PayPerCloud(TM) Revamps Network With Ethernet Fabric and 10 GbE to Meet Growing Demand

Press release:

PayPerCloud(TM) Revamps Network With Ethernet Fabric and 10 GbE to Meet Growing Demand

Share on facebookShare on twitterShare on diggShare on stumbleuponShare on newsvineShare on redditShare on googlebuzzShare on emailShare on print

Brocade Helps Cloud Hosting Company Increase Orders by 160 Percent After Displacing Incumbent Networking Vendor

SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 07/31/2012 -- (NASDAQ: BRCD) Cloud hosting provider PayPerCloud ran its business on a mix of servers and storage connected with various network switches operating at 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE), but the aging infrastructure was unable to scale with its growing business. The company was running out of physical ports and experiencing performance issues. It needed a 10 GbE solution.

After evaluating several solutions, PayPerCloud replaced its infrastructure with a Brocade® Ethernet fabric that includesBrocade VDX® 6720 Switches and Brocade MLX® Series routers. The comprehensive solution from Brocade delivered the performance, scalability and reliability PayPerCloud needed, as well as the design, installation, service and support.

PayPerCloud relies on Brocade VDX 6720 switches for 10 GbE top-of-rack server connectivity. These connect to Brocade MLX-16 routers in a Multi-Chassis Trunking (MCT) configuration, enabling network-level virtualization and enhanced network reliability. A Brocade MLXe-4 chassis resides at the edge of the network and supports connections between servers and storage, as well as 10 GbE Internet connectivity. SAN storage arrays connect to Brocade MLXe-16 chassis to provide storage connectivity to the various environments.

California-based PayPerCloud -- specializing in creating a high-availability, cloud-hosting infrastructure and cloud-enabled applications -- has since launched VaultScape™, an online backup service, based on its new storage capabilities. The Brocade network infrastructure allows PayPerCloud to easily support new customers on the bandwidth-intensive backup service as it continues to grow. PayPerCloud subsequently grew its customer base 81 percent in 2011, and orders are currently up 160 percent for 2012.

PayPerCloud also increased its server-rack density from eight servers per rack to 12, a 50 percent increase, and expects to reduce power consumption by approximately 60 percent. "Now we have half as many cables to manage," said Miles Feinberg, president of PayPerCloud. "And VM management takes a lot less time with Brocade Network Advisor."

The Brocade Automatic Migration of Port Profiles (AMPP) feature ensures that a consistent port profile is applied to all VDX switches in the fabric. Whenever there is a VM motion event, it dynamically configures the switch ports to ensure that VM traffic experiences consistent policies and configurations. PayPerCloud is leveraging AMPP with Brocade Network Advisor, a graphic user interface (GUI) based network management tool, to automate a previously manual process.

This incredible growth was almost upended by the company's aging network. "When we moved to pure hosting services, we discovered our weak points," said Feinberg. "Brocade helped us architect a plan that fulfills our business goals, and service and support have been great."

What Is an Ethernet Fabric?

Compared to classic hierarchical Ethernet, Ethernet fabrics provide higher levels of performance, utilization, availability and simplicity. Moreover, they have the following characteristics:

• Flatter: Ethernet fabrics are self-aggregating, enabling a flatter network.
• Intelligent: Switches in the fabric know about each other and all connected devices.
• Scalable: All paths are available to help ensure high performance and reliability.
• Efficient: Traffic automatically travels along the shortest path.
• Simple: The fabric is managed as a single logical entity.

"The interest in Ethernet fabric offerings and customer adoption are all on the rise. Customers want to migrate to an Ethernet fabric with minimal disruption to current operations. An access layer-based approach addresses the pains that drive many to look at fabrics to begin with: the latency and unnecessary load on core switches that is incurred without the risk associated with a 'rip and replace' strategy. The right fabric does not require an entirely new set of skills and training to manage, and solid solutions do exist," said Zeus Kerravala, founder ZK Research.

