile Website configuration, Webmail and shopping cart.

“Parallels enables over 5,000 Service Providers to deliver cloud services to more than 10 million small businesses in 125 countries,” said Nick Lallas, Vice President of Cloud Services at Parallels. “We are committed to providing our Service Providers with the latest software-as-a-service solutions to help them differentiate their offerings, increase average revenue per user, and increase customer retention. We are extremely pleased these new solutions are available to our Partners to deliver a full range of profitable Cloud services.”

The complexity of IT can easily become an expensive and time-consuming distraction for small businesses. Acquiring applications and services through the Cloud removes both the significant initial expense of in-house IT operations, and simplifies decision-making as small businesses can get a range of services from a single provider they are already working with.

“Small businesses continue to change the way they procure and consume IT. In increasing numbers, they are buying their software as a service from the Cloud and moving away from traditional desktop software,” said Philbert Shih, Senior Analyst, Hosting at Tier1 Research, a division of The 451 Group. “This sea change is creating a huge opportunity for service providers. But going it alone is not an easy or viable pathway. Service providers need the help of a partner, platform and ecosystem to equip them with the tools to profit from the Cloud.”

Cloud Service Providers can get a first hand view of the newly packaged applications by registering for the Parallels Small Business Application Webinar Series, located at http://www.parallels.com/webcasts/, under the “Parallels SaaS” tab.

Key features of the APS packaged applications include:

Persony’s Web Conferencing 2.0 is a private-label Web and video conferencing service designed to be hosted by corporations or service providers using their own Web servers. It enables small businesses to share desktops, give a sales presentation, conduct a webinar, or provide online training.

4PSA’s VoiP Now is a software suite designed to simplify the deployment of Unified Communications services in the Cloud. The suite includes Professional, Automation and Core, three separate components that allow service providers to automate the delivery of a wide range of IP communication services that include hosted PBX, voice, video, presence, faxing, instant messaging and collaboration.

SugarCRM’s customer relationship management (CRM) software helps businesses of all sizes identify and increase sales leads, shorten and optimize sales cycles, and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty — all at an affordable price. SugarCRM’s software is simple to deploy and maintain, and the most user-friendly business software available today.

Wrike.com, the award-winning project management software, is changing the way millions of people collaborate via email and allows teams to get the convenience of real-time online collaboration in your email inbox. By combining the simplicity of email with revolutionary project productivity features and a fast, intuitive interface, Wrike doubles collaboration efficiency for thousands of teams worldwide.

Unity Mobile is the premier solution to mobilize small business, providing everything a small business needs to convert mobile opportunities to revenue. The solution features 3 easy steps to extend small businesses web presence into the mobile space and is backed by a comprehensive toolset to manage successful marketing and sales.

Atmail Webmail is a premium webmail offering with integrated calendar, contacts and more. Atmail provides service providers with a branded premium webmail offering, that has a fluid, intuitive interface and advanced functionally.

Pinnacle Cart is an easy-to-use, yet extremely powerful shopping cart and website builder application for small businesses focused on rapidly and cost effectively deploying, managing and growing a successful web-based business.

About Parallels

Parallels is a worldwide leader in virtualization and automation software that optimizes computing for consumers, businesses, and Cloud services providers across all major hardware, operating systems, and virtualization platforms. Founded in 1999, Parallels is a fast-growing company with more than 700 employees in North America, Europe, and Asia. For more information, please visit www.parallels.com.

About APS

The APS standard is a set of specifications that covers provisioning, management and integration of Cloud-based services and applications. APS covers the full service life cycle of applications and was designed from the ground up to address requirements of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Cloud computing paradigms, such as full automation and role-based access control. For more information, please visit www.APSstandard.org.

ROUND ROCK, Texas, July 20, 2010 – Today Dell KACE continues its commitment to systems management innovation by expanding the company’s portfolio of end-point security capabilities with Dell KACE Secure Browser. Immediately available at http://www.dell.com/freetools/, the Dell KACE Secure Browser uses application virtualization technology to provide an isolated instance of Firefox to secure what has become a common entry point for malware and viruses—Internet browsing.

While many endpoint security solutions focus on detection and clean up of security breaches, Dell KACE Secure Browser aims to proactively contain threats before they become a problem. The new technology provides users with a virtual instance of an Internet browser application. By running the browser in a virtual instance, the browser and any activity resulting from its use are separated from the endpoint keeping the actual computer and operating system free of changes that would normally occur. Fully contained from the operating system, any such changes made via browser activity are not only kept separated, but may also be quickly cleared with a single click. For even more security and control, optional white and black list entries may be used to limit what sites a user may visit and what applications the browser is permitted to launch.

