VXL launches new thin client virtualization solutions for Citrix and VMware environments

Worldwide thin client and cloud connection device manufacturer, VXL, unveils a new range of desktop devices for North America and Western Europe including two System-on-Chip (SoC) models, the Citrix ready, Xtona J12-z zero client & Gio-Linux J54 desktop together with VMware ready, Vtona V200, PCoIP zero client with dual DVI.
Xtona J12-z, SoC, Citrix Ready Zero Client Designed for the Citrix environment, the System-on-Chip J12-z incorporates the latest HDX Hardware Acceleration, a TI ARM 1.0GHz processor and an ultra-slim, compact desktop footprint. An environmentally friendly device, with a low power consumption of only 8.7 watts, the J12-z incorporates 4GB Flash / 1GB RAM onboard and a comprehensive feature set including four USBs, DVI-I / DV-D ports and Gigabit networking.
J54 Gio Linux, SoC, Desktop
The J54 System-on-Chip desktop also incorporates the latest TI ARM 1.0GHz processor and utilises VXL's Gio Linux operating system making it suitable for either VMware or Citrix user environments. Sharing the same ultra-slim design and low power consumption as the J12-z, the J54 also boasts the same impressive feature list including 4GB Flash / 1GB RAM onboard, four USBs, DVI-I / DV-D ports and Gigabit networking.
Vtona V200 VMware PCoIP Zero Client
The perfect solution for VMware Horizon View users, the Vtona V200 Zero Client incorporates the Teradici 2321 PCoIP processor for a superior performance for all Cloud, Virtualisation and Remote Desktop environments. Ensuring a rich multi-media performance including 3D graphics, CAD / CAM, video and more, the latest V200 also supports up to two displays with up to 2560 x 1600 resolution.
Classified as a ‘true' zero client, the Vtona V200 has no operating system, no device drivers, no fan, no noise and comes complete with class-leading specification including 512MB memory, four USBs and a three year warranty as standard.
Frank Noon, VXL's VP Worldwide Sales commented "Our leadership position in the thin and cloud connection space reflects our ongoing strategy of developing innovative product solutions that meet our customer needs. These competitively priced models stay true to that concept, providing VMware or Citrix users with high performance, low power devices with excellent green credentials" he added.

Coriant Accelerates On-Demand Service Enablement and Simplifies Network Operations with Dynamic Optical Cloud

Coriant today announced the Coriant Dynamic Optical Cloud, an end-to-end and highly programmable infrastructure solution that enables service providers to cost-effectively address a rapidly changing world of dynamic, virtualized, high-bandwidth applications and services. The Coriant Dynamic Optical Cloud solution is powered by proven metro-to-core packet optical networking capabilities and industry-leading software-defined networking (SDN) intelligence for a new level of programmability, automation and control of multilayer, multi-vendor transport networks.
As business and consumer demand for cloud-based connectivity increases and traffic loads in wide area networks become more and more unpredictable, service providers require an elastic end-to-end infrastructure that mirrors the flexibility, scalability and programmability of compute and storage resources in the data center - for all services. To unleash this capability, Coriant is introducing Dynamic Optical Cloud, an innovative solution and open framework that helps service providers reduce OPEX and CAPEX, while creating new revenue opportunities as well.
Coriant has worked with several Tier 1 operators around the world to define the SDN use cases and implementations for the Dynamic Optical Cloud's software-defined multilayer programmability. This includes such functionality as the following: 

• Application-driven TaaS/bandwidth on demand
• Multilayer defragmentation
• Network analytics and workflow management
• Dynamic mobile backhaul resiliency
• Cloud-bursting

This solution is comprised of the 7100 and hiT 7300 packet optical networking platforms, the 8600 mobile edge router, and a suite of applications, open orchestration and controllers - all of which are available to customers today. Furthermore, Coriant has integrated third party routers into these use cases as an initial step toward multivendor implementation. Coriant is currently engaged in multiple customer trials and will be trialing the commercial offering in the third quarter of 2014.
"Coriant‘s Dynamic Optical Cloud solution reinforces our market leadership in end-to-end packet optical networking following the merger of Tellabs and Coriant," said Pat DiPietro, Chief Executive Officer, Coriant. "With greater scale, deeper R&D resources and technology expertise, and an expanded portfolio of SDN-enabled products and capabilities, we are well positioned to be the preferred supplier to our customers as their network and service requirements evolve in a cloud-centric world."
"As we bring new solutions to market and strengthen our end-to-end product portfolio, we are also delivering the software-defined tools and techniques to help our customers easily integrate our solutions into their networks and quickly deliver tangible service and operational value," said Herbert Merz, President and Chief Operating Officer, Coriant.
Coriant's full suite of Dynamic Optical Cloud solutions and capabilities will be showcased in a live demo at the OFC 2014 conference. Attendees can stop by the Coriant booth (#2511) to learn more about our comprehensive portfolio of SDN-enabled packet optical products and solutions, including the new mTera Universal Transport Platform, the Coriant 7100 Nano, the Coriant hiT 7300 intelligent optical transport platform, and Coriant IOC.

Citrix Advances Enterprise Mobility To Meet High-Security Requirements With New XenMobile Release

Citrix today announced new security and feature enhancements to the Citrix XenMobile solution. The new release empowers organizations in highly regulated industries, such as government agencies, to embrace device choice, improve productivity with quick access to more apps, and provide support for Microsoft Lync online meetings and other communication environments, without sacrificing security, control and most importantly, user experience. Citrix also enables enterprises and government agencies that are planning to phase out BlackBerry devices to transition smoothly, knowing their data and existing apps are secure, integrated and supported.
Mobility is redefining the way people work and the way IT departments support them. For many organizations, the growth of mobile devices and applications is largely driven by employees' desire to be more productive. While the new era of mobile computing offers opportunities for organizations to boost worker productivity and employee satisfaction through programs, such as bring your own device (BYOD) or corporate-owned, personally enabled (COPE), governments and other highly regulated industries face the challenge of finding cost-effective enterprise mobility management (EMM) solutions that will meet their security and compliance requirements while providing a solid user experience.
XenMobile enables government agencies and other highly regulated organizations to mobilize their employees without sacrificing security or control. The security and feature enhancements to XenMobile include:

• FIPS 140-2 compliant encryption for mobile apps, including secure email, browser and content collaboration. XenMobile creates a secure encrypted vault for application data on mobile devices so that government and enterprise workers can access critical documents and applications securely.
• Better-than-native secure mobile email, calendar and contacts through the WorxMail™ app with FIPS compliant encryption for data at rest and data in motion. New enhancements include one-click access to leading communication and collaboration apps, such as Microsoft Lync, the FaceTime app, and SMS messaging directly from WorxMail calendar and contacts.
• Support for a variety of email and collaboration solutions, such as existing systems like the IBM Lotus Notes client. Government workers also have secure mobile intranet access with single sign-on (SSO) to portals and SharePoint sites using the WorxWeb™ app, a containerized browser with full policy control.
• Support for newly launched Apple iOS 7.1 and Microsoft Windows 8.1 operating systems, allowing devices with these new operating systems to be managed and controlled with XenMobile. XenMobile also adds VPN support for Amazon Kindle devices, enabling them to connect to corporate environments.