In the PayPerCloud environment, Brocade 1860 Fabric Adapter cards installed in Dell servers enable 10 GbE connectivity to the Microsoft Hyper-V hosts and security systems, which provide 10 GbE backup performance. Brocade Network Advisor gives PayPerCloud end-to-end visibility through an integrated interface that manages the Brocade devices, the remaining incumbent devices and third-party monitoring tools.

PayPerCloud has noticed significant performance and bandwidth improvements as a result of the network upgrade. "We went from eight- to nine-millisecond latency to the Internet backbone to sub-millisecond latency. Our rack-to-rack latency is in the nanoseconds, whereas before it was three to four milliseconds," said Feinberg.

The Brocade network infrastructure also has enabled increased capacity and scalability. "Our capacity originally was 48 servers per row and 30 VMs per machine, and we were maxed out. Today, the Brocade architecture allows us to support 72 servers per row and 540 possible VMs in a rack. If we need more 10 GbE capacity, we can scale out easily," said Feinberg.

Brocade VDX 6720 switches are among the lowest power consuming top-of-rack switches on the market.

Additional Assets:

Case study: Hosting Company Finds Success in the Cloud with Brocade  

Tags: PayPerCloud, Ethernet Fabric, Brocade, VDX, MLX, Brocade Network Advisor

About BrocadeBrocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) networking solutions help the world's leading organizations transition smoothly to a world where applications and information reside anywhere. (www.brocade.com)

Press release:

Korea’s Amoje Corporation Partners with IBM to Drive Food Services Market Growth through Scalable IT Solutions

Will allow Amoje to maintain the quality of its food services operations, continue to expand accounts

Tab navigation

• News release
• Related XML feeds

• Contact(s) information

Seoul, South Korea - 27 Jul 2012: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it has partnered with Amoje Corporation, a leading food services company in South Korea, to design and implement a scalable and efficient solution that provides an integrated management information system to support the growth and expansion of Amoje’s business. IBM will also manage the company’s IT infrastructure, run applications through an IBM designed and operated data center, and provide operational support for the next five years.

This partnership will help Amoje establish a robust IT environment allowing it to scale up operations, bring greater system efficiency, enable higher productivity and ensure business availability. IBM’s application on demand (AOD) service allows Amoje to build a sophisticated business application system. In addition, by providing faster management information, Amoje can speed up its decision-making process.

“Having a strong IT environment is key to our success and IBM’s experience and expertise will help us achieve our business goals,” Huiho Shin, CEO of Amoje Corporation, said. “We expect a high-quality IT service for continuing growth and management innovation through this partnership with IBM, which has the industry knowledge and deep technical skills to understand and address our needs.”

Amoje supplies food to distribution companies, large restaurants and their affiliates and franchises, as well as to school lunch, catering services and resort cafeterias, major supermarkets, discount and warehouse stores. With rapid growth of more than 20 percent annually in recent years, Amoje has expanded its presence in Korea and has started an overseas operation in Thailand. The company’s growth is due in part to its efforts to meet customer demand for international, high quality food products.

By entering into an agreement with IBM for efficient IT infrastructure management, Amoje can ensure greater focus on its core business applications without making large initial investments. The stable, managed infrastructure provided by IBM enables Amoje to manage cost, sales, and profit-and-loss information with an integrated view, so that the company can make decisions quickly and enhance customer service.  With this agreement, the company can continue to maintain the quality of its food, continuously expand its accounts, and strive to offer the total services solutions necessary to stay competitive.

“In Korea, IBM has been working with small and medium sized companies across various sectors to improve their competitiveness,” said Won Jong Kim, general manager of GTS, IBM Korea. “We are happy to provide a smarter IT service to Amoje Corporation through IBM’s application on demand service and hope to establish a long-term relationship with them.”

IBM Korea’s application on demand services specialize in small and medium-sized businesses. The application covers IBM’s integrated, managed services portfolio and supports systematic construction as well as its operation of core business applications. The services include application development, software and hardware operations, data center, and application operation support. After the service construction, the user receives a stable, integrated management and maintenance service based on the IBM data center.