“Internet browsing is one of the number one sources for malware,” said Rob Meinhardt, co-founder and president of Dell KACE. “With the Dell KACE Secure Browser, we stop malware at its source and trap it, and even provide granular control over browser activity.”

When used with the award-winning Dell KACE K1000 Management Appliance, Secure Browser can be centrally deployed and managed. Current status, insightful statistics and the ability to remotely reset any Secure Browser running throughout an organization are among the innovative management highlights and capabilities Dell KACE customers can expect.

To help provide the highest level of security possible for users, Dell KACE Secure Browser introduces:

• A simple installation package that includes the Firefox browser along with Adobe Reader and Flash plug-ins pre-installed;
• Easy website restriction policies allowing only specified sites to be accessed, and further, prevention of access to any chosen restricted sites; and,
• Full remote insight and control when used with the K1000 Management Appliance for advanced management capabilities, offering an innovative and revealing view into current browser activity as well as the ability to remotely reset or terminate a remote instance.

 “Even with our web filtering technology, we still regularly encounter situations where users are tricked into installing malicious software,” said Andrew Peercy, Administrator of IT Operations of BattleGround Academy, a K-12 school located in Franklin, Tennessee, “With the Dell KACE Secure Browser, we will be able to blacklist known sites and processes, but even if we miss something, the malicious installation can be quickly and easily cleaned from a system with the press of a button.”

To hear more about the new Dell KACE Secure Browser technology, join the Secure Browser webinar on Thursday July 29, 2010 at 1:00 PM ET. 

The Dell KACE family of systems management and deployment appliances fulfill the systems management needs of a mid-market IT organization, from initial computer deployment to ongoing management and retirement. Dell KACE products are available as both physical and virtual appliances, directly from Dell or through its partners.

About Dell
Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) creates, enhances and integrates technology and services customers count on to provide them reliable, long-term value. Dell provides system-management solutions for customers of all sizes and system complexity. The award-winning Dell KACE family of appliances delivers easy-to-use, comprehensive, and affordable systems management capabilities. For more information, visit http://www.dellkace.com/ or follow the conversation at http://twitter.com/DellKACE.

Virtual appliances of DB2 for Ubuntu users enable fast, easy deployment.

OSCON, Portland Oregon, July 20, 2010 – Canonical Ltd., the company behind Ubuntu, has launched a virtual appliance of IBM’s DB2 Express-C software running on the Ubuntu cloud computing platform in private and public cloud configurations. Canonical also announced that IBM has completed validation of the full version of DB2 software on Ubuntu 10.04 Long Term Support Server Edition.

This announcement is the latest in the growing ecosystem for Ubuntu 10.04, which launched in April with declarations of support from more than 80 organisations. Ubuntu is one of the most popular guest infrastructure layers on cloud services like Rackspace and Amazon EC2. Increasingly, it is also being deployed as the host cloud infrastructure layer (as Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud) by private organisations and ISPs. IBM DB2 Express-C software will be available however Ubuntu is deployed on a cloud.

“A virtual cloud appliance consisting of Ubuntu and DB2 Express-C will enable customers to quickly and easily set up DB2 in both public and private cloud situations,” said Neil Levine, VP of Commercial Services at Canonical. “The full commercial support of DB2 running on Ubuntu and physical servers is also attractive to customers as a protection to their investment.”

IBM DB2 Express-C is a no-charge community edition of DB2 software. It is ideal for small businesses and multi-branch companies, as well as developers and business partners who serve these clients. DB2 Express-C can be setup quickly, is easy-to-use, and includes self-managing capabilities. It also embodies all of the core features of more scalable DB2 editions, including pureXML technology for powering Web 2.0 and SOA-based solutions.

“Customers are quickly adopting DB2 software on Linux for both on-premise and cloud computing deployments,” said Robert S. Sutor, Vice President, Open Source and Linux, IBM Software Group. “The combination of Ubuntu and DB2 provides users with a highly integrated and tested virtual cloud appliance.”

