$233 million modernization plan delivers advanced internet and wireless services to northerners

$233 million modernization plan delivers advanced internet and wireless services to northerners

  • 99 per cent of northerners will have access to next generation wireless and wireless broadband services within the next five years
  • 58 northern communities will have access to Internet speeds two to three times their current speed
  • 100 per cent of northern communities will have access to calling features
  • The modernization plan is Northwestel's most ambitious investment in infrastructure to date

WHITEHORSE, Jan. 16, 2013 /CNW/ - Northwestel today announced a plan to invest $233 million in its telecommunications network to enhance customer services. The capital spending is estimated to occur over a five-year period and will provide northern Canadians with access to advanced Internet and wireless networks.

"We have developed a modernization plan that delivers for our communities," said Paul Flaherty, President and Chief Executive Officer at Northwestel. "In addition to supplying more northern communities with enhanced services, the plan puts in place measures to facilitate competition and builds on partnerships with other parties. The Northwestel plan outlines how we will bring next generation wireless and broadband services to the North and essentially reduce distances with technology. This plan puts northerners first and provides our customers with access to modern and innovative services."

Northwestel's $233 million investment will be allocated to support core infrastructure and to upgrade and expand new services by:

  • Bringing 3G wireless broadband service to an additional 67 northern communities, enabling 99 per cent of northerners to access the latest handsets, smartphones and tablets.
  • Upgrading existing wireline Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) and cable infrastructure to at least double Internet speeds in 58 communities across Northern Canada within five years.
  • Delivering Enhanced Calling Features, including Call Display, to all 96 communities in Northwestel's operating area.
  • Enabling 84 per cent of the northern population to keep their phone numbers if they choose to switch to another service provider.

"The team at Northwestel is excited by the opportunity to implement this modernization plan and provide the communities we serve and our customers with an unprecedented level of service," said Flaherty. "We are working continuously to put our customers first at Northwestel and are committed to providing these new services over the next few years. We are working to ensure the customer is the winner as a result of this modernization plan."

Northwestel's current modernization plan confirms its commitment to invest $233 million in capital. This will be the most ambitious expansion of communications technology ever undertaken in Northern Canada and will provide Northwestel's customers with leading-edge telecommunications services. Northwestel submitted its modernization plan to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) on January 16, 2012.

Northwestel's detailed modernization plan for Northern Canada will be available on the company's website atwww.nwtel.ca. Members of the public are invited to submit comments to the CRTC and support the plan. Northwestel has posted the details on how to participate in the CRTC process on its site.

About Northwestel:
Northwestel Inc. services the largest operating area of any telecommunications company in the western hemisphere over the most remote and rugged terrain in Canada. It provides a complete range of voice, video and data solutions to residential and business customers in the Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Yukon, northern British Columbia and High Level, Alberta.


SOURCE: NorthwesTel

For further information:

Eric Clement
External Communications Manager
(867) 455-4209
eclement@nwtel.ca
Or visit our website at www.nwtel.ca.




















































































































Toronto-based Medworxx Unveils Next Generation Patient Flow Solution

Medworxx Unveils Next Generation Patient Flow Solution

Medworxx is proud to announce the general availability of Medworxx 5.0, a web-based, software-as-a-service Patient Flow solution that enables appropriate care transitions and fewer readmissions across the continuum of care.


News Release

TORONTO, ONTARIO, January 17, 2013 – Medworxx Inc. (“Medworxx”) (TSXV: MWX), a leader in patient flow solutions, announced today the launch of Medworxx 5.0. This new web-based, integrated Patient Flow solution, comprised of Medworxx Utilization Management, Medworxx Bed Board, Medworxx Assessments, and Medworxx Dashboard & Analytics, is available as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) single solution.

Medworxx 5.0 is built on a platform that provides sharing of data and functionality across all modules. Medworxx clients will benefit from a reporting & analysis dashboard with pre-built reports, charts and indicators needed to make proactive decisions about improvement opportunities in care transitions and readmissions.

Offered as a SaaS solution, Medworxx 5.0 clients will be able to quickly and cost-effectively maximize the value of their investment. Medworxx 5.0 will allow clients to rapidly gain the benefit of their Patient Flow software without significant start-up costs. Clients can focus on their critical business initiatives and change process, while Medworxx enables the software.

“We are excited to introduce this unique offering into the healthcare marketplace,” said Dan Matlow, President and CEO at Medworxx. “While the individual modules within the Medworxx 5.0 can be licensed separately, the functionality and data are fully integrated. Medworxx clients will truly have the ability to optimize appropriate care transitions and reduce readmissions across the continuum of care.”

With 33% of the Canadian acute care beds and approximately 1,000 beds in the UK, Medworxx bridges clinical and operational patient flow perspectives with an increased focus on the “appropriateness” of care. Medworxx 5.0 provides insight into a large number of potential patient flow barriers in an easy-to-share and easy-to-read format for actionable and measurable improvement opportunities.

Mr. Matlow said, “The availability of this new offering will greatly assist us in our international distribution strategy. We strongly believe this new solution provides a compelling business case for our existing clients as well as new prospective clients to license the full patient flow solution.”

About Medworxx

Medworxx delivers health information technology solutions to over 350 hospitals internationally; including Canada, United States and United Kingdom. Medworxx helps hospitals meet patient flow challenges, and requirements in compliance and education. Medworxx Utilization Management system—flagship of Medworxx Patient Flow that includes electronic bed board and independent assessment components—currently serves over 33% of the acute care beds in Canada. Founded in 2004, Medworxx Inc. is based in Toronto, ON, and publicly traded on the TSX Venture Exchange:MWX

Visit www.medworxx.com

The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed this press release and neither approved nor disapproved the information contained in this press release.

Disclaimer

The statements made in this press release may contain forward-looking statements that may involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual events or results could differ materially from the company’s expectations and projections. The TSX Venture Exchange has not reviewed this press release and neither approved nor disapproved the information contained in this press release.