About Amoje Corporation 
For more information about Amoje, visit: http://www.amojeind.com

About IBM
For more information about IBM, visit: http://www.ibm.com/services  

Press release:

Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute Gains Infrastructure Reliability with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

Raleigh

NC, Global, July 25, 2012

Belgian Weather Forecaster Selects Red Hat Virtualization Technology and Achieves Cost Savings and Minimizes Downtime

RALEIGH, NC – July 25, 2012 – Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI) has migrated to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. This deployment is expected to provide considerable cost savings by optimizing the efficiency of the organization’s existing servers.

KMI provides weather forecasts by analyzing large amounts of meteorological data. Due to the nature of its services, KMI relies heavily on its IT environment and therefore requires a highly available, around-the clock infrastructure. An advocate of open source solutions, it had been a satisfied Red Hat Enterprise Linux customer for six years before deciding to virtualize its systems and applications on Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.

The aim of the project was to optimize the organization’s use of technology resources and simplify the execution of activities, including systems management, testing developments, migration and new applications introduction. KMI chose Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization due to the benchmark results achieved with the solution’s Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor technology.

Migration to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization will allow KMI to optimize the use of its IT resources, lower costs and minimize server downtime. The virtualization platform supports DNS servers, DHCP, webmail, an FTP production server for exchanges with KMI customers as well as a server for the Zimbra Collaboration Suite, which provides email, calendar and contact management.

“Thanks to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, we expect to not only be able to realize good cost savings, but also enjoy a very high standard of IT performance, in compliance with our strong open source views,” said Emmanuel Strobbe, systems engineer at KMI. To migrate to Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, KMI had to bid farewell to several UNIX and Microsoft Windows servers. Its new Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers platform supports KMI's virtual servers that run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows software, such as Windows login-server, Windows domain server with Active Directory and an antivirus server for Windows updates. The hardware consists of a cluster of four Dell PowerEdge R710 servers with EMC NX4 storage.

The switchover to a virtualized infrastructure will be executed in phases and should be completed by the end of 2012. The operational team already uses the new software for weather prediction and experimentation.

Additional Resources
Download a free, fully supported 60-day trial of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization product pages

Connect with Red Hat
Get more Red Hat news or subscribe to the Red Hat news RSS feed
Follow Red Hat on Twitter
Join Red Hat on Facebook
Watch Red Hat videos on YouTube

About Red Hat, Inc.
Red Hat is the world's leading provider of open source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to reliable and high-performing cloud, Linux, middleware, storage and virtualization technologies. Red Hat also offers award-winning support, training, and consulting services. As the connective hub in a global network of enterprises, partners, and open source communities, Red Hat helps create relevant, innovative technologies that liberate resources for growth and prepare customers for the future of IT. Learn more at http://www.redhat.com.

Forward-Looking Statements
Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements provide current expectations of future events based on certain assumptions and include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including: risks related to delays or reductions in information technology spending; the effects of industry consolidation; the ability of the Company to compete effectively; uncertainty and adverse results in litigation and related settlements; the integration of acquisitions and the ability to market successfully acquired technologies and products; the inability to adequately protect Company intellectual property and the potential for infringement or breach of license claims of or relating to third party intellectual property; the ability to deliver and stimulate demand for new products and technological innovations on a timely basis; risks related to data and information security vulnerabilities; ineffective management of, and control over, the Company's growth and international operations; fluctuations in exchange rates; and changes in and a dependence on key personnel, as well as other factors contained in our most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q (copies of which may be accessed through the Securities and Exchange Commission's website athttp://www.sec.gov), including those found therein under the captions "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations". In addition to these factors, actual future performance, outcomes, and results may differ materially because of more general factors including (without limitation) general industry and market conditions and growth rates, economic and political conditions, governmental and public policy changes and the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods. The forward-looking statements included in this press release represent the Company's views as of the date of this press release and these views could change. However, while the Company may elect to update these forward-looking statements at some point in the future, the Company specifically disclaims any obligation to do so. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing the Company's views as of any date subsequent to the date of this press release.