XenMobile provides a complete EMM solution for highly regulated organizations to manage mobile apps, data and devices. With XenMobile, government agencies and enterprises gain control over personal and corporate-issued mobile devices with full configuration, security, provisioning and support capabilities. This also includes visibility into currently deployed BlackBerry devices. XenMobile meets IT departments’ need for mobile security, compliance and control while allowing employees new ways to work better.
Availability
Citrix XenMobile 8.7 will be available for download for current customers this month. For more information, please contact Citrix sales.

PernixData FVP Added to VMware Partner Verified and Supported Product Program

PernixData, the leader in virtualizing server flash, announced today that FVP has been added to the VMware Partner Verified and Supported Product Program. With inclusion in this program, PernixData's software is ready for deployment in vSphere environments 5.0 and greater. This is the latest in a string of features that highlight PernixData's virtualization expertise, establishing the company as a storage vendor for today's virtual data centers.
PernixData's listing in the VMware Partner Verified and Supported Product Program, including the FVP compatibility guide, can be found here: http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/vcl/partnersupport.php 
PernixData's Virtualization Expertise
FVP virtualizes all server side flash into a clustered acceleration tier that enables IT administrators to quickly, easily and cost-effectively scale-out storage performance completely independent of storage capacity. PernixData's extensive knowledge of VMware and commitment to customers using vSphere is evident in the following unique FVP features:

• Robust vSphere support. FVP supports all versions of VMware vSphere 5.0 and greater today. 
  
• Seamless management via vSphere Web Client. All FVP operations are managed natively within vSphere, such as configuring flash clusters and monitoring application and storage performance. 
  
• Seamless deployment, compatible with VMware vSphere: PernixData FVP software is deployed inside vSphere in under 20 minutes, with no changes (or reboots) required to VMs, servers or primary storage. The product is compatible with VMware vSphere.
  
• Clustered platform compatible with all VMware operations: PernixData FVP uses patent-pending Flash Cluster technology to enable any host to remotely access the flash device(s) on any other host in the cluster. This technology enables PernixData FVP to support all VMware operations and products, such as vMotion, DRS, HA, Snapshot, VDP, Site Recovery Manager, Horizon View and vCloud Director.

VMware Releases vSphere PowerCLI 5.5 R2

VMware quietly announced the release of vSphere PowerCLI 5.5 R2.  And with it, some great new features are being made available. 
Alan Renouf, a product manager at VMware focusing on automation frameworks and CLI, explained, "In this release we take PowerCLI one step further and allow even more troubleshooting, reporting and automation of vCloud Suite products by introducing easy access to vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) APIs through the core PowerCLI cmdlets."
Some of the new features and enhancements added to vSphere PowerCLI 5.5 Release 2 include:

• Full management of the vCenter SRM Public API - Using the Connect-SRMServer and Disconnect-SRMServer you are now able to connect to vCenter SRM and access all public APIs available
• Support for creating and removing Tags and Tag Categories - create and remove tags and tag categories to complement the tagging functionality offered in existing cmdlets released in the previous version
• Enable/Retrieve information on Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) Mode for Clusters - Adjustments to the Host and Cluster Cmdlets now allow for enabling, disabling and retrieving information for EVC Mode making automated build environments one step easier to accomplish.
• Security policies for vSphere standard switch and port groups - vSphere standard switches and portgoups can be adjusted using the Get/Set-SecurityPolicy cmdelts.
• Added support for Windows PowerShell 4.0
• Added support for IPv6
• Added statistical information - PowerCLI has been updated and we have added the ability to specify all supported types including clusters, datastores, etc and retrieve more statistical information via the Get-Stat and Get-StatType cmdlets.
• 64 bit Support - The New/Set-OSCustomizationSpec cmdlets have been updated to work in 64-bit PowerShell and no longer require running in a 32-bit PowerShell environment.
• Updated the Get-Datastore cmdlet - Filtering can now be done by cluster
• Added support for e1000e network adapter type
• Get-VM cmdlet updated - Allows a virtual machine to be retrieved by virtual switches
  

For a full list of all that has changed, check out the full vSphere PowerCLI 5.5 R2 Release notes here.
And when you are ready, download the latest version here.  

CPLANE NETWORKS Delivers High-Performance OpenStack® Networks to Accelerate Cloud Application Deployments

CPLANE NETWORKS, the leader in high-performance software-defined networking (SDN), today announced the availability of a new network virtualization platform for enterprises and cloud service providers. Dynamic Virtual Networks (DVN) transforms static physical networks into virtualized resource pools that can be allocated on demand, significantly reducing the time and cost to deploy cloud applications.
DVN is Built for OpenStack, the leading open source computing platform for private and public cloud service orchestration. “Our approach has been to unite the ‘divided house’ of the data-center, bringing together cloud application developers and network engineers to deliver agile, automated cloud networks,” said Brandon Williams, CEO of CPLANE NETWORKS. “Enabling application developers and network engineers to work together in a unified DevOps (development/operations) model, DVN and OpenStack significantly simplify and shorten the network services provisioning process.” Zero-touch configuration, reduction of unnecessary network traffic and elimination of external routing services ensure rapid response to service orchestration requests and significantly improve network performance.
Utilizing the power and scale of the CPLANE NETWORKS Cloud Networking Platform in conjunction with industry-standard protocols such as Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN), DVN creates high-performance virtual networks that provide secure traffic isolation for applications and customers. A software-only solution, DVN leverages all popular vendor network architectures and products, allowing customers to protect their current infrastructure investment while providing a smooth path to new technologies and eliminating vendor lock-in.
“DevOps and open source orchestration are dramatically transforming the way data centers deliver services. CPLANE NETWORKS is at the nexus of these two revolutions with radically innovative and transformative technology,” said Williams.