About Canonical
Canonical provides engineering, online and professional services to Ubuntu partners and customers worldwide. As the company behind the Ubuntu project, Canonical is committed to the production and support of Ubuntu – an ever-popular and fast-growing open-source operating system. It aims to ensure that Ubuntu is available to every organisation and individual on servers, desktops, laptops and netbooks.

Canonical partners with computer hardware manufacturers to certify Ubuntu, provides migration, deployment, support and training services to businesses, and offers online services direct to end users. Canonical also builds and maintains collaborative, open-source development tools to ensure that organisations and individuals can participate fully in innovations within the open-source community. For more information, please visit www.canonical.com.

Paper Highlights Results of Lab Testing Showing Host and Guest Performance Boost from Defragmentation.

Gaithersburg, MD July 21, 2010 – Raxco Software, the leader in disk defragmentation software, today announced a new white paper that highlights how organizations can maximize VMware® ESX performance through defragmentation of guest systems. The paper details the results of testing performed to determine if there is any measurable server virtualization performance benefit to be derived from defragmenting virtual servers. The testing, conducted on a VMware ESX cluster, indicated that file defragmentation and free space consolidation of Windows Server® guests has a positive effect on the performance of both the Windows® guest and the ESX host.

Some of the key points from the paper include:

• File defragmentation and free space consolidation combine to significantly reduce the total number of IOs that need to traverse the ESX virtual storage stack
• File defragmentation and free space consolidation dramatically reduce disk latency, the time it takes an IO to complete
• File defragmentation and free space consolidation of Windows guests in a VMware environment reduce the total overhead on the hypervisor
• Free space consolidation improves write throughput for the Windows guests
• File defragmentation and free space consolidation improve productivity

“Organizations engaging in virtualization projects need to ensure that performance of their host and guest environments is maximized to the fullest extent,” said Bernd Harzog, virtualization performance and capacity management analyst at The Virtualization Practice. “This paper identifies file defragmentation and free space consolidation as high impact areas for performance improvement and highlights the significant benefits that can be realized by addressing these two components of virtualization environments.”

“For years, Microsoft and independent industry groups have recognized the importance of disk defragmentation and free space consolidation in improving and maintaining high-level performance on physical servers and workstations,” said Erwin Solis, product manager at Raxco Software. “As the industry flocks to virtualization environments, it is critical for businesses to achieve top performance in these environments to ensure they reap all the benefits, and this paper demonstrates how defragmentation and free space consolidation result in considerable benefits in the virtualization arena as well.”

The white paper can be downloaded at: http://www.perfectdisk.com/user_data/white_papers/vmware_multi_test.pdf .

About Raxco Software:
Raxco Software has been the industry leader in helping large enterprises, small businesses, and consumers with their computer performance and resource management needs for over 30 years. Its PerfectDisk is certified by Microsoft® for Windows 7, Vista, Windows Server® 2008 and Hyper-V. PerfectDisk products have a long history of winning the industry’s highest awards, including a perfect 5-star review from CNET Download, winner of the Windows IT Pro Readers’ Choice Awards for Defragmentation Utility and Storage Management Tools, Redmond Magazine’s Best of the Best Award, and PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice Award, among others. Raxco’s PerfectSpeed is the industry’s first all-in-one automated PC performance suite for Windows®. Raxco also produces optimization software for HP’s OpenVMS operating system. Raxco Software can be found on the Web at www.perfectdisk.com.

ISE Storage Hosts 350 Percent More Desktops Than Competition; Emprise 9000, ISE Manager and ISE Analyzer Expand Data Center Flexibility.

EDEN PRAIRIE, MN–July 20, 2010 - Xiotech Corporation, the leader in Intelligent Application Storage, today announced a set of new products that take the power of the company’s Intelligent Storage Element (ISE™) storage systems and tailor it for the internal enterprise service provider. The solution set includes the Emprise™ 9000 storage system, built on ISE technology, as well as ISE Manager software and ISE Analyzer software. Together, these solutions optimize performance-starved applications like VDI and offer service-level functionality, from service assurance to chargeback, across a fully shared data center infrastructure.