Media Contact

Susan Gershman
Medworxx
700 – 121 Richmond St West, Toronto, Canada M5H 2K1
T: 1.800.321.1591 | T: 416.642.1278 x322
sgershman@medworxx.comwww.medworxx.com

Dan Matlow
President & Chief Executive Officer
Medworxx
700 – 121 Richmond St West, Toronto, Canada M5H 2K1
T: 1.800.321.1591 | T: 416.642.1278 x311
dmatlow@medworxx.comwww.medworxx.com

Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Advertising Revenue to Reach $11.4 Billion in 2013

Gartner Says Worldwide Mobile Advertising Revenue to Reach $11.4 Billion in 2013

Revenue from Global Mobile Advertising to Grow 400 Percent Between 2011 and 2016

STAMFORD, Conn., January 17, 2013— Worldwide mobile advertising revenue is forecast to reach $11.4 billion in 2013, up from $9.6 billion in 2012, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide revenue will reach $24.5 billion in 2016 with mobile advertising revenue creating new opportunities for app developers, ad networks, mobile platform providers, specialty agencies and even communications service providers in certain regions. 

"The mobile advertising market took off even faster than we expected due to an increased uptake in smartphones and tablets, as well as the merger of consumer behaviors on computers and mobile devices," said Stephanie Baghdassarian, research director at Gartner. "Growth in mobile advertising comes in part at the expense of print formats, especially local newspapers, which currently face much lower ad yields as a result of mobile publishing initiatives."

"Smartphones and media tablets extend the addressable market for mobile advertising in more and more geographies as an increasing population of users spends an increasing share of its time with these devices," said Andrew Frank, research vice president at Gartner. "This market will therefore become easier to segment and target, driving the growth of mobile advertising spend for brands and advertisers. Mobile advertising should be integrated into advertisers' overall marketing campaigns in order to connect with their audience in very specific, actionable ways through their smartphones and/or tablets." 

Geographical regions will also evolve at a different pace and in different directions. Historically, the atypically large adoption of handsets for digital content consumption in Japan and South Korea has given the Asia/Pacific region an early lead in mobile advertising worldwide. Looking forward, the high-growth economies of China and India are expected to contribute increasingly to mobile advertising growth, as their expanding middle classes present attractive markets for global and local brands.

However, North America and Western Europe will close the gap on Asia/Pacific as the mobile channel gets more and more integrated with 360-degree advertising campaigns, eating up budgets historically allocated to print and radio. Consumer multitasking will drive preference for multiplatform approaches, which will blur the lines between channels and make it difficult to eliminate category overlap. In the rest of the world — Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East and Africa — mobile advertising growth will be aligned with technology adoption and the stabilization of emerging economies, but will mostly be driven by large markets such as Russia, Brazil and Mexico. 

Table 1

Mobile Advertising Revenue by Region, Worldwide, 2012-2016 (Millions of Dollars)

 

2012

2013

2014

2016

North America

3,181.5

3,825.7

4,694.9

8,866.2

Western Europe

1,600.5

1,941.4

2,367.8

4,445.4

Asia/Pacific and Japan

4,333.0

4,864.9

5,506.7

9,480.2

Rest of the World

644.1

788.0

960.6

1,768.3

Total

9,759.1

11,420.0

13,530.0

24,560.1

Source: Gartner (November 2012)

Different types of mobile advertising are evolving at a different pace and in different directions. Mobile search — including paid positioning on maps and various forms of augmented reality, all of which can be informed by location — will contribute to drive mobile ad spending across the forecast period, although it will diminish in strength as the period progresses. Gartner believes that mobile display ad spending will grow and take over from mobile search. It will initially remain divided between in-app and mobile Web (in-browser) placements — reflecting consumer usage — although after several years of in-app dominance, Web display spending will take over in-app display from 2015. 

The rapidly growing share of time that consumers spend on mobile devices is generating ad inventory at a pace considerably faster than most advertisers can shift their spending to the medium. This creates a surplus condition that is driving down unit ad prices which in turn has led to a situation in which a significant portion of mobile ad inventory is taken up by app developers paying for ads to promote their apps and get them more downloads, a category known as "paid discovery."

While the revenue basis of paid-for app store downloads provides some economic justification for this category, for many developers the outlay for ads is close to their maximum ad income or even exceeds it.

This creates a circumstance, reminiscent of the early days of Web advertising, in which cyclical advertising arrangements among websites produced an inflated picture of revenue that may ultimately prove to be a bubble. "Some correction in the growth rate must occur before demand from brand and local advertisers catches up with supply, and more sustainable economics support a faster growth rate commensurate with consumer adoption," said Ms. Baghdassarian.

Additional information is available in the Gartner report, "Forecast: Mobile Advertising, Worldwide, 2009-2016." The report is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2247015.

Contacts: 
 

Christy Pettey 
Gartner
+1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com 

Rob van der Meulen 
Gartner
+44 0 1784 267892
rob.vandermeulen@gartner.com 


About Gartner: 
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to clients in 12,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 5,000 associates, including 1,280 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, www.gartner.com.

Lenovo Introduces Rugged ThinkPad Chromebook for Schools

Lenovo Introduces Rugged ThinkPad Chromebook for Schools

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. – January 17, 2013: Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) today announced the ThinkPad X131e Chromebook -- a fast booting, highly customizable laptop PC built with rugged features for the daily rigors of K-12 education. The ThinkPad X131e Chromebook simplifies software and security management for school administrators and provides students and teachers with quick access to thousands of apps, education resources and storage.  
 
Throughout the course of a typical school day, students’ laptops are often subject to extreme wear and tear. To help school-proof them, the ThinkPad X131e has rugged features including a rubber bumper around the top cover and stronger corners to protect the system in the case of an accidental drop. The hinges and hinge brackets are also strengthened to last more than 50,000 open and close cycles.

“The ThinkPad X131e has proven to be very successful in education environments,” said Jerry Paradise, executive director of product marketing, ThinkPad Product Group. “With the rugged features we added to the X131e, we’ve seen reduced failure rates in the field. This is a huge benefit to schools and students. We’re pleased to be able to offer this hardened ThinkPad Chromebook as a great computer for schools.”
 
Latest Tools for Today’s Digital Learning Environment
Lenovo’s ThinkPad X131e Chromebook, provides students, educators, and IT administrators with an intuitive, easy-to-manage, and rugged laptop for all their computing needs right out of the box. Using Google Apps for Education along with thousands of web apps in the Chrome Web Store, students can easily create documents, edit spreadsheets, view multimedia videos, create slide show presentations and view PDF files.
 