CollabNet's CloudForge Available in Cloud Foundry Marketplace

CollabNet, a leading provider of cloud-based Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions for agile software delivery at scale, today announced that its CloudForge® development platform is currently available as an add-on service in Pivotal's on-demand PaaS service, powered by Cloud Foundry and available on-line at http://run.pivotal.io.
CloudForge continues to see strong adoption by organizations that want the benefits of cloud computing with the compliance and traceability CollabNet delivers to enterprises increasingly using open-source tools and cloud-based platforms. CloudForge availability in the Pivotal Web Services add-on marketplace provides developers with an integrated development and PaaS offering. It will accelerate development and deployment of enterprise applications to any Cloud Foundry-based platform, whether it is hosted in a private or public cloud.
"Joining the Cloud Foundry ecosystem is a great fit for CloudForge as both platforms support an open and flexible approach to software development and delivery in the cloud," said Bill Portelli, co-founder and CEO of CollabNet. "The move to develop and deploy applications in the cloud is growing every day, and CloudForge is attracting increasing numbers of developers, teams and organizations that want a practical path to scale without cumbersome restrictions."
Cloud Foundry is an open platform-as-a-service, providing a choice of clouds, developer frameworks and application services. It makes it faster and easier to build, test, deploy and scale web and mobile applications. Cloud Foundry is an open source project and is available through a variety of private cloud distributions and public cloud instances, including Vmware's vSphere, Amazon Web Services, Open Stack and more.
CollabNet's CloudForge helps developers build websites, mobile/cloud/web applications, and rapidly prototype and deploy business software. Built for the enterprise, it offers a fast and practical path to grow and scale organization-wide, through a flexible role-based framework that makes it easy for developers to use and administrators to scale to thousands of users.
Now, Cloud Foundry users on Pivotal's Web Services (http://run.pivotal.io) can sign up for a CloudForge account from the Add-on Services Marketplace to gain instant access to CloudForge's leading development-based tools that are integrated into a single-user experience. CloudForge lets developers manage their development projects (plan, code, track and collaborate) and deploy code in Cloud Foundry. CloudForge delivers Apache Subversion® and Git, as well as the TeamForge ALM project management platform to all customers.
"We're excited to add CloudForge to the growing Cloud Foundry ecosystem," said James Watters, head of product for Cloud Foundry at Pivotal. "This partnership provides an integrated suite of leading development tools to enable rapid application development, deployment and scalability. CloudForge complements the Cloud Foundry philosophy of choice, flexibility and performance with a proven suite of on-demand, enterprise-grade tools and services."

Puppet Labs Announces Puppet Enterprise 3.2

Puppet Labs, the leading provider of IT automation software, announced today the availability of Puppet Enterprise 3.2, which simplifies and accelerates IT organizations' ability to meet the demands of their business and their customers. Puppet Enterprise 3.2 includes new capabilities to help IT organizations provision new hardware and scale infrastructure faster than ever before - and realize the full value of Puppet Enterprise more quickly.
"As organizations struggle with rapidly increasing node counts and the time pressures of meeting customer demands, reducing cycle time is becoming more critical," said Luke Kanies, founder and CEO of Puppet Labs. "Puppet Enterprise 3.2 addresses these challenges by significantly reducing the time it takes our customers to deliver new value, quickly and with confidence."
Key New Capabilities in Puppet Enterprise 3.2
Puppet Enterprise Supported Modules New in Puppet Enterprise 3.2 is the first set of planned supported modules to help IT teams get up and running more quickly, so they can realize the power of the software faster than ever before. The first set of Puppet Enterprise supported modules will help IT teams ensure time synchronization across nodes, set up database services, manage web servers and control Windows components. Hand-selected from more than 2,100 modules on the Puppet Forge, these pre-written, ready-to-run configurations have been rigorously tested and validated by Puppet Labs to ensure they perform reliably and with predictable results in the most demanding production environments. Puppet Enterprise supported modules can be found at forge.puppetlabs.com/supported.          
Simplified Agent Install
Puppet Enterprise 3.2 simplifies the task of deploying and upgrading agents by leveraging native OS packaging systems. With this new capability, the time required to deploy and upgrade puppet agents can be reduced several minutes per node, delivering substantial productivity gains in large environments.
Razor Tech Preview
Razor, a next-generation physical and virtual hardware provisioning solution, lets IT teams improve the speed of provisioning bare metal and scaling infrastructure to meet increased demand, enabled by Puppet Enterprise's rules-based approach. Razor includes the ability to automatically discover bare-metal hardware, dynamically configure OS and/or hypervisors and hand off resources to Puppet Enterprise for workload configuration via policy-based automation.
Razor is available as a Tech Preview in Puppet Enterprise 3.2. The Tech Preview enables customers who want to automate bare metal provisioning and accelerate deployment of compute resources to get early access to upcoming provisioning innovations. Plus, customers can provide feedback and influence future product development.
More New Features in Puppet Enterprise 3.2 ●      Oracle Solaris 11 support. Builds on Puppet Labs' commitment to support platforms critical to enterprise IT, joining a long list that includes Microsoft Windows, IBM, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, IBM AIX, Debian, Ubuntu and others.
●      Ability to run agents as non-root. Enables users who don't have root access to realize productivity gains through automation, extending the capabilities of Puppet Enterprise beyond infrastructure teams to other groups such as app developers and database admins.
●      More than 300 fixes and improvements throughout the platform that improve usability and platform support.
Pricing and Availability
You can download Puppet Enterprise 3.2 today and try it out free for up to 10 nodes. Annual subscription options including license, support and maintenance start at $112 per node. Documentation for installing and using Puppet Enterprise can be found here.

CommVault Software Helps Protect Real-Time Analytics Environments with New Integration with SAP HANA Platform

CommVault today announced that its Simpana 10 software has achieved certified integration with the SAP HANA platform. CommVault’s Simpana software enables companies to more easily and comprehensively manage, protect and recover massive volumes of high-performance transactional and analytical data.
As the consumerization of IT and “Internet of Things” continue to transform how companies engage with their customers, Fortune 500 organizations need to adjust to rapidly changing business requirements to remain competitive. Managing massive data growth and constant change also requires IT organizations to focus on efficiency and ensuring data integrity, protection and availability of mission critical information. Avoiding downtime is key. SAP HANA is being used as an enterprise cornerstone providing streamlined analytics, planning, and predictive and sentiment assessments. Simpana 10 software delivers robust and comprehensive backup and recovery for environments running SAP HANA with the speed, ease of use and performance required in the fast-moving world of real-time, predictive analytics.
“CommVault continues to enable enterprises to increase the business value of their information as a result of our investments in solutions for SAP HANA and our relationship with SAP as a member of the SAP PartnerEdge® program for Application Development,” said David West, senior vice president, worldwide marketing and business development, CommVault. “Companies can speed up their data management by using CommVault software together with solutions based on SAP HANA.”
The new SAP-certified integration with the SAP HANA platform is especially timely because of increasing demand from CommVault customers for deeper protection of enterprise database applications from SAP. In addition, with CommVault’s newly available support for Fujitsu’s FlexFrame, an end-to-end operating platform for infrastructures running SAP solutions, customers can have more confidence that running on Fujitsu technology is highly scalable, fully protected and recoverable.
With its unique single-platform architecture, Simpana software can help companies meet business demands more efficiently and easily. Customers can anticipate reducing the costs, risks and complexities associated with protecting and accessing information for environments running SAP software.
CommVault Simpana 10 takes advantage of the distinctive capabilities of SAP HANA to deliver key benefits, including:

• Simpler administration through integration with SAP HANA studioand policy-based automation.
• Simplified end-to-end backup for a large-scale single-node and multi-node SAP HANA environments.
• Robust and comprehensive backup and recovery with automatic log backups, command line support and efficient job management and reporting.

Live Webinar: Virtualization Backup & Recovery Deep Dive

Virtualization backup is changing rapidly including new developments with hypervisors, features, cloud capabilities and more.  This webinar takes a deep dive into the world of virtualization backup and recovery to answer questions about different types of:

• Cloud backups
• Backup modes
• Replication,
• Deduplication
• Hypervisors
• Scalability issues,
• Agent and agentless backups,
• Recovery testing,
• Mixed virtual and physical environments 

WHEN?  March 19th, 2014 @ 1PM CDT
A deeper understanding of these commonly used terms and capabilities is necessary to help you avoid the pitfalls while ensuring best practices in your ever changing environment. Whether you have been virtualized for years, or are just starting out, you won’t want to miss this informative webinar delivered by the PHD Virtual Team.
WEBINAR BONUS: One lucky attendee of this webinar will be chosen as the winner of a $50 Amazon Gift Card. You must attend the webinar to win, and the sweepstakes is only open to US residents.
Click here to register.

AMD A10-7850K And A8-7600: Kaveri Gives Us A Taste Of HSA

We've spent the days following CES benchmarking two of AMD's new Kaveri-based APUs. Do the Steamroller x86 architecture, GCN graphics design, and HSA-oriented features impress, or do they come up short against Intel's value-oriented Haswell-based parts?

This year’s CES was my most insane to date. I showed up in Vegas two days earlier, stayed a day later, and managed to fit close to 50 different meetings into a schedule that started early in the morning and didn’t end until late at night. But by the end, I had a solid grasp on the technologies we’ll be seeing in 2014. Some of them are decidedly evolutionary. Others, like Oculus’ Crystal Cove prototype, will fundamentally change PC gaming for the better.

For AMD’s part, it spent CES talking about Kaveri—a design that, on paper, should be interesting stuff for enthusiasts. There are the Steamroller-based x86 cores, giving us a new processor architecture to talk about. This is also the first time AMD’s vaunted Graphics Core Next design finds its way into an APU. The company did a ton of work enabling Heterogeneous System Architecture features for better interplay between computing resources and software developers. And it’s using a new 28 nm manufacturing process from GlobalFoundries.

But although this week's introduction focused on the top-end 95 W A10-7850K, the real emphasis of Kaveri is down in the lower-power segments. Company representatives say engineers designed for the 35 to 45 W range, scaling as high as 95 and as low as 15 W. AMD wants to see APUs in desktops, notebooks, embedded environments, and servers. So, it took the middle road in order to better optimize for those targets. AMD also had to make some compromises on the manufacturing side, better balancing transistor density to enable a 512-shader Radeon graphics core, while ultimately sacrificing CPU speed.

Gigabyte Announces Quad-Core J1900-Based Motherboard

Gigabyte's new J1900-based motherboard is even more feature-rich.

Not long ago, Gigabyte announced its J1800-based motherboard. Now, it brings us the J1900N-D3V board, which carries a quad-core Celeron J1900 chip. Alongside this upgrade, the motherboard also features a number of other improved goodies.
The Celeron J1900 chip is a Bay Trail-based chip, operating four cores at a clock speed of 2.0 GHz. The integrated Intel HD graphics runs at 688 MHz, though it can boost up to 854 MHz. The TDP of all of this is just 10 W, allowing Gigabyte to have the chip passively cooled.

Internal connectivity consists of two DDR3-SODIMM slots, two SATA2 ports, a single PCI port, and a Mini-PCIe slot. Rear I/O connectivity is handled by a pair of PS/2 ports, a pair of serial COM ports, DVI, VGA, four USB 3.0 ports, stereo audio jacks, as well as dual Gigabit Ethernet. Gigabyte has also equipped the board with its DualBIOS, which is a very nice addition for a budget board.
There was no word on pricing or availability yet.

Intel to Shut Down AppUp Store Meant for Netbooks, Ultrabooks

Intel is shutting down its app store.

Intel announced on Wednesday that it's shutting down its AppUp store on March 11. The service was originally launched in January 2010 and focused on netbooks, but eventually expanded out to include Ultrabooks, laptops and desktops. Now its days are numbered.

"At Intel, we're always thinking about the future, which often means making changes today," reads the notice on the AppUp website. "That's why, on March 11, 2014, Intel AppUp center will come to a close as we focus on developing new and exciting PC innovations that will continue to shape your world."
According to the FAQ, customers will still need to keep the client installed in order for their apps to work. Intel suggests that users launch and update the client software after the service shuts down in March. Customers can also continue to download apps until the March 11 shutoff date.

"Most applications should work as normal," reads the FAQ. "However, they must be launched directly from a desktop icon or through the Program menu rather than through the storefront. Please note that some applications do require communication with the AppUp client and may not work after May 15, 2015."
That's because some of the apps use a special technology (read: DRM) that protects the app from being pirated. As long as customers update to the latest AppUp client, these apps will work until the May 2015 date.

The FAQ also reveals that customers can get refunds for paid apps. These refunds will be granted for the actual transaction price, and will be available for a limited time only: January 28, 2014 to December 19, 2014.

The FAQ addresses the issue of Intel storing personal information. For the most part that's not going to happen, as it's all purged save for a few exceptions such as purchase information for the apps that are downloaded, and all orders and invoices will be archived for financial accounting and audit purposes.
"Closing Intel AppUp was a tough decision," reads an email to all registered users. "Of course, Intel AppUp would not have been possible without loyal users like you. Thank you for participating in the experience. It's been a fun ride."