###

VMware Announces VMware vFabric Data Director 2.0, Adds Support for Oracle to Enterprise Database as a Service Platform

VMware News Releases

VMware Announces VMware vFabric Data Director 2.0, Adds Support for Oracle to Enterprise Database as a Service Platform

Database-aware Virtualization on VMware vSphere, and Self-Service Lifecycle Management Reduce Database Costs and Accelerate Application Development

PALO ALTO, Calif., July 10, 2012 –VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced VMware® vFabricTM Data Director 2.0 with support for virtualization of Oracle databases on VMware vSphere®.vFabric Data Director 2.0 simplifies and automates database lifecycle management, allowing IT to deliver Database as a Service in order to increase developer agility while reducing total cost of ownership for databases.
 
“The journey to cloud computing is all about reducing complexity for developers and IT operations in order to be able to more effectively meet the demands of today’s application realities – faster development cycles, more data and higher expectations for IT responsiveness,” said Jerry Chen, vice president, Cloud and Application Services, VMware. “VMware vFabric™ Data Director leverages the benefits of virtualization at the database tier to reduce database complexity and cost through policy-based automation and a self-service management model.”

Today, enterprises and service providers are rapidly implementing self-service cloud platforms that enable IT to quickly provision virtual machines and other core infrastructure components. Now, users are looking for their IT providers to deliver similar benefits from the most critical software solutions, including databases. VMware vFabric Data Director’s database virtualization makes this possible while addressing some of the challenges customers face managing a growing, heterogeneous database infrastructure—long lead times for developers, overworked DBAs and excessive operational costs.

Self-Service Database Lifecycle Management
vFabric Data Director 2.0 automates deployment, management and governance of heterogeneous databases and enables IT to securely automate and delegate routine database management tasks, including provisioning, backup, cloning and patching. This means application teams can provision or refresh a database in minutes rather than days and IT can offer developers self-service database access while maintaining control and compliance through policy.

New and expanded capabilities in vFabric Data Director 2.0 include:

• Expanded database support – vFabric Data Director 2.0 now supports Oracle 10gR2, Oracle 11gR2 as well asvFabric Postgres 9.1 (a VMware optimized relational database based on PostgreSQL).
• Automated physical-to-virtual migration – To further simplify database virtualization, vFabric Data Director 2.0 now automates the process of migrating a physical database into a virtual environment. This enables enterprises to consolidate existing databases on VMware vSphere, achieving further cost savings and agility.
• Integration with cloud infrastructure and big data solutions – APIs for integration with other products such as vCloud® Director™, vFabric Application Director™,the Cloud Foundry™ open source project, EMC Data Domain, and Greenplum Chorus. Enterprises using these products can now leverage Data Director for database provisioning and management for an integrated experience.

"One of the primary obstacles to infrastructure migration, be it to virtualized environments or to the cloud, is the complexity and risk associated with the database," said Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst at RedMonk. "Now, with support for Oracle as well as PostgreSQL, VMware is offering customers a more seamless transition of database assets."

vFabric Data Director is part of the VMware vFabric family of products which includes GemFire®, SQLFire and runtime products optimized for Spring, a Java development framework, plus a complete set of services to build, run and manage modern applications in distributed cloud environments.

Pricing and Availability
vFabric Data Director 2.0 is currently available and is licensed per VM of managed database at $750 per VM up to two vCPUs. For more information, please visit the product page.

Additional Resources

• Data Director product sheet
• Tune into a live Webcast on Thursday, July 26 at 9:00 AM PTto learn more about virtualizing Oracle databases with VMware vFabric Data Director
• Oracle Databases on VMware - Best Practices Guide
• Understanding Oracle Certification, Support and Licensing for VMware Environments
• VMware vCloud Director
• VMware vFabric Application Director
• Cloud Foundry

About VMware
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 350,000 customers and 50,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

VMware, Cloud Foundry, VMware vCloud,GemFire,VMware vFabric and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

# # #

VMware Named a Leader in Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure

VMware News Releases

VMware Named a Leader in Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 29, 2012 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced that it has been positioned by Gartner, Inc. in the Leaders Quadrant of the 2012 Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure. (1) 

According to Gartner, “Virtualization penetration has surpassed 50 percent of all server workloads, and it continues to grow.” The report continues: “The x86 server virtualization infrastructure market is the foundation for two extremely important market trends that relate and overlap: infrastructure modernization and cloud computing. Virtualization is a fundamental enabler to IaaS, and will be used to establish private cloud services, public cloud services and interoperable hybrid cloud services.”