Students can use the low-light webcam to communicate with students in other schools across the world or just across town. They can also easily connect via WiFi and Chrome’s fast start up gets students online instantly. With HDMI and VGA ports, students can present their reports to the class with a projector or big screen TV.
 
The 11.6-inch X131e laptop features an Intel® processor, a 1366x768 HD LED anti-glare screen, and three USB ports. At less than four pounds1 and battery life for the entire school day, students can easily carry the laptop between classes without the need to recharge.
 
Recognizing that one laptop doesn’t fit all, especially when it comes to schools, the ThinkPad X131e offers a number of customization options including custom colors, asset tagging services to help keep track of devices left on the school bus or in the classroom, and school logo etching to make every device unique to each educational institution2.
 
“Chromebooks are in use today by more than one-thousand K-12 schools, and they make an ideal one-to-one device because they’re more cost effective, easier to manage and maintain than traditional laptops or tablets,” said Caesar Sengupta, director of product management, Chrome OS, Google. “Lenovo has a great reputation in schools for making durable and reliable laptops, so we’re excited to partner with them to introduce the ThinkPad X131e Chromebook.”
 
Student Tested, IT Approved
As millions of students in education institutions across the country continue to use Google Apps for Education, administrators need a system that is easily manageable but also provides the layers of security required to safe guard a school’s ecosystem. In conjunction with Chrome’s built-in protection, Chromebooks allow schools’ IT teams to manage security and scalability through one dashboard. This allows IT professionals to configure and manage devices all from one place, saving time, resources and money rolling out multiple computer images.
 
For the always budget conscious educators and school administrators, Chromebooks cost less than most high end tablets and according to the IDC, require 69 percent less labor to deploy and 92 percent less labor to support3.
 
Pricing and Availability
The ThinkPad X131e Chromebook will be available starting February 26th via special bid volume pricing starting at $429. Interested K-12 institutions should contact their Lenovo Sales Representative.
 
For the latest Lenovo news, subscribe to Lenovo RSS feedsor follow Lenovo on TwitterandFacebook.
 
About Lenovo
Lenovo (HKSE: 992) (ADR: LNVGY) is a $US30 billion personal technology company – and one of the top two PC makers globally, serving customers in more than 160 countries. Dedicated to building exceptionally engineered PCs and mobile internet devices, Lenovo’s business is built on product innovation, a highly efficient global supply chain and strong strategic execution. Formed by Lenovo Group’s acquisition of the IBM Personal Computing Division, the Company develops, manufactures and markets reliable, high-quality, secure and easy-to-use technology products and services. Its product lines include legendary Think-branded commercial PCs and Idea-branded consumer PCs, as well as servers, workstations, and a family of mobile internet devices, including tablets and smart phones. Lenovo has major research centers in Yamato, Japan; Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, China; and Raleigh, North Carolina.  For more information, see www.lenovo.com.
 
 
13.92 lbs (1.78kg) with 6-cell battery
2Some customization may require a minimum order quantity
3Based on research performed by IDC, August 2012, “Quantifying the Economic Value of Chromebooks
for K–12 Education

Rackspace Announces Open Source Datacenter Strategy

Rackspace Announces Open Source Datacenter Strategy

Rackspace to further the open cloud vision by extending it into its data center infrastructure solutions

SAN ANTONIO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 16, 2013-- Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX) COO Mark Roenigk today unveiled plans by the San Antonio-based open cloud company to support and partner with Open Compute suppliers that provide open source datacenter solutions.

Rackspace launched the industry’s first OpenStack powered cloud platform of compute, storage and networking in 2012.

“Rackspace will support those companies and organizations that share our vision for an open cloud,” said Roenigk. “Rackspace is committed to supporting like-minded companies who are dedicated to open standards and breaking down the engineering barriers that lock users into proprietary technologies.”

Rackspace COO and Open Compute Foundation board member Roenigk delivered his remarks today during his keynote address at the Open Compute Summit in Santa Clara, CA.

Rackspace has contributed a server design to the Open Compute Project community and expects to announce plans later this year to purchase servers from Open Compute Project suppliers for one of the company’s new data centers.

“Open Compute Project members like Rackspace are breaking down the barriers for open cloud adoption,” saidFrank Frankovsky, Chairman of the Open Compute Foundation Chairman and Vice President of Hardware Design & Supply Chain at Facebook. “Today’s announcement by Rackspace shows the progress that the Open Compute Project is making in advancing open source infrastructure technologies.”

Rackspace is a founding member of the Open Compute Project and has worked closely with technology leaders who share a common vision for the future around open standards. As a founder of OpenStack, Rackspace’s work with theOpen Compute Project aligns with this vision.

The Open Compute Project is a rapidly growing community of engineers around the world whose mission is to design and enable the use of the most efficient server, storage and data center hardware designs for scalable computing. Open Compute members believe that openly sharing ideas, specifications and other intellectual property is the key to maximizing innovation and reducing operational complexity in the scalable computing space.

Rackspace® Hosting (NYSE: RAX) is the open cloud company, delivering open technologies and powering more than 197,000 customers worldwide. Rackspace provides its renowned Fanatical Support® across a broad portfolio of IT products, including Public Cloud, Private Cloud, Hybrid Hosting and Dedicated Hosting. Rackspace has been recognized by Bloomberg BusinessWeek as a Top 100 Performing Technology Company, is featured on Fortune’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For and is included on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Rackspace was positioned in the Leaders Quadrant by Gartner Inc. in the “2011 Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting.” Rackspace is headquartered in San Antonio with offices and data centers around the world. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

Rackspace® is a registered trademark of Rackspace Hosting Inc. OpenStack® is a registered trademark of theOpenStack Foundation. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected development, performance or market acceptance associated with the Open Compute project; anticipated operational and financial benefits from the Open Compute project; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include including the possibility that expected benefits from the Open Compute project, support services and training may not materialize because Open Compute products and services are not generally accepted in the marketplace, which could occur due to certain factors including (i) a failure to market the products and services cost effectively, differentiate the products and services from competitive products or communicate differentiations effectively, (ii) the reliability, quality or compatibility associated with the products and services, (iii) changes in technology which adversely affect the benefits of the products and services, (iv) slowdowns in the general economy or technology industry that impact consumer spending habits, (v) internal strategy decisions that impact the products and services, and (vi) other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting’s Form 10-Q for the quarter endedSeptember 30, 2012, filed with the SEC on November 7, 2012. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hostingassumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