We asked Intel for a comment, and the company provided this letter:

Intel continually assesses its business objectives to ensure we are meeting the needs of the market and our customers. In the recent months the company has been public about its intent to re-focus the business to address the mobile market and to move faster. Intel’s Software and Services Group will play a key role in this growth strategy.

Intel is sharpening its focus around services, specifically business services that address the market needs of the enterprise, service provider and developer. To accelerate this focus, Intel will be making some changes to existing services that fall outside of the new scope.

Ongoing analysis and reprioritization is a normal course of action that all businesses go through.

All existing agreements with customers will be honored (as per its contracts).

What do you think of Intel closing its app store? Is Intel better off leaving app distribution to the experts?

Fujitsu Ultrabook Has Shift Hinge to Enable 4 Orientations

Fujitsu's Lifebook TH90/P will have four modes.

Shopping around for a convertible laptop? Fujitsu could have what you're looking for: the Lifebook TH90/P. This notebook has a special "Shift Hinge" that allows the user to position the notebook's screen in four ways: Theater for watching movies, Presentation for sharing content, Tablet for pen input and classic Laptop. The device launches later this month for an unknown price.

"It has been designed to instantly adapt to the best mode for any use without being limited by its shape. With support for styluses that can detect 1,024 gradations of pressure sensitivity, users can jot down memos or make sketches with the feeling of writing on paper," reads the company's press release.
The company didn't provide a full list of specs, but reports that the notebook features a durable chassis with an "ultra-compressed, solid core" and machined aluminum construction. The notebook also has an IGZO panel with a 2560 x 1440 resolution that's protected by a high-strength Dragontrail display, which can handle bumps and scratches.

In addition to the screen, the new convertible laptop packs a fourth-generation Intel Core i5-4200U processor, a 500 GB hybrid drive, and a "long running" 12.5 hour battery. Unfortunately, that's it in regards to the hardware details. We expect to see more information arrive before the laptop ships later this month.
The company also updated two additional laptops late last month. The Lifebook AH42/M is now offered with an Intel Haswell processor, the Pentium 3558U, whereas the Esprimo FH52/M comes equipped with Microsoft Office Home and Business.

Fujitsu has also launched Personal Computer Norikae Cloud Service in Japan. This new service aims to make it easy to migrate a customer's data and settings from an old computer, such as one running Windows XP, to a new one by way of My Cloud Library. Customers signing up by the end of April 2014 will receive up to two months of My Cloud Library's 100 GB plan free of charge.

"Starting in mid-February, Fujitsu will be giving away a limited number of a free Touch New FMV migration-assistance DVDs," reads Fujitsu's announcement. "The first 100 thousand customers buying FMV or ARROWS Tab computers installed with Windows 8.1 or Windows 8(6) at stores will receive the Norikae Ouen DVD, which helps migrate data to a new computer. In addition to helping with data migration, the DVD also includes tips on using Windows 8.1, the photo-oriented My Cloud, and the updated Windows 2013."

Toshiba's convertible Lifebook TH90/P is scheduled to launch on February 21. Prices were not announced. The updated Lifebook AH42/M and Esprimo FH52/M are already available on the market.

Toshiba Ships 13.3-inch Chromebook

As promised in January during CES 2014, Toshiba has launched its very first Chromebook, costing either $279.99 or $299.99, depending on where you look. This Chrome OS laptop, which is the first in this category to provide a 13.3-inch screen, can now be purchased from Amazon, Adorama, or directly from Toshiba.

"We see great potential in Chrome OS as it offers both consumers and educators a simple and easy-to-use computing experience," said Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "We believe that bringing a more versatile 13-inch model to market will help drive the entire category forward."

The specs reveal a 13.3-inch TrueBrite LED-lit display with a native 1366 x 768 resolution. This screen is backed by an Intel Celeron 2955U processor clocked at 1.4 GHz, 2 GB of DDR3-1600 RAM and a battery promising up to nine hours on a single charge. Storage is provided by a 16 GB SSD, a microSD card slot, and 100 GB of Google Drive storage free for two years.

Toshiba's new Chromebook also includes two USB 3.0 ports, a full-size HDMI port, a security lock slot, Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and a full-size Chrome optimized keyboard. The "Sunray Silver" Chrome OS laptop measures just 0.8 inches thin and weighs a very light 3.3 pounds.

As a comparison, over on Google Play the HP Chromebook 11 shares the same $279 USD price tag. The device sports an 11.6-inch 300 nit screen with 178 degree viewing angles, backed by a Samsung Exynos 5250 SoC, 2 GB of DDR3L memory, and a 30 Wh li-Polymer battery promising up to 6 hours on a single charge. Other features include 16 GB of internal storage, Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, a VGA webcam and more.

For another comparison, HP also has the Chromebook 14, which costs $299. This Chrome OS laptop has a 14 inch BrightView screen with a 1366 x 768 resolution, an Intel Celeron 2955U "Haswell" processor, 2 GB or 4 GB of DDR3L memory, 32 GB of internal storage, Wireless N and Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity, and a 4-cell 51 Whr battery promising up to 9.5 hours on a single charge. This Chromebook also has an HP TrueVision HD webcam and an island-style Chrome OS keyboard.

For more information about Toshiba's Chromebook that's now available, head here.

GeForce GTX 780M, 770M, And 765M: Scaling Vs. Radeon HD 8970M

We already have a really good idea how desktop-bound graphics cards perform. But what about the mobile hardware typically derived from those same GPUs? We test four identically-configured notebooks and show how they scale in six popular games.

Sometimes it's hard to know how a mobile graphics processor will perform based on its name alone. Both AMD and Nvidia refer to their mobile solutions using branding very similar to their desktop parts. To help us nail down expectations of its fastest laptop GPUs, Nvidia sent over ten grand worth of Origin PC notebooks armed with GeForce GTX 780M, GeForce GTX 770M, and GeForce 765M cards.
I also wanted a bit of relativity, though. So I called up the folks at Eurocom for something comparable based on AMD's top-end graphics processor.

Origin PC recently unveiled its Genesis and Millennium cases, which were custom-designed for the company's gaming-oriented desktop PCs. Fortunately for us, though, Origin's Eon17-S uses Clevo’s P177SM chassis, which meant that Eurocom could send over a comparable system with a Radeon HD 8970M-based module with the same cooling system. An identical thermal solution is one more way we can give you benchmark results that are truly apples-to-apples.

Comparing Mobile GPUs

GPU-Z reports lower clock rates for Nvidia’s mobile GeForce modules than the manufacturer specifies, though that's likely a result of running at lower idle frequencies. Similarly, we had to load down the Radeon module with a 3D task to get its clock settings to show up at all.