"VMware customers of all sizes are leveraging a decade of virtualization investments to build cloud operations that will allow them to achieve the peak in automation, flexibility and efficiency," said Rick Jackson, VMware CMO. "We believe our placement in the Leaders Quadrant underscores that VMware has the vision, strategy and offerings to help customers transform IT and deliver on the promise of cloud computing."

Industry Momentum and Recognition

VMware vSphere® is the most widely deployed virtualization platform in the world, broadly utilized by enterprises, small and midsize businesses (SMBs), public cloud service providers and as a foundation for the growing virtual desktop (VDI) market.

• In the past year, VMware's customer base has grown to more than 350,000 customers worldwide, including 100 percent of the Fortune 100.
• There are now more than 125 verified VMware vCloud® public clouds across 26 countries.
• More than 2,000 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) support more than 3,600 applications running on VMware vSphere.

To access the 2012 Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure, go to:http://www.gartner.com/reprints/vmware?id=1-1B2IRYF&ct=120626&st=sg

About the Magic Quadrant
Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About VMware
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 350,000 customers and 50,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.
# # #
VMware, VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.  All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

(1) Gartner “Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure,” by Thomas J. Bittman, George J. Weiss, Mark A. Margevicius, Philip Dawson, June 11, 2012

Oracle Press Release

Oracle Expands Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with SPARC and Oracle Solaris

Cloud Solution Delivers Up to 50 Percent Lower TCO Over Five Years Than IBM or HP, Speeds Private Cloud Deployment and Management

Redwood Shores, Calif. – June 13, 2012

News Facts

Broadening its cloud portfolio, Oracle today announced a new SPARC/Oracle Solaris option for its Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure.

Designed, tuned, tested and fully documented, the Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure now offers customers looking to upgrade, consolidate and virtualize their existing SPARC-based infrastructure a proven foundation for private cloud-based services which can lower TCO by up to 81 percent(1).

Oracle’s solution helps enable faster time to service, can help reduce deployment time from weeks to days, and can increase system utilization to 80 percent.

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure can also be deployed at up to 50 percent lower cost over five years than comparable HP/VMware and IBM/PowerVM alternatives(2).

The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure is also available on x86 servers with Oracle Solaris or Oracle Linux, and the entire solution is being demonstrated this week at Cloud Expo in New York City in booth #511. For more information on Oracle at Cloud Expo, visit Oracle’s events page.

Oracle Hardware and Software Engineered Together Helps Reduce Cost, Improves Operational Agility

The expanded solution announced today spotlights Oracle’s unique ability to engineer hardware and software together, combining Oracle’s latest SPARC T-Series servers; Oracle Solaris 11, the first cloud OS; Oracle VM Server for SPARC, Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance, and, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, which manages all Oracle system technologies, streamlining cloud infrastructure management.

With Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Zones, the Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure provides robust and flexible virtualization capabilities included with Oracle systems at no additional cost when combined with Oracle Premier Support services.

Oracle VM Templates speed application deployment by enabling the installation of pre-configured software images such as Oracle Database in minutes.

Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services offers mission critical support services from installation, configuration and performance reviews to dedicated advanced support and preventative monitoring to help customers looking to deploy private clouds or simply optimize and virtualize their data center infrastructure.

Supporting Quote

“Oracle delivers complete, virtualized infrastructure that is secure, highly scalable, and offers excellent price/performance for UNIX applications versus the competition,” said Ganesh Ramamurthy, vice president of engineering, Oracle. “The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure provides customers a flexible, cost-effective solution for moving SPARC and RISC-based services onto a secure private cloud infrastructure.”

Supporting Resources

Oracle Optimized Solutions

Solution Brief: Accelerating Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Deployments

Whitepapers: Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure

SPARC T-Series servers

Oracle Solaris on OTN

Oracle Hardware on Facebook, Twitter

Connect with Oracle Solaris via Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

.

