Tag: vmware

Arrow gets VMWare gongs

Posted on March 6, 2014 by - News

Arrow logoDistributor Arrow Electronics said it had received two gongs at the VMWare partner exchange.

It picked up the Partner Network award and also was recognised as emEA Distributor Partner of the year.

Jesper Trolle, VP of sales for Arrow enterprise computing in EMEA said his company has a key focus on products such as VMWare’s desktop-as-a-service and NSX network virtualisation.  That contributes to the channel’s bottom line.

And Dave O’Callaghan, senior VP at VMWare in charge of partners said Arrow had distinguished itself at the global level.  “We congratulate Arrow on winning a global VMWare Partner network award.”

Arrow supplies over 100,000 OEMs, contract manufacturers and commercial customers. It operates across 460 place in 58 countries.

Bull flies red rag with fast data analytics

Posted on October 2, 2013 by - News, Products

scotbullBull Information Systems has put together a new big data analytics tool called “bullion fast data analytics”, designed to look at data from the digital economy in real time.

It has been built using Pivotal based technologies in combination with Bull’s bullion servers.

Bull points out that this year there are roughly 3 Zettabytes of data floating around, or 400 Gigabytes for everyone on the planet, with this figure only set to increase to up to 40 Zettabytes by 2020. So for it’s very useful for organisations to be able to sift through this data and extract relevant information, whether that is managing crises, or building customer loyalty. Of course, we have all heard about “big data” this year.

Fast data analytics is, Bull asserts, the “first platform to integrate new data fabrics, modern programming frameworks, cloud portability and support for legacy systems”. The architecture has been designed on top of Pivotal Greenplum Database and Gemfire, and the company promises the end product makes analytics less complex, shifting the focus from software tinkering to applying the actual information.

The company says its technology is highly flexible and can “significantly” reduce Total Cost of Ownership, as well as having been validated with Pivotal and VMware at Bull’s R&D labs. It runs in a virtualised environement, promises lower latency, and cost savings.

VP of Bull’s enterprise service business, Jacqueline Moussa, said the company offers a “unified and robust platform”.

“Organisations can take advantage of lower implementation and operations costs and quick real-time analysis of the huge amounts of data being produced each hour,” Moussa said.

Avnet to school partners on VMware

Posted on September 24, 2013 by - News

avnettsAvnet and VMWare are collaborating to open an End User Computing practice in Britain, to push channel partners towards the desktop transformation market, utilising VMware’s Horizon suite along with Avnet SolutionsPath.

Avnet insists that as the office environment rushes towards Bring Your Own Device, IT departments are faced with emerging threats to make sure their networks are fit for security as well as cost effective. By investing in the workspace, businesses can reduce headaches in the long run.

The company believes twinning SolutionsPath with VMware technology can manage all parts of a firm’s physical and virtual infrastructure centrally, meaning down the road businesses can implement a system that is not shaken by the consumerisation of IT.

The EUC practice promises to quicken entry into desktop transformation, and Avnet says it will do this by opening up access to its technology and multi vendor network, as well as providing specialist knowledge.

Businesses that sign up to the practice will have the opportunity to learn about delivering VMware gear in a way to fit a customer’s IT environment, as well as gauging the level ofvirtualisation that is required. Users can pick from Avnet’s wide range of VMware partners such as HP, IBM, Cisco, EMC, NetApp, Riverbed, and Nvidia.

Partners will also be encouraged to learn how they should sell VMware Horizon in markets such as healthcare, government and finance.

VMware’s UK&I head of channel, Ed Dolman, said the initiative will be a “powerful value proposition” as the company looks for new partners who are interested in desktop transformation but don’t have the right skills.

“By enrolling in Avnet’s SolutionsPath University, business partners have the ability to receive the training they need to develop knowledge and expertise supported by the generation of sales leads,” Dolman said.

HP and VMware team up for federated networks

Posted on August 27, 2013 by - News

HPHewlett Packard and VMware have teamed up to deliver the industry’s first federated network solution, which is designed to provide customers with more automation and visibility in physical and virtual data virtual centres. Or so they say.

Companies are embracing mobile, cloud, BYOD, so manual network configuration is proving tricky and demanding. Virtualisation helps, as it offers a centralised control pane, but it still does not automate configuration and provisioning of physical devices. That’s where the new HP – VMware “solution” comes into play.

It will combine the HP Virtual Application Networks SDN Controller with VMware’s NSX network virtualisation platform to let customers automate their physical and virtual network infrastructure, all in one place. The companies say the new networking solution will provide a centralised view, unified automation, visibility and control of the complete data center network, improving agility, monitoring and troubleshooting. Or so they say.

It all revolves around man or possibly woman hours. A typical cloud data centre network may need 10,000 provisions per day, each requiring at least 20 network command line changes. These 200,000 command line changes would require 3,333 man or woman hours to complete, assuming one minute per command. The HP-VMware networking “solution” threatens to eliminate manual configuration of both the physical and virtual data centre networks through interoperable automated orchestration of policies. It also will create a single view of the network, both physical and virtual. Or so they say.