Source: Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace Hosting
Rachel Romoff, 210-312-3732
rachel.romoff@rackspace.com

























































































Cisco Introduces Software to Extend Jabber's HD Voice, Video and Collaboration Experience to Virtual Desktops on Cisco and Third-Party Thin Clients

Cisco Introduces Software to Extend Jabber's HD Voice, Video and Collaboration Experience to Virtual Desktops on Cisco and Third-Party Thin Clients 

Cisco Continues to Evolve the Workspace With Exclusive Accessories Developed With Jabra and Logitech That Help Employees Work Their Own Way

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwire - Jan 17, 2013) - As part of Cisco's ongoing efforts to enable anytime, anywhere collaboration, Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced new software that extends the Cisco Jabber™ unified communications application to virtualized workspace environments. As part of a long-term software strategy for collaboration-enabling virtual desktops, this software, called the Virtualization Experience Media Engine (VXME), will be available initially on Cisco thin clients, followed by support for third-party devices, starting with Dell Wyse thin clients, and then Windows-based thin clients and Windows PCs.

VXME enables virtual desktop users to access Jabber's enterprise-class collaboration capabilities such as voice and high-definition (HD) video, presence and instant messaging (IM) as part of the Cisco® Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) Smart Solution. With the Cisco VXI end-to-end solution for desktop virtualization, virtual desktops, applications and collaboration services are centrally hosted on the Cisco Unified Data Center and delivered across a Cisco network to a broad array of user devices for a superior virtual workspace experience.

Cisco also announced support for new desktop accessories, designed exclusively for Cisco by Logitech and Jabra, which enable Cisco Jabber for Windows users to customize their virtual workspace to increase productivity and work more effectively. For example, a virtual desktop user logging in from a home office may want a keyboard with a unique caller-ID display and call control buttons. There are also specially designed peripherals, ranging from a standalone speaker phone to a handset to a webcam that enables Jabber® users to collaborate from their virtual desktop using HD video. Cisco, Jabra and Logitech have enhanced the collaboration desktop consisting of voice, computing and video services, into a fully integrated virtual desktop solution built around Jabber.

Today's announcement is all about helping employees work the way they want. As employees demand increased flexibility in how they work, more and more companies are turning to desktop virtualization. According to a 2012 Cisco IBSG Horizons study, 68 percent of U.S. respondents agreed that most knowledge-worker roles within their company are suitable for desktop virtualization; over half of these U.S. respondents have already implemented -- or are in the process of implementing -- a desktop virtualization strategy. Respondents indicated that the top three drivers of desktop virtualization for their organizations are data protection, employee mobility, and business agility.

ANNOUNCEMENT HIGHLIGHTS

Cisco Jabber for virtual environments, enabled by VXME, is initially available on Cisco's thin client, the Virtualization Experience Client (VXC) 6215. The VXME software is targeted for global availability in the first half of the calendar year. Additional benefits include:

- Increased choice for users: In the first half of the calendar year, the VXME software will be extended to Dell Wyse's Z50D thin client, followed by support for third-party Windows-based thin clients and Windows PCs, to enable an enhanced enterprise collaboration experience to other endpoints as part of the VXI architecture.

- Improved user experience: Cisco VXI was the first desktop virtualization architecture to eliminate the crippling network bottlenecks and server overload often caused by real-time voice and video traffic traveling between an end user device and a virtual desktop hosted in the data center. Today's announcement builds on that solution design; using the VXME software, Cisco Jabber is able to use the computing and processing resources of the local user device. This minimizes the impact of real-time HD audio and video traffic on the network and data center resources and frees up bandwidth, improving the experience for end users on a virtual desktop.

- Easier Management for IT: With today's announcement, Cisco VXI becomes the first desktop virtualization architecture to integrate network-based quality of service (QoS). The VXME software on a thin client makes the network aware of the voice and video traffic on the virtual desktop, enabling the network to automatically prioritize this collaboration traffic. This reduces jitter and delay and delivers the best possible collaboration experience.

- Highly secure access to information and collaboration virtually: With Cisco Jabber for virtual environments, Cisco VXI enhances the collaboration experience delivered without compromising on voice and video capabilities. To end users, the virtual desktop becomes a mirror of their traditional enterprise workspace, providing highly secure access to documents, corporate applications, and a full suite of collaboration tools via Jabber.

- Compatibility with top desktop virtualization partners: Cisco Jabber for virtual environments is compatible with Cisco VXI solutions running Citrix XenDesktop 5.6 FP1, Citrix XenApp Published Desktop version 6.5, or VMware View® 5.1.

Cisco is also providing options for users to personalize their virtual desktop experience, through support for new desktop accessories from Logitech and Jabra. These new accessories are built exclusively for Cisco Jabber, running natively or in virtual environments.

Traditional Desk Phone Call Control from a Keyboard:

- The Logitech UC Keyboard K725-C delivers voice and video call controls, as well as an LCD caller ID display, directly on the keyboard, fully integrated with Cisco Jabber so users can manage a complete call control experience from the keyboard itself. This is paired with the Logitech M525-C Wireless mouse.

Choice of dedicated audio and video devices:
- The Jabra Speak 450 for Cisco enables users to easily turn their workspace into a mini conference room with a hands-free speakerphone with 120-degree coverage.

- The Jabra Handset 450 for Cisco is a cordless handset that enables a familiar phone user experience for virtual desktop environments, with the convenience of having on handset mute and volume controls, as well as a message waiting indicator light.

Business-Grade High-Definition Video

- The Logitech C920-C Webcam delivers full HD video integrated with Cisco Jabber for a rich-media collaboration experience.

Supporting Quotes

Phil Sherburne, vice president of engineering, Enterprise Smart Solutions, Cisco

"The definition of an enterprise workspace is changing as users demand increasing flexibility in where and how they work. With Cisco Jabber now available for virtual environments, we are enabling customers to deliver a complete 'anywhere' desktop to their employees, without sacrificing the exceptional enterprise capabilities they have come to expect. As part of an end-to-end VXI solution, Cisco Jabber creates a new user experience for the virtual desktop."

Roland Koenig, Managing Director, Bechtle AG

"We are an IT company based in Germany with a large salesforce to meet the needs of our customers. Our account managers need reliable, highly secure access to their enterprise desktop and applications. With our pilot of Cisco Jabber for VXI, we will be able to deliver HD collaboration capabilities to the virtual desktop, giving our employees a virtual workspace that moves with them, and increasing employee productivity and satisfaction."