About Oracle

Oracle engineers hardware and software to work together in the cloud and in your data center. For more information about Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), visit http://www.oracle.com/.

Trademarks

Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

This document is for informational purposes only and may not be incorporated into a contract or agreement.

Footnotes

(1) Comparison based on current SPARC server customers consolidating existing installations including Sun Fire E4900, Sun Fire V440 and SPARC Enterprise T5240 servers to latest generation SPARC T4 servers. Actual deployments and configurations will vary.

(2) Comparison based on solution with SPARC T4-2 servers with Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM Server for SPARC versus HP ProLiant DL380 G7 with VMware and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and IBM Power 720 Express - Power 730 Express with IBM AIX Enterprise Edition and Power VM.

Cisco and EMC Deliver Premier Infrastructure Solution Running SAP HANA for Big Data

EMC Press Release

Cisco and EMC Deliver Premier Infrastructure Solution Running SAP HANA for Big Data

Cisco and EMC Announce Certification and Support for SAP HANA

SAN JOSE, Ca. and HOPKINTON, Mass. - June 7, 2012

News Summary:

• Cisco Unified Computing System^™ (Cisco UCS^®) with EMC^® VNX^™ 5300 unified storage systems are now certified for the SAP HANA^® platform.
• Together, these technologies combine Cisco’s data center computing and networking technology with the EMC’s enterprise-class storage technology
• The EMC Proven™ Solution provides industry-leading manageability, scalability and availability capabilities necessary for critical SAP® application-based environments.
• Results in immediate access to vast amounts of information with SAP HANA’s reporting and analysis, enabling insights and visibility to speed business decisions.  

Full Story:

Cisco and EMC today announced certification of Cisco UCS blades with EMC® VNX^®5300 unified storage systems to run the SAP HANA® platform. Together, these leading Cisco and EMC technologies can substantially reduce business risk and further ensure that customers receive the scalability, high availability, disaster tolerance and continuous access required for their mission-critical information. 

Validated through in-depth testing and analysis conducted by SAP AG, EMC, and Cisco, the certified solution enables customers to transform their business by harnessing the power of information to make real-time business decisions. By helping organizations act on information as it happens, SAP HANA helpscustomers dramatically increase the speed of their existingprocesses and allows for access to large amounts of data in shorter periods of time.

Cisco and EMC are working to address strong customer demand for infrastructure in support of SAP HANA. Cisco and EMC's joint go-to-market activities include sales collaboration, channel partner enablement, collaborative technical services and support, integrated professional services, and marketing.  The integrated solution is now in limited availability globally. 

 Designed from the ground up with a "clean slate" approach, Cisco UCS is an integrated system, designed to optimize compute, networking, storage access, virtualization and management. UCS tapped into a powerful market demand for a new approach to computing, enabling IT organizations to unleash new business models with its innovative, integrated architecture.  Customers are able to reduce the time to deploy new applications, improve business agility and reduce costs. UCS is the first fabric computing platform that combines industry-standard, x86-architecture servers with networking and storage access into an integrated system.

 In an extensive survey of end users conducted by leading industry analyst firm IDC¹, EMC wasnamed the #1 storage choice for SAP solutions and other mission critical environments. The survey ranks storage vendors based on how endusers are deploying their technology with enterprise applications.  Results of the survey show that more customers choose EMC storage than any other storage for their SAP environments. EMC, as a leading information infrastructure provider for SAP solutions, provides customers running SAP HANA with the availability, protection, and automation needed to further enable real-time analytics to gain competitive advantage.

Designed to deliver proven Five-9’s availability, award winning VNX storage delivers end-to-end data integrity, multiple RAID options, and proactive global sparing and diagnostics. Advanced software suites provide local and remote data protection, application protection, security and compliance. The VNX series delivers leadership performance, efficiency, and simplicity for demanding virtual application environments. VNX optimizes application performance that span the leading set of enterprise applications, as well as the SAP HANA platform. EMC’s Unisphere^® software provides a simple and intuitive interface for provisioning, monitoring and managing the VNX family.