“Customers are adopting network virtualisation to gain the necessary agility needed to realise the promise of virtualised and cloud data centres. To be successful, IT organisations need solutions to deliver common management of services and operations across the physical and virtual domains,” said Stephen Mullaney, senior vice president and general manager, networking and security business unit, VMware. “By collaborating with HP on a federated networking solution, we will help our joint customers create a unified network operations model that will radically simplify IT in the software-defined data centre.” Or so they say.

The new HP-VMware networking thing will be available in the second half of 2014, along with HP’s new ConvergedControl software.

VMware hires new channel honcho

Posted on May 21, 2013 by - News

Hands across the waterVMware has added a new recruit to its senior management payroll.

The virtualisation and cloud infrastructure company hired Dave O’Callaghan as senior vice president of Global Channels and Alliances.

It is hoped that in his new role O’Callaghan will lead the vision and strategy for VMware partners globally across all routes to market, including service providers, distributors, OEMs, system integrators and outsourcers, and independent software vendors.

His CV boasts positions in the tech industry spanning 30 years and includes positions in senior sales and indirect sales roles at Cisco Systems, Hitachi Data Systems and Memorex Telex.

Most recently, in 2011, O’Callaghan founded and led his own consulting firm specialising in go-to-market strategies for high-tech manufacturers, distributors and solution providers. Prior to this, O’Callaghan served as vice president of worldwide commercial sales at Cisco, where he led sales, strategy and programs of the midmarket and SMB segments.

During his 12 years at Cisco, O’Callaghan also held vice president roles in worldwide distribution and regional sales. He said he was “excited” to be helping his new  customers “solve their biggest IT infrastructure challenges of today and in the future”.

VMware needs luck as it sticks its head in the clouds

Posted on March 13, 2013 by - News, Opinions

cloud (264 x 264)VMware has given up trying to wait for its partners to help it become an important name in the cloud space and has decided to do it itself.

Yesterday the outfit unveiled vCloud Hybrid Service to investors. Well we say unveiled we really mean that it told the world that was intending to set up a public cloud service. But it caught everyone on the hop because it was only a couple of months ago that VMware’s Pat Gelsinger sounded so dead set against the public cloud.

Speaking at the VMware’s Partner Exchange Conference in Las Vegas, Gelsinger said that VMware needed to own the corporate workload. He said that the company would lose if they end up in commodity public clouds.

With comments like that to suddenly come out and launch your own public cloud seems a little silly. However what Gelsinger appeared to be saying was that he did not want corporate data on other people’s public clouds.

“We want to extend our franchise from the private cloud into the public cloud and uniquely enable our customers with the benefits of both. Own the corporate workload now and forever.”

But Gelsinger’s plans might be a little tricky to pull off.

When it comes to public cloud there is a lot of top notch competition including Amazon, IBM, and HP who don’t take too kindly to strangers in the market. To make matters worse VMware’s offering will not be around until at least the second quarter.

VMware has chucked a bit of money trying to get the idea of the ground. Former Savvis Cloud president, Bill Fathers, will run the vCloud and has said that the idea will get a level of investment appropriate to that priority and to capitalize on a $14 billion market opportunity.

One of the crucial differences about what VMware is offering is that it is the service “hybrid” so that enterprises should see it as part of the VMware’s packages. The software which the vCloud is based on is called Director. It uses an IaaS environment and lets workloads become managed either in the cloud or in the office in the same way.

But all this is being set up because VMware could not interest its partners in building something similar. VMware had a crack at offering similar products through its ISP partners. But these were a little spooked that vCloud implementation would commodise their products. There were mutterings from ISPs who did not want to pay VMware licensing costs when they had cheaper open source alternatives.

VMware has a job on its hands to prove to VMware Certified Professionals that the public cloud is an extension of the data centre while at the same time convincing them that there are some advantages over the “non-cloud” environments they use now.

The public cloud will be aimed at its existing customer base and sold through its existing VAR and SI channel.

However most of VMware’s channel partners don’t have the skills to help their I&O clients transition from static virtualisation to cloud. So somehow VMware is going to have to give its channel the consulting skills and hope they can bluster their way through conversations where real cloud is needed.
Either way the company has a long way to go before it can sit comfortably among other cloud players. It might just pull it off, but it will take a bit of time and a lot of luck.

VMware to fire and hire staff

Posted on January 29, 2013 by - News

fireVMware has become the latest company to announce that it will be slashing jobs.

VMware, which reported revenue growth of 22 percent for 2012 compared to 2011, raking in around $4.61 billion, said that it would be handing around seven percent of its 13,800 staff their pink slips as part of a restructuring effort.

The announcement was driven by a slowdown in its 2013 earnings predictions,

However, it said it plans to hire in other areas.

Speaking with analysts, VMware chief exec Pat Gelsinger said a lack of government spending, plus increasing competition from the likes of Microsoft, meant that the company had to focus on specific products and geography.

This means taking away a focus on areas such as its online presentation software, SlideRocket and looking more at software-defined data centres and hybrid cloud services. Translated, this means VMware will slash 900 jobs in areas that are not profitable, where it hopes to save roughly $20 million for the first quarter of 2013.

Gelsinger did say that 1,000 jobs should be created by the end of the year as the company keeps up with competitors in its new focus areas. He said the company will shovel talent into the new roles, which support “growth opportunities” as well looking for new recruits in these areas.

The announcement comes after security software firm Symantec admitted it would be culling management jobs to save cash.