Apple Looking at Solar Power Converters

Getting "green" is going to be one of the tech trends that defines the next generation of hardware. As more customers are getting power conscious, the race is on to maximize performance and cut down on power consumption – especially for portable devices where the ability to run all day on a charge can make or break an entire product line.

That in mind, the U.S. Patent office has published a patent application from Apple Inc. titled "Power management systems for accepting adapter and solar power in electronic devices." In short, it details a mechanism that would allow solar power to be put into a device directly, without the need for a secondary converter. This basically would act as a power supply in a desktop does and directly scales the electrical input to the proper voltage and amperage to help ensure compatibility.

From the patent: "The power management system includes a system microcontroller (SMC) and a charger. During operation, the power management system accepts power from at least one of a power adapter and a solar panel. Next, the power management system supplies the power to components in the electronic device without using a converter circuit between the solar panel and the power management system."
If the patent is awarded, hopefully Apple will spread the love around, because having a cheaper, streamlined system for charging my stuff would be awesome.

Apple Marketing Head Says Samsung Made Job a Lot Harder

Apple's head of marketing, Phil Schiller, said Samsung's devices resembling the iPhone made it "much harder" to effectively distinguish between the two lines of products. Schiller spoke in front of a court hearing a retrial for damages Samsung allegedly owes Apple for design patent infringement.
Schiller went on to claim that Samsung's infringing products made customers "question our design skills in a way they never used to." These comments came on the fourth day of trial, following the decision in March removing over $450 million from the damages that originally totaled over $1.5 billion.
Responding to Samsung criticisms stating that even Apple adapted in the face of competition in the tablet market, Schiller said, "We were not trying to respond to competition… We were simply trying to make our product better."

How to Transfer files from a Windows PC to Mac using an Ethernet Cable.

Have you ever wanted to share files that are on your Mac with your Windows PC but have no USB or external storage, well look no further because all you need is any Ethernet Cable and you will be good to go.

PLEASE CLICK BELOW!!
VIDEO TUTORIAL

This is what you will need:

Ethernet Cable.
Windows PC.
Apple Mac Computer.
Basic understanding of both Operating Systems.

WINDOWS

Step 1
Plug one end of your Ethernet Cable into your Windows PC, and the other end of your cable into your Mac.

Step 2
Press Start, and type Network and Sharing Center and press enter. Once in Network and Sharing Center Go to the left column and click Change Adapter Settings.

Step 3
You should see a range of Network connections, There should be a network named Local Area Connection, double click on Local Area Connection and a window should come up with the general information. Click on the Details Button.

Step 4
There should be a line that says "Autoconfiguration IPv4 add" for now, just remember that. At this point you should choose the file or folder that you would like to share with your Mac. Right Click on the File/Folder and go down to "Share With" > "Specific People" in the Area for the name you are going to have to type "Guest" and now click "Add." You will now have to go over to Permission Levels and Change the Guest permissions from "Read" to "Read/Write" Press Next and we are now Ready to Continue.

MAC

Step 5
First off, open up Finder. whilst in finder press "cmd + k" at the same time. At this time another window should pop up saying "Connect to a Server" all you need to do is enter "smb://YOUR AUTOCONFIGURATION IPV4 ADDRESS" Now press "Connect" and log on as Guest.

Step 6
You should now be able to access and share files between both Computers. but
if your Mac says "this file server does not allow Guest access." Here's what you have to do on the Windows side:
1. Control Panel/User Accounts/Manage Another Account. Then turn on Guest account.
2. Control Panel/Network and Sharing Center/Change advanced sharing settings. Then scroll down, select "Turn off password protected sharing." Save Changes.
Restart your Windows computer. Then follow the previous instructions.

iPhone 6: All The Hardware Rumors So Far

Apple's next iPhone is always a heavily rumored affair. We gather all the whispers here and make sense of it.

With Mobile World Congress just around the corner, rumors about new and upcoming devices are as thick as San Francisco fog. However, one company that won't be in Barcelona next week is Apple. The Cupertino-based company prefers to steer clear of these big conferences and mass launch events, choosing instead to host their own exclusive events. That way, its news never gets lost in the flood of announcements (as if that could happen to the Apple of today).
What you may wonder, after hearing about all the new phones that are going to arrive through the spring and into the summer, is if the iPhone 6 is will match up to the MWC debutantes. Apple hasn't announced the device yet, and it's not expected to announce anything for a while. After all, the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S were just announced and released in September. Though Apple has traditionally announced new phones at WWDC in June, it's thought the switch to September refresh will carry through to this year. So what can we expect come fall?

iPhone Screen

Arguably one of the most important features of a smartphone, given it's what you'll spend all your time looking at. Apple pays special attention to its displays, adding its famed Retina Display with the introduction of the iPhone 4. Talk of the iPhone 6 display Recent rumors suggest Apple is going to use a sapphire display in the iPhone 6. The company’s new Arizona plant will produce sapphire glass, that much we know. Tim Cook confirmed it while speaking to ABC. Now, Apple already uses tiny amounts of sapphire glass for the home button and to keep the camera safe from scratches, and though it’s technically possible that this is all the company needs the new plant for, that seems highly unlikely. Word on the street says Apple will kick things up  a notch and make the entire display out of this tough material. This week, Canonical’s CEO complained that Apple had bought up a three year supply of a display Canonical wanted for the Ubuntu Edge. Apple’s either has a huge need for sapphire glass or is stockpiling for a future product while keeping the product away from its competitors.

SolarWinds Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2013 Results

SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today reported results for its fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2013.

• Total revenue for the fourth quarter of $97.1 million, representing 32.0% year-over-year growth.
• Combined maintenance and subscription revenue for the fourth quarter of $57.6 million, representing 42.2% year-over-year growth in recurring revenue.
• License revenue for the fourth quarter of $39.5 million, representing 19.6% year-over-year growth.
• GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.29 and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.41 for the fourth quarter.
• GAAP operating income of $30.4 million, or a GAAP operating margin of 31.3%, and non-GAAP operating income of $43.6 million, or a non-GAAP operating margin of 44.9% for the fourth quarter.