Hiroki Aramaki, technical specialist, Collaboration Technology, Net One Systems Co., Ltd

"Our company was considering how to implement BYOD and teleworking initiatives to create a more agile workforce. With Cisco thin clients as part of an end-to-end architecture, we are able to give our sales representatives the capability to work remotely from any location. Now, our IT organization is able to equally support Citrix and VMware desktops and easily create a sales office and back office with full functionality with only a monitor."

Krishna Subramanian, vice president of marketing and partner engagement, Desktops and Apps Group at Citrix

"Cisco and Citrix have been successfully partnering to deliver desktop virtualization solutions that empower users to collaborate from anywhere on any device. With today's announcement, Cisco and Citrix continue to drive increased business agility and workspace performance with the full Jabber suite optimized for virtual environments."

Scott Davis, chief technology officer, End User Computing, VMware

"As organizations realize the benefits of VDI and adoption grows, our customers are using VMware View® to help deliver a secure, agile and high fidelity experience to their end users. As part of Cisco's end-to-end VXI architecture, Cisco Jabber for virtual environments offers VMware View customers real-time collaboration capabilities including high-definition voice and video, helping to drive a more flexible, productive and connected workplace."

Jeff McNaught, executive director, Marketing, and chief strategy officer for Cloud Client Computing, Dell

"As the global leader in cloud client computing, Dell is focused on delivering superior user experience, a critical part of any desktop virtualization deployment. By extending the Cisco VXME software to Dell Wyse thin clients, Cisco and Dell are providing virtual desktop users with access to a suite of enhanced collaboration tools from the market leader in unified communications and collaboration. Cisco Jabber's high-quality voice and video collaboration can enable increased productivity and flexibility for virtual desktop users on our industry leading thin clients."

Mogens Elsberg, chief executive officer, Jabra

"Effective enterprise collaboration requires a high-quality user experience. A cordless handset and a standalone speakerphone designed for Cisco Jabber users introduce new audio options for Cisco Jabber on the virtual desktop. These new audio endpoints, designed for Cisco, enable users to create a complete workspace that adapts to their needs."

Eric Kintz, senior vice president & general manager, Logitech for Business

"Collaboration and increased engagement is a top priority for organizations today. Logitech's new peripherals include the first keyboard for Cisco Jabber with integrated audio, video and messaging controls, giving users the freedom to manage communications in either PC or virtual environments. The Logitech UC Solution for Cisco 725-C, designed for Cisco, also includes a full HD webcam and an ergonomically shaped mouse, enabling users to be productive and effective in any work environment, from cubicles to shared "hot desk" spaces to home offices."

Additional Resources:

- Join Cisco Collaboration leaders online as they share a strategy update, announcements overview, and demonstrations of these new solutions in the Cisco Collaboration Announcements Webcast on Jan 17 from 12-12:30 p.m. Eastern Time. Replay available at 2 p.m. ET on Jan 17. Cisco, Jabra, and Logitech experts will respond to questions online.

- Read perspectives on these announcements through blogs by Cisco Collaboration and Desktop Virtualization leaders Phil Sherburne and Fabrice Della Mea

- Find more information:

- Cisco Virtualization Experience Infrastructure (VXI) http://www.cisco.com/web/solutions/trends/virtualization/index.html

- Cisco Jabber http://www.cisco.com/web/products/voice/jabber.html

- Cisco Unified Communications Accessories http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/voicesw/uc_endpoints_accessories.html

- Hear the latest news and engage with Cisco and your peers daily through the Cisco Collaboration Community https://communities.cisco.com/community/technology/collaboration, @CiscoCollab on Twitter, and Cisco Collaboration on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/CiscoCollab. Hear directly from our Cisco Collaboration leaders through the Cisco Collaboration Blog. http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration

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About Cisco Collaboration

From award-winning IP communications to mobility, customer care, Web conferencing, messaging, enterprise social software, and interoperable telepresence experiences, Cisco brings together network-based, integrated collaboration solutions based on open standards. These solutions offered across on-premise, cloud-based or virtualized platforms, as well as services from Cisco and our partners, are designed to help promote business growth, innovation and productivity. They are also designed to help accelerate team performance, protect investments, and simplify the process of finding the right people and information.

About Cisco

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is the worldwide leader in IT that helps companies seize the opportunities of tomorrow by proving that amazing things can happen when you connect the previously unconnected. Cisco Canada Co., a wholly owned subsidiary of Cisco, has offices across Canada dedicated to customer support, sales and service. For ongoing news, please go to http://newsroom.cisco.com/canada/.

-30-

Cisco and the Cisco logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Cisco and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. A listing of Cisco's trademarks can be found at www.cisco.com/go/trademarks. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between Cisco and any other company.

Availability Disclaimer: Many of the products and features described herein remain in varying stages of development and will be offered on a when-and-if-available basis. This products and features are subject to change at the sole discretion of Cisco, and Cisco will have no liability for delay in the delivery or failure to deliver any of the products or features set forth in this document.

Contact Information

Karin Scott
Cisco
416-709-2138
kariscot@cisco.com

Andrea Berry
StrategicAmpersand Inc. (for Cisco)
416-556-6975
andberry@cisco.com

 
 
 

Microsoft Advances the Cloud OS With New Management Solutions

Microsoft Advances the Cloud OS With New Management Solutions
Jan. 15, 2013
New offerings deliver on the commitment to help customers and partners deliver cloud services and manage connected devices.

REDMOND, Wash. — Jan. 15, 2013 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of new solutions to help enterprise customers manage hybrid cloud services and connected devices with greater agility and cost-efficiency. System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 (SP1), the enhanced Windows Intune, Windows Azure services for Windows Server and other new offerings deliver against the Microsoft Cloud OS vision to provide customers and partners with the platform to address their top IT challenges.

“With Windows Server and Windows Azure at its core, the Cloud OS provides a consistent platform across customer datacenters, service provider datacenters and the Microsoft public cloud,” said Michael Park, corporate vice president of marketing for Server and Tools, Microsoft. “Powerful management and automation capabilities are key elements of the Cloud OS, taking the heavy lifting out of administration and freeing IT organizations to be more innovative as they embrace hybrid cloud computing and the consumerization of IT.”