Many specialized applications today have their own dedicated storage infrastructures to reduce conflict, increase reliability and provide clear, line-of-sight management. This separation results in higher costs, lower efficiency and increased management complexity. Xiotech’s ISE-based approach drastically changes the planning, deployment and management equation, including:

• Scale-out storage — Emprise 9000 storage and controllers can be added anywhere, whether in a rack or distributed across campus. This enables cost-effective, linear scaling from two to 12 controllers and up to 1.8 PB with the reliability and performance that are the hallmarks of ISE-based storage.
• Service-level management – ISE Manager and ISE Analyzer provide the ability to forecast, provision, manage and measure all aspects of storage performance and utilization across any number of ISE units. ISE Manager enables users to deploy and provision storage as part of an internal storage cloud instead of individual devices, while ISE Analyzer reports, analyzes, streamlines and predicts storage performance and capacity.
• Application-centric storage control — Emprise 9000 offers flexible control, delivering powerful, controller-based access or direct ISE management access via the CorteX API.

“These new announcements from Xiotech extend the applicability of its underlying ISE architecture as well as improve overall storage management for users,” said Mark Peters, senior analyst at the Enterprise Strategy Group. “Making the advantages of ISE available in this way is perfect for extending Xiotech’s Intelligent Application Storage approach to support the demands of internal enterprise service providers, especially for applications — such as VDI — where consistent performance and top-notch reliability are crucial.”

VDI Unleashed
The extension of virtualization from servers to desktops holds great promise for IT businesses, yet storage costs are holding back broader adoption due largely to existing performance and reliability inefficiencies. The unique characteristics of ISE-based storage — augmented by the flexibility and granular visibility delivered in the products announced today — make ISE the ideal platform for VDI. Predictable, linear scalability of performance and capacity, 100x reliability with a five-year, zero-touch warranty and the industry’s broadest integration with major virtualization solutions from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix drive tremendous performance and efficiency. Xiotech’s own lab tests and a published report from the Enterprise Strategy Group underscore the gains in comparison to HP LeftHand, including:

• 200 percent increase in storage utilization
• 350 percent more VDI users supported
• 31 percent fewer watts consumed
• 37 percent fewer drives used

Xiotech is seeing similar gains in customer deployments. “VDI is a critical application platform for Campbell Union High School District, and it delivers significant benefits to our community, particularly as we drive new modes of education services,” said Charles Kanavel, director of Technology at Campbell Union High School District. “Since we deployed, we’ve cut our desktop and server refresh expenses significantly, which saves precious educational dollars in this tough budgetary climate. Our partnership with Xiotech has played a big role in that virtualization journey, as their ISE-based storage solutions are unmatched in their ability to cost effectively power our applications.”

“Xiotech continues to advance our ISE-based storage solutions, making them accessible to a broader range of customers and partners,” said Alan Atkinson, president and CEO at Xiotech. “With today’s announcement, we’ve unlocked even greater value from our ISE technology, especially for VDI. Applications simply run better on ISE because of its industry-best balance of performance, capacity, reliability and cost.”

The Next Step in ISE Evolution and Storage Migration
With the introduction of Emprise 9000, ISE Manager and ISE Analyzer, Xiotech has delivered more components and value within its Intelligent Application Storage architecture and provided for greater ease of migration from legacy storage concepts.

The Emprise 9000 is Xiotech’s next-generation, scale-out storage controller, delivering to IT a unifying data center platform that offers the highest levels of advanced functionality, deployment/management flexibility and investment protection along with scale-out flexibility up to 12 controllers and 1.8 PB. Representing an entirely new control architecture, Emprise 9000 offers the ability to:

• Control the Future — Unlike traditional arrays, Emprise 9000 allows advanced applications like VDI direct, high-performance control of ISE storage resources — and development of additional applications and automated controls through CorteX. It also allows customers to leverage the functionality they have come to expect in traditional storage array control — snapshots, thin provisioning, replication, cloning, etc. – to keep current applications running optimally.
• Protect the Past — Because it is an ISE-based platform, Emprise 9000 can be dropped into an environment with no changes required. Because it can manage and control all ISE within the platform as well as integrate third-party storage, it can optimize data across service-oriented storage tiers and enable seamless, heterogeneous migration when the time is right. Adding further value, Emprise 9000 offers two DataPacs within each ISE that can be mixed and matched.

ISE Manager, the next generation of Xiotech ICON Manager, provides a powerful yet simple management interface for simple, user-friendly storage and server administration that yields efficiencies and cost savings. ISE Manager enables complete storage management in a single internal storage cloud and greatly simplifies provisioning and capacity deployment. Whereas traditional storage provisioning requires a dozen or more steps across the storage system, the server and the virtual or physical machine, ISE Manager allows you to create new volumes with a simple three-click process via Virtual View and extensive support for third-party hypervisors.