Financial Results SolarWinds reported total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2013 of $97.1 million, a 32.0% increase over total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2012. Total recurring revenue, comprised of subscription revenue of $3.9 million and record maintenance revenue of $53.7 million, reached $57.6 million, increasing by 42.2% over the fourth quarter of 2012 and now represents over 59.3% of total revenue. License revenue increased to a record $39.5 million for the fourth quarter of 2013.
On a GAAP basis, diluted earnings per share were $0.29 for the fourth quarter of 2013, in line with $0.29 for the fourth quarter of 2012. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.41 for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to $0.36 for the fourth quarter of 2012.
Net cash provided by operating activities was $49.7 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to $47.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2012, representing a year-over-year increase of 5.3%. Free cash flow was $49.2 million for the fourth quarter of 2013 compared to $48.0 million for the fourth quarter of 2012.
The financial results included in this press release are preliminary and pending final review by the company and its external auditors. Financial results will not be final until SolarWinds files its annual report on Form 10-K for the period. Information about SolarWinds' use of these non-GAAP financial measures is provided below under "Non-GAAP Financial Measures."

Recent Business Highlights
"I am pleased to report that we delivered a strong performance in the fourth quarter. After a challenging start to the year, we implemented a number of improvements in our business focused on the ways in which we generate and respond to demand within our marketing and sales organizations. We believe those improvements, along with the continued efforts of the entire SolarWinds team, translated into a solid level of license and recurring revenue outperformance relative to our outlook for the fourth quarter," said Kevin Thompson, SolarWinds' President and Chief Executive Officer.
"Although we have a number of initiatives we are working on in order to enhance our execution, we believe the investments that we made in sales and marketing have already started to pay dividends. We feel positive about the momentum we have created in our business exiting 2013 and we are focused on driving strong growth in new business, both license and subscription, in 2014," added Thompson.

Recent SolarWinds business highlights include:

• SolarWinds announced a strategic partnership with AppNeta, a leading provider of cloud-based application performance management solutions. The partnership will enable the two companies to explore opportunities to meaningfully connect IT infrastructure to application delivery to drive an improvement in the overall performance and value of mission-critical business applications.
• SolarWinds continues to receive honors from the IT community for its portfolio of IT management products. Fourth quarter accolades included the 2013 Windows IT Pro Community Choice Awards which recognized SolarWinds Network Performance Monitor (NPM), Server & Application Monitor (SAM), Database Performance Analyzer (formerly Confio Ignite(R)), Patch Manager, Virtualization Manager, and Mobile Admin(R) with top honors. Awards from TechGenix, Government Security News, and SC Magazine also recognized NPM, SAM, Network Topology Mapper (NTM), Log & Event Manager (LEM), and Network Configuration Manager (NCM).
• SolarWinds maintained its track record of delivering a wealth of new features and functionality to customers via several product updates. Fourth quarter updates included increased flow processing speed and granularity into network utilization for SolarWinds NetFlow Traffic Analyzer (NTA). SolarWinds also made key enhancements to its security management product portfolio including SolarWinds Log & Event Manager (LEM), Firewall Security Manager (FSM), and Patch Manager. LEM now offers improved automation features to help ensure security and compliance monitoring practices are met on an ongoing basis. Patch Manager now ships with improved setup wizards speeding time to value while FSM is now integrated with SolarWinds' centralized management console providing a single pane of glass between firewall change and configuration management and SolarWinds products for managing networks, systems, and security.

"We are excited about our accomplishments in the fourth quarter and are encouraged by the trajectory of our business. We believe our fourth quarter results reflect an acceleration in our business, but also show a significant increase in investment in an effort to capitalize on the opportunity we see before us," said Jason Ream, SolarWinds' Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. "For 2014, we plan to continue to pursue that opportunity through a number of initiatives intended to improve our rate of new business growth while maintaining a go-to-market approach that is consistent with SolarWinds' efficient business model," added Ream.

AppSense Enhances DesktopNow Suite to Deliver Unparalleled Scale and Flexibility in Enterprise Workspace Management

AppSense, the leading provider of enterprise workspace management solutions, today announced updates to DesktopNow- its industry-leading software suite for virtual and physical desktop management. The enhancements include support for heterogeneous enterprise architectures, an even better user experience, and improved scalability and performance. AppSense customers will benefit from leveraging existing and anticipated infrastructure investments, enhanced user productivity and acceptance, and streamlined workspace management upgrades.
“At AppSense, we understand the complex challenges our customers face delivering a secure, productive workspace,” said Ravi Khatod, SVP Marketing of AppSense. “The upgraded DesktopNow suite delivers unparalleled scale, flexibility and performance for enterprise environments.”
These updates follow a highly successful year for AppSense. The company delivered record bookings in the first half of its fiscal year, with a 50% increase in the number of customers spending over $1 million vs. prior year. In addition, over 500 enterprise customers purchased AppSense software for the first time in 2013.

Extended Heterogeneous Support for Microsoft, VMware, and Citrix
The DesktopNow suite includes enhanced support for Microsoft and VMware desktop deployments. As enterprise IT becomes more diverse, AppSense is expanding its offerings to ensure that its customers can continue to deliver seamless and personalized user experiences, regardless of the various vendors they use in their environments.
DesktopNow now integrates with Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8.1, with full integration and support for System Center 2012. The built-in connection to System Center allows customers to save AppSense configurations directly to SCCM for deployment.
The updates also include support for VMware ThinApp, AppSense’s latest application virtualization partner.
DesktopNow also extends integration with Citrix XenDesktop®- including the latest release XenDesktop 7.5. When used in conjunction with XenDesktop and XenApp, the AppSense DesktopNow suite delivers increased user density per server, seamless, personalized roaming between physical desktops, virtual desktops and virtual sessions (Terminal Server/RDSH), control of users admin rights, and granular control of application performance to deliver an optimized experience for all user types.

Improved Policy and Efficiency Controls for Workforce Productivity
The new DesktopNow suite also includes improved granular policy controls, allowing business owners to provide a tailored set of resources and tools specific user groups need to be most productive without impacting the experience of users in other departments, or conflicting corporate security practices. For example, in a financial services environment DesktopNow helps ensure traders have access to trading applications taking financial feeds from their nearest servers, but can provide a different set of options in the same application for researchers. In healthcare, policy controls ensure that clinicians and caregivers are able to print at the printers closest to their location, fulfilling privacy regulations.
AppSense has also expanded replication options to make sure users across locations can access the applications and resources they need. DesktopNow includes improved support for replicated databases across multiple sites and locations, and added support for highly distributed Active Directory infrastructure, as well as for federated IT teams.

Solving the Challenges of Desktop Deployments at Scale
AppSense has invested significant resources to help meet and exceed customer performance demands at scale. As a result, the baseline AppSense Enterprise Readiness Environment can support hundreds of thousands of endpoints. In real world environments, individual AppSense customers have already deployed over 146,000 endpoints and counting.
In addition, enhanced deployment options improve compatibility and performance. With .MSP files and patching support, users have the ability to patch agents and provide incremental updates when deploying service packs and hotfixes. The additional support allows customers to deploy and rollback the product, while enabling the software to be updated in a more agile way, helping to mitigate risk and improve efficiencies.