Park today wrote about the Cloud OS on the The Official Microsoft Blog here.

Transforming the Datacenter

Using System Center 2012 SP1 with Windows Server 2012, customers can shift from managing datacenter components separately to delivering resources as a whole, including networking, storage and compute. Cloud infrastructure capabilities such as multitenancy, software-defined networking and storage virtualization are built in and ready for automated, hybrid cloud environments.

With the updated System Center, customers can centrally manage cloud-based applications and resources running in their datacenters, on a hosted service provider datacenter or on Windows Azure. By integrating service provider cloud capacity and management directly into their operations, enterprises can extend their datacenter capabilities. Administrators can move virtual machines to Windows Azure and manage them from within System Center, based on their needs.

Customers can also use System Center 2012 SP1 to back up their servers to Windows Azure to help protect against data loss and corruption. In addition, SP1 supports Global Service Monitor, a new Windows Azure-based service available for trial evaluation today, which provides Web application performance measurement from a user’s perspective.

Hosting Service Providers and the Cloud OS

Hosting service providers play a key role in the Cloud OS with the opportunity to deliver new solutions, attract more customers and grow revenues. With Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 SP1, they can build multitenant, massive-scale cloud services that interoperate with customer datacenter operations. For example, System Center 2012 SP1 delivers a Service Provider Foundation API, which hosting partners can use to give customers self-service management of hosted infrastructure and applications.

Microsoft today released Windows Azure technologies that hosting service providers can run on their own Windows Server 2012 infrastructure for high-scale website and virtual machine hosting services. These capabilities are specifically designed for easy incorporation into hosting service providers’ offerings for deployment to their customer bases.

Unified PC and Device Management

With the new release of the Windows Intune service and System Center 2012 Configuration Manager SP1, enterprise customers can centrally manage a full array of PCs, laptops and mobile devices. With one management console, IT organizations can crack the bring-your-own-device challenge, helping ensure secure and productive employee experiences with applications and data on virtually any device, anywhere.

Working as a unified solution, Windows Intune and System Center Configuration Manager provide a comprehensive approach to better securing and managing the new generation of powerful Windows 8 PCs, Windows RT tablets and Windows Phone 8 smartphones, as well as the diversity of other platforms in today’s modern enterprise.

More information about System Center 2012 SP1 is available athttp://www.microsoft.com/systemcenter, and more information about Windows Intune is available at http://www.microsoft.com/intune. Those interested can follow the conversation on Twitter at #CloudOS, @WindowsServer@WindowsIntune and @MSServerCloud.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Note to editors: For more information, news and perspectives from Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft News Center at http://www.microsoft.com/news. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/news/contactpr.mspx.

Gartner Executive Program Survey of More Than 2,000 CIOs Shows Digital Technologies Are Top Priorities in 2013

Gartner Executive Program Survey of More Than 2,000 CIOs Shows Digital Technologies Are Top Priorities in 2013

Survey Highlights the Need for CIOs to Set Aside Old Rules and Adopt New Tools

STAMFORD, Conn., January 16, 2013—            Enterprises realize on average only 43 percent of technology's business potential, according to a global survey of CIOs by Gartner, Inc.'s Executive Programs. That number has to grow for IT to remain relevant in an increasingly digital world. 

The worldwide survey was conducted in the fourth quarter in 2012 and included 2,053 CIOs, representing more than $230 billion in CIO IT budgets and covering 36 industries in 41 countries. The Gartner Executive Programs report, "Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World: The 2013 CIO Agenda," represents the world's most comprehensive examination of business priorities and CIO strategies. 

Over the last 18 months, digital technologies — including mobile, analytics, big data, social and cloud — have reached a tipping point with business executives. Analysts said there is no choice but to increase technology's potential in the enterprise, and this means evolving IT's strategies, priorities and plans beyond tending to the usual concerns as CIOs expect their 2013 IT budgets to be essentially flat for fifth straight year. 

"Digital technologies provide a platform to achieve results, but only if CIOs adopt new roles and behaviors to find digital value," said Mark McDonald, group vice president and Gartner Fellow. "CIOs require a new agenda that incorporates hunting for new digital innovations and opportunities, and harvesting value from products, services and operations. 

"In a world of change, it is concerning that around half of CIOs surveyed do not see IT's enterprise role changing over the next three years," Mr. McDonald said. "IT needs new tools if it hopes to hunt for technology-intensive innovation and harvest raised business performance from transformed IT infrastructure, operations and applications. Without change, CIOs and IT consign themselves to tending a garden of legacy assets and responsibilities." 

The survey showed that CIO IT budgets have been flat to negative ever since the dot-com bust of 2002. For 2013, CIO IT budgets are projected to be slightly down, with a weighted global average decline of 0.5 percent. 

Digital technologies dominate CIO technology priorities for 2013. The top 10 global technology priorities revealed by the survey reflect a greater emphasis on externally oriented digital technologies, as opposed to traditional IT/operationally oriented systems (see Table 1). 

Table 1
T
op 10 CIO Business and Technology Priorities in 2013

Top 10 Business Priorities

Ranking

Top 10 Technology Priorities

Ranking

Increasing enterprise growth

1

Analytics and business intelligence

1

Delivering operational results

2

Mobile technologies

2

Reducing enterprise costs

3

Cloud computing (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS)

3

Attracting and retaining new customers

4

Collaboration technologies (workflow)

4

Improving IT applications and infrastructure

5

Legacy modernization

5

Creating new products and services (innovation)

6

IT management

6

Improving efficiency

7

CRM

7

Attracting and retaining the workforce

8

Virtualization

8

Implementing analytics and big data

9

Security

9

Expanding into new markets and geographies

10

ERP Applications

10

SaaS = software as a service; IaaS = infrastructure as a service; PaaS = platform as a service
Source: Gartner Executive Programs (January 2013) 

CIOs see these technologies as disrupting business fundamentally over the next 10 years. When asked which digital technologies would be most disruptive, 70 percent of CIOs cited mobile technologies, followed by big data/analytics at 55 percent, social media at 54 percent and public cloud at 51 percent. The disruptiveness of each of these technologies is real, but CIOs see their greatest disruptive power coming in combination, rather than in isolation. 