Deployed as an appliance, ISE Analyzer provides an intuitive, graphical, browser-based resource manager for analyzing, streamlining and predicting storage capacity. With real-time, granular ISE telemetry data from ISE Manager, ISE Analyzer:

• Identifies usage patterns for more efficient storage allocation, leading to greater storage infrastructure yields and efficiencies.
• Maps performance to applications, allowing chargeback capabilities and better insight.
• Triggers informational alerts when intended changes are predicted to have adverse effects, ensuring stronger and more consistent storage performance.
• Tracks historical data, enabling better storage usage analysis and budget forecasts.
• Reclaims storage orphaned by dormant virtual machines, saving users more money.

About Xiotech
Xiotech Corporation is one of the world’s largest privately held data storage companies and the leader in Intelligent Application Storage. Xiotech’s patented Intelligent Storage Element (ISE™) technology has rebooted storage fundamentals to better align with evolving application demands, including linearly scalable performance and capacity, industry-leading energy savings and zero-touch reliability. ISE storage blades enable organizations to build systems of interoperable, best-of-breed solutions and overcome the bottlenecks caused by current-generation storage infrastructure in the face of explosive data growth, increasing levels of virtualization and ever-increasing application intelligence. With a widely acclaimed service and support team and more than 240 foundational storage patents held across a team of storage industry veterans from EMC, Seagate, IBM, Compaq and DEC, Xiotech is setting a new standard in storage. Follow Xiotech at www.twitter.com/xiotech.

More Than 25 Companies, Including Citrix and Dell, Support Open Source Cloud Platform to Accelerate Industry Standards.

SAN ANTONIO, July 2010 – Rackspace Hosting  today announced the launch of OpenStack(TM), an open-source cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology standards and cloud interoperability. Rackspace, the leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project. The project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. Rackspace and NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide.

“Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand,” said Chris C. Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT. “To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source.”

OpenStack will feature several cloud infrastructure components including a fully distributed object store based on Rackspace Cloud Files, available today at OpenStack.org. The next component planned for release is a scalable compute-provisioning engine based on the NASA Nebula cloud technology and Rackspace Cloud Servers technology. It is expected to be available later this year. Using these components, organizations would be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code currently in production serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

“We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies,” said Lew Moorman, President, Cloud and CSO at Rackspace. “We are proud to have NASA’s support in this effort. Its Nebula Cloud Platform is a tremendous boost to the OpenStack community. We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres.”

Rackspace and NASA have committed to use OpenStack to power their cloud platforms, and Rackspace will dedicate open-source developers and resources to support adoption of OpenStack among enterprises and service providers. An OpenStack Design Summit hosted by Rackspace was held July 13-16 in Austin, where more than 100 technical advisors, developers and founding members joined to validate the code and ratify the project roadmap. More than 25 companies were represented at the Design Summit including AMD, Autonomic Resources, Citrix, Cloud.com, Cloudkick, Cloudscaling, CloudSwitch, Dell, enStratus, FathomDB, Intel, iomart Group, Limelight, Nicira, NTT DATA, Opscode, PEER 1, Puppet Labs, RightScale, Riptano, Scalr, SoftLayer, Sonian, Spiceworks, Zenoss and Zuora.

“OpenStack provides a solid foundation for promoting the emergence of cloud standards and interoperability,” said Peter Levine, SVP and GM, Datacenter and Cloud Division, Citrix Systems. “As a longtime technology partner with Rackspace, Citrix will collaborate closely with the community to provide full support for the XenServer platform and our other cloud-enabling products.”

“We believe in offering customers choice in cloud computing that helps them improve efficiency,” says Forrest Norrod, Vice President and General Manager of Server Platforms, Dell. “OpenStack on Dell is a great option to create open source enterprise cloud solutions.”

To download or contribute code and get involved, visit OpenStack.org. Follow OpenStack on Twitter @OpenStack.

About Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support(R) to its customers, across a portfolio of IT services, including Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. For more information, visit http://www.rackspace.com/.

About the NASA Nebula Cloud Program

NASA Nebula is a Cloud Computing service based at NASA Ames Research Center that provides high performance compute, network, and data storage services to NASA scientists and researchers. Nebula allows NASA to share and process large scientific data sets and was one of three flagship projects highlighted in NASA’s Open Government Plan. For more information, visit http://nebula.nasa.gov/.