Availability and Pricing
The latest version of the DesktopNow suite – including Environment Manager 8.4, Performance Manager 8.2, and Application Manager 8.7 - is immediately available at no charge to customers with a current AppSense DesktopNow subscription. For new customers, pricing is available on a per seat basis.

Pluribus Networks Integrates Netvisor Software and Freedom Server-Switch Platforms With Oracle Solaris

Pluribus Networks, the company that brings together compute, network and storage into a single platform, announced today a relationship with Oracle to integrate its innovative network hypervisor software, Netvisor®, with Oracle Solaris 11 to power the Pluribus Freedom Server-Switch product line. Oracle customers can now deploy turnkey cloud solutions with a compute, network, storage and virtualization infrastructure operated under Oracle Solaris’ consistent cloud automation. Pluribus Networks is a Gold level member of Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN).
“As a sponsor of the OpenStack Foundation, we are committed to offering our customers the ability to manage Oracle cloud products and services using OpenStack,” said Markus Flierl, vice president, Oracle Solaris. “By integrating Pluribus Networks’ innovative network hypervisor and Freedom Server-Switch platform into the Oracle Solaris ecosystem, our joint customers will soon be able to use OpenStack as a common cloud management infrastructure across compute, network and storage.”
“We are delighted that Oracle will be leveraging Pluribus Networks’ open platform to deliver an unparalleled level of cloud infrastructure integration where compute, network, storage and virtualization can operate as an extension of each other under the Oracle Solaris architecture,” said Kumar Srikantan, CEO of Pluribus Networks.
This relationship between Oracle and Pluribus Networks will have many benefits for the growing number of more than 4,000 Oracle Solaris 11 customers who have gone into production since the release of Oracle Solaris 11. Some of these benefits are:

• The ability to use OpenStack to manage Oracle Solaris 11 running on compute nodes via the Nova plug-in, as well as Pluribus Network switches via the Neutron plug-in, and Oracle Solaris-based ZS3 Series storage via the Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance Cinder Driver, allowing joint customers to take advantage of the stability, efficiency, performance, scalability and security of Oracle Solaris
• Turnkey OpenStack-based cloud architecture to help eliminate costly integration and testing work for enterprise private clouds
• Elastic provisioning of virtual networking services: running Oracle Solaris 11 on the Pluribus Network Freedom Server-Switches means that virtual networking services can be dynamically re-provisioned from a compute node to a networking node in order to maximize throughput performance while minimizing latency
• Advanced OpenStack integration with the unique ability to provision virtual services along with virtual networks with the Pluribus Networks Cloud Underlay virtualization technology, which allows customers to manage physical and virtual workloads without complex underlay-overlay network operations

Effective today, Oracle customers can order directly from Pluribus Networks the Freedom Server-Switch platforms with the Oracle Solaris operating system.

Kaspersky Lab Discusses the Future of Virtualization Security at Annual North American Partner Conference

At the company’s annual North American Partner Conference, Kaspersky Lab is previewing the newest additions to its portfolio of virtualization security applications.  The Kaspersky Security for Virtualization | Light Agent application is scheduled to be released within the Kaspersky Security for Virtualization solution in Q2 2014, and will include light agent support for the VMware, Citrix and Microsoft virtualization platforms.

Kaspersky Security for Virtualization | Light Agent will provide advanced anti-malware and network protection for virtual machines through a combination of a dedicated virtual appliance and small software agents.  By off-loading the anti-malware processing to the dedicated virtual appliance, the host network’s performance will not be affected, a clear improvement over deploying multiple redundant security agents on each virtual machine. In addition to advanced anti-malware protection, Kaspersky Security for Virtualization | Light Agent will also feature the company’s award-winning endpoint controls to apply easily-managed policies, such as application control, device control, and web content filtering, to virtual machines.

Kaspersky Lab’s virtualization security offerings have recently focused on providing agentless anti-malware and network security for virtual environments based on the VMware platform.  But with the addition of Kaspersky Lab’s new light-agent capabilities, the solution is now applicable to Citrix and Microsoft environments for the first time, in addition to VMware environments.  Kaspersky Security for Virtualization |Light Agent delivers benefits that offer clear advantages to the traditional agent-based approach, such automatic protection for all virtual machines to avoid the “instant-on” security gap associated with most agent-based protection.  Moreover, the unique architecture of Kaspersky Lab’s specialized virtualization security solutions offer dramatic performance benefits over traditional “physical” protection being applied to virtual machines.
With Kaspersky Security for Virtualization | Light Agent added to the company’s solution portfolio, Kaspersky Lab can offer a more complete and effective range of security solutions for specialized virtual environments than other vendors. The competitive advantages of Kaspersky Security for Virtualization | Light Agent, which will be proven by independent testing in the coming weeks, include lower performance impact on virtual infrastructure, and superior overall protection fueled by the individual Kaspersky Lab technologies — including exploit prevention and application control components — found within the solution.  For more information about how Kaspersky Lab’s current virtualization prowess compares to the competition, read the results of a group test conducted by The Tolly Group here.

Opportunities for Partner GrowthBy making light agent solutions available, Kaspersky Lab partners will be able to offer a variety of support options for all three of the primary virtualization providers – VMware vSphere, Citrix XENServer, and Microsoft Hyper-V – significantly expanding revenue opportunities for channel partners and protection options for end-users.  Investments in virtual infrastructure – at both the server and virtual desktop level - are set to be key area of spending across the IT industry for 2014, and as more mission-critical applications and data move to virtual machines, the need to secure this data will increase as well.  By integrating seamlessly within the Kaspersky Security Center administration console, Kaspersky Security for Virtualization can be managed from the same screen as Kaspersky Lab’s security for physical devices.

Kaspersky Lab’s virtualization security solutions offer a combination of security technologies, ease-of-management, and platform compatibility that is unmatched by any other vendor.  Kaspersky Lab will also offer financing options, marketing support, and flexible product licensing that allows partners to sell based on either the “per virtual machine” – which is based on knowing the exact amount of server and desktop licenses needed – or “per core” licensing based on the number of cores found in a customer’s virtualization hardware, which provides the end-users with flexible room to expand their network as needed.
More information about Kaspersky Lab’s virtualization security roadmap will be shared at the North American Partner Conference breakout sessions, and additional details will be shared prior to the formal availability of Kaspersky Lab’s new virtual security applications.