"As CIOs continue to amplify the enterprise with digital technologies while improving IT organizational structure, management and governance, 2013 promises to be a year of dual priorities," said Dave Aron, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "Key CIO strategies identified in the survey reflect the realities of these dual business priorities and confirm the need to expand IT's ability to hunt for new opportunities and harvest current business value. While CIOs recognize that IT's value contribution comes from delivering business solutions, they also recognize that the prioritization and delivery of specific results must change." 

As needs and opportunities evolve, more CIOs will find themselves leading in areas outside of traditional IT. In addition to their tending role, they are starting to assume responsibility for hunting for digital opportunities and harvesting value. Sixty-seven percent of CIOs surveyed have significant leadership responsibilities outside of IT, with only 33 percent having no other such responsibilities. This situation contrasts sharply with 2008, when almost half of CIOs had no responsibilities outside of IT. Almost a fifth of CIOs now act as their enterprise's chief digital officer (CDO), leading digital commerce and channels. Although this nascent role varies in scope and style, it normally includes championing the digital vision for the business — that is, ensuring that the business is evolving optimally in the new digital context. 

"IT cannot expect to secure additional funding without assuming new responsibilities or producing new results," said Mr. Aron. "Reacting to limited budgets by restructuring costs, outsourcing and doing more with less made sense from 2002 to 2011, when the supply of innovative technologies was scarce. Adapting to, and leading, in the digital world requires doing things differently, yet in ways consistent with the demands of digital technologies. CIOs need to make the case that mainstream emerging mobile, big data, social and cloud technologies justify revisiting IT budget and investment levels." 

"CIOs knew that doing the right thing required tending to IT by delivering cost-effective quality services. CIOs and IT leaders managed cost, complexity and risk to enable business operations in a world of managed stability," Mr. McDonald said. "However, the world outside IT changed creating a quiet crisis for IT. Demands have increased in a world grown dynamic and digital. The harder CIOs work tended to current concerns, the less relevant IT became. CIOs know that the future rests in not repeating the past but in extending IT by hunting and harvesting in a digital world." 

More-detailed analysis on the CIO agenda for 2013 will be presented in two webinars. During these webinars, Mr. McDonald and Mr. Aron will outline the results from the 2013 CIO agenda survey and the top business and technology priorities for CIOs. The "Agenda 2013 — Implications for High-Tech Providers" webinar will be hosted on February 5 at 11 a.m. EST. To register for this complimentary webinar, please visithttp://my.gartner.com/webinardetail/resId=2299616. The webinar "New Priorities, Technologies and Leaders Shaping the Future of IT" will be hosted by Gartner on February 21 at 10 a.m. EST. To register for this webinar, please visithttp://my.gartner.com/webinardetail/resId=2299617.

 About Gartner Executive Programs
Thousands of CIOs and IT executives worldwide receive customized advice and participate in peer exchange opportunities through the membership-based programs of Gartner Executive Programs. Members enjoy personalized Gartner service, unique insight into the CIO role and the shared knowledge of the largest communities of their kind. 

Through membership benefits including a team of service delivery professionals, exclusive research, access to CIO experts, peer networking opportunities and a rich online experience, programs such as Gartner for IT Executives CIO, CIO Signature and CIO Essentials equip members with the tools and knowledge they need to deliver exceptional results for their organizations. Additional information about Gartner Executive Programs can be found on Gartner's website athttp://www.gartner.com/technology/cio/.

Contacts: 
 

Christy Pettey 
Gartner
+1 408 468 8312
christy.pettey@gartner.com 

Rob van der Meulen 
Gartner
+44 0 1784 267892
rob.vandermeulen@gartner.com 


About Gartner: 
Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is the valuable partner to clients in 12,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, U.S.A., and has 5,000 associates, including 1,280 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, www.gartner.com.

Symantec Global Survey Reveals Upsurge in Rogue Clouds and Other Hidden Costs

Symantec Global Survey Reveals Upsurge in Rogue Clouds and Other Hidden Costs

 

 

TORONTO – January 16, 2013 – Organizations are widely migrating to the cloud to gain competitive advantages around speed, agility and flexibility according to Symantec Corp’s. (Nasdaq: SYMC) recent Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud 2013 Survey. In fact, more than 90 percent of all organizations are at least discussing cloud, up from 75 percent a year ago. Other key survey findings showed enterprises and SMBs are experiencing escalating costs tied to rogue cloud use, complex backup and recovery, and inefficient cloud storage. Rogue clouds are defined as business groups implementing public cloud applications that are not managed by or integrated into the company’s IT infrastructure.

 

Industry experts predict several key issues will arise in 2013 focused on the financial pressures and security challenges of cloud computing. Business continuity is seen as an important issue with the increase in cloud outages posing greater risks than security breaches. Over the holidays, a leading cloud service provider experienced an outage, which they quickly remediated. This outage impacted businesses and posed important concerns around data loss prevention, backup, time spent on data recovery and the associated costs. However, with advance preparation, organizations can build safe, agile and efficient clouds that will enable them to meet their business goals.

 

Read more detailed blog post: Avoiding Hidden Costs in the Cloud

 

By taking control of cloud deployments, companies can seize advantage of the flexibility and cost savings associated with the cloud, while minimizing the data control and security risks linked with rogue cloud use,” said Francis deSouza, group president, Enterprise Products and Services, Symantec.

 

Click to Tweet:  77% of businesses saw rogue cloud deployments last year, 40% of them suffered exposure of confidential info: http://bit.ly/X988cQ 

 

Rogue Cloud Implementations

According to the survey, rogue cloud deployments are one of the cost pitfalls. It is a surprisingly common problem, found in more than three quarters (77 percent) of businesses within the last year. It also seems to be an issue experienced more by enterprises (83 percent), due to their larger company size, than SMBs (70 percent). 

 

Among organizations who reported rogue cloud issues, 40 percent experienced the exposure of confidential information, and more than a quarter faced account takeover issues, defacement of Web properties, or stolen goods or services. The most commonly cited reasons for undertaking  rogue cloud projects were to save time and money.

 

Cloud Backup and Recovery Issues

Cloud is complicating backup and recovery. First, most organizations use three or more solutions to back-up their physical, virtual and cloud data—leading to increased IT inefficiencies, risk and training costs. Furthermore, 43 percent of organizations have lost cloud data (47 percent of enterprises and 36 percent of SMBs), and most (68 percent) have experienced recovery failures.

 

Finally, most see cloud recovery as a slow, tedious process. Only 32 percent rate this is as fast and 22 percent estimate it would take three or more days to recover from a catastrophic loss of data in the cloud.

 

Inefficient Cloud Storage

One of the key advantages to cloud storage is how simple it is to provision. Sometimes this simplicity leads to inefficient cloud storage. Generally, organizations strive to maintain a storage utilization rate above 50 percent. According to the survey, cloud storage utilization is surprisingly low at 17 percent. There is a tremendous difference in this area between enterprises (which are utilizing 26 percent of their storage) and SMBs (which is a shockingly low seven percent). Furthermore, roughly half admit very little, if any, of their cloud data is deduplicated, further compounding the problem. 

 

Compliance and eDiscovery Concerns

According to the survey, 49 percent of organizations are concerned about meeting compliance requirements in the cloud, and a slightly larger number (53 percent) are concerned about being able to prove they have met cloud compliance requirements. This concern about information in the cloud is well founded, as 23 percent of organizations have been fined for cloud privacy violations.

 

eDiscovery is creating additional pressure on businesses to quickly find the right information. One-third of businesses reported receiving eDiscovery requests for cloud data. Of those, two-thirds have missed their cloud discovery deadlines, leading to fines and legal risks.

Data in Transit Issues

Organizations have all sorts of assets in the cloud – such as web properties, online businesses or web applications – that require SSL certificates to protect the data in transit whether it is personal or financial information, business transactions and other online interactions. The survey showed companies found managing many SSL certificates to be highly complex: Just 27 percent rate cloud SSL certificate management as easy and only 40 percent are certain their cloud-partner’s certificates are in compliance with corporate standards.

 

Hidden Costs Are Easily Avoided

The survey shows ignoring these hidden costs will have a serious impact on business. However, these issues are easily mitigated with careful planning, implementation and management: 

  • Focus policies on information and people, not technologies or platforms
  • Educate, monitor and enforce policies
  • Embrace tools that are platform agnostic
  • Deduplicate data in the cloud

 

Symantec’s Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud 2013 Survey

Symantec’s 2013 Cloud Survey is a result of research conducted by ReRez in September-October 2012. The full study represents 3,236 organizations from 29 countries. Responses came from companies with a range of  five to more than 5,000 employees. Of those responses, 1,358 came from SMBs and 1,878 came from enterprises.

 

Resources

 

Connect with Symantec

 

About Symantec

Symantec protects the world’s information, and is a global leader in security, backup and availability solutions. Our innovative products and services protect people and information in any environment – from the smallest mobile device, to the enterprise data center, to cloud-based systems. Our world-renowned expertise in protecting data, identities and interactions gives our customers confidence in a connected world. More information is available at www.symantec.com or by connecting with Symantec at: go.symantec.com/socialmedia.

###

Dell Adds Two New Utilities to Virtualization Freeware Suite

Dell Adds Two New Utilities to Virtualization Freeware Suite

  • New storage and change tracking utilities added to vOPS Server Explorer

 
Dell Software announced today the addition of two new utilities to its vOPS Server Explorer freeware appliance from Dell acquisition VKernel, a noted provider of enterprise-class capacity management and performance monitoringproducts for virtualized data centers and cloud environments. The new Storage Explorer utility assesses storage performance and capacity, while Change Explorer tracks the evolution of configuration changes in the virtual environment. The new utilities are part of the vOPS Server Explorer suite that now contains five free utilities in one downloadable virtual appliance.

Storage often is viewed as the foundation of virtual environments, and it is the subsystem that can be the root of most performance or capacity challenges. Assessing storage metrics is critical to ensuring the virtual environment continues to operate with expected performance and availability. Unfortunately, due to the magnitude and complexity of these metrics, proper analysis can require a significant amount of manual data mining and calculation.Storage Explorer is designed to alleviate many of these challenges by using the same analytics and advisory engine found in the core vOPS Server Standard product to provide virtual administrators with a rapid assessment of the state of their storage environment.

Assessed values include:

  • Storage performance across datastores, highlighting performance bottlenecks;
  • Storage capacity and over-commitment across datastores, highlighting low-capacity environments;
  • VMs causing the most storage traffic and potential bottlenecks; and,
  • VM disk capacity alerting to those virtual machines running out of space.

While storage is a critical part of the virtual environment, changes in the virtualization layer also can have severe impact on performance. When there are multiple VM administrators, one admin can make a single change that drastically changes the performance characteristics for the entire environment, which consumes troubleshooting time for all administrators.

To address these issues, Change Explorer lists all changes that occurred to datacenters, clusters, resource pools, hosts, datastores, and VMs within the previous seven days, and includes associated risk impact. Using Change Explorer, problematic changes to virtualization environments are easily identified for rollback.

Both Change Explorer and Storage Explorer are part of vOPS Server Explorer, a single downloadable virtual appliance that now offers five free utilities:

  • Environment Explorer – Provides at-a-glance information about performance, efficiency and capacity.
  • vScope Explorer – Offers immediate identification of VMs, hosts and datastores that are suffering performance, capacity and efficiency issues.
  • SearchMyVM Explorer – Delivers “Google-like” search capabilities of the virtual environment.
  • Storage Explorer - Assesses storage performance and capacity across datastores and VMs.
  • Change Explorer – Lists all changes that occur in a virtual environment, and provides associated risk impact.

“Storage Explorer provides a very good overview of your storage environment and quickly tells you if there are any storage problems at the datastore or VM level,” said David Davis, author and evangelist at TrainSignal.com. “Change Explorer shows what configuration changes have occurred and who did the changes – a capability that definitely can save you time troubleshooting your environment. The free utilities in vOPS Server Explorer have helped me many times when troubleshooting virtual environments.” 

“These two additional utilities available with our award-winning freeware suite will help virtualization administrators gain better visibility and understanding of the health of their storage environment, as well track configuration changes across the virtual environment,” said Mattias Sundling, product evangelist, Dell. 

General Availability
vOPS Server Explorer is now available for download from http://www.vkernel.com/download/server-explorer. vOPS Server Explorer installs in minutes as a virtual appliance, and supports the following hypervisors: VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.

About Dell
Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that give them the power to do more. For more information, visit www.dell.com and http://www.quest.com.