EMC Executive Quote

Prasad Rampalli, Senior Vice President, EMC Global Solutions Group

"EMC, SAP and Cisco are continuing their close collaboration by integrating best-of-breed technologies and delivering an industry-leading solution in scalability, availability and performance for customers running SAP HANA. Today we are launching an "application-aware" infrastructure which addresses mission—critical requirements for IT to accelerate their adoption of SAP HANA in the enterprise. We are excited to be a key part of this inflection point in the industry with "in-memory" computing on EMC Cisco infrastructure establishing a new normal for time-to-information and making real-time business decisions."

David Yen, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Data Center Business Group, Cisco

"As data volumes in the enterprise continue to grow exponentially, the need for businesses to react to business events more quickly through real-time analysis and reporting of operational data is becoming a strategic imperative. SAP’s HANA solution combined with EMC unified storage and Cisco’s easy to manage, highly-scalable UCS architecture delivers a highly innovative and agile infrastructure to meet the demanding performance needs of real-time analytics."

Supporting Quotes:

Stefan Sigg, Senior Vice President, In-Memory Platform, SAP

"Through this latest announcement, we are entering the next phase in our strategic collaborations with EMC and Cisco. By teaming with key partners in our ecosystem, we can deliver the power of our disruptive innovations to customers, providing access to the best-of-breed technologies needed to harness the power of their information to create business value for their end users."

About EMC

EMC Corporation is a global leader in enabling businesses and service providers to transform their operations and deliver IT as a service. Fundamental to this transformation is cloud computing. Through innovative products and services, EMC accelerates the journey to cloud computing, helping IT departments to store, manage, protect and analyze their most valuable asset — information — in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way. Additional information about EMC can be found at www.EMC.com.

Additional Resources

• Read about EMC VNX
• For more information on EMC’s SAP Solutions click here
• View the “Everything SAP at EMC” community page
• Connect with EMC via Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and ECN
• Cisco RSS Feed: http://newsroom.cisco.com/rss-feeds
• Read about Cisco Unified Computing
• Visit Cisco Data Center blog

VMware vSphere 5.0 Earns Common Criteria EAL4+ Certification

VMware News Releases

VMware vSphere 5.0 Earns Common Criteria EAL4+ Certification

Industry’s Most Trusted and Widely Deployed Virtualization Platform Achieves Highest-Level Security Certification

PALO ALTO, Calif., May 30, 2012 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced that VMware vSphere™ 5.0 has achieved Common Criteria certification at Evaluation Assurance Level 4 (EAL4+) under the Common CriteriaEvaluation and Certification Scheme (CCS). Common Criteria is an international set of guidelines (ISO 15408) that provides a common framework for evaluating security features and capabilities of Information Technology (IT) security products, and EAL4+ is the highest assurance level that is recognized globally by all signatories under the Common Criteria Recognition Agreement (CCRA).

"Cloud computing is a top priority for CIOs of government IT organizations,” said Aileen Black, vice president, public sector, VMware. “With VMware vSphere 5.0, government organizations can trust that they have a solid and reliable platform to achieve the benefits of cloud computing while maintaining the security, control and efficiency they require."

With VMware vSphere 5.0 achieving EAL4+ certification, this marks the completion of an intensive effort during which VMware vSphere 5.0 was examined, tested and certified at EAL4+, validating that VMware vSphere is one of the most proven platforms for modern IT infrastructure.

To facilitate the successful achievement of the Common Criteria certification, VMware worked with Corsec Security, Inc., and CGI’s accredited Common Criteria lab to complete the evaluation.

"VMware vSphere continues to lead virtualization and cloud computing solutions in its class and surpass security expectations by achieving Common Criteria at an EAL4+, " said Matthew Appler, CEO of Corsec Security. "VMware’s consistent certification strategy clearly demonstrates their commitment to security."

“CGI is pleased to support VMware’s continuing commitment to providing Common Criteria certified products for use worldwide” said Jason Lawlor, lab director at CGI’s IT Security Evaluation and Test Facility. “The growth of virtualized environments adds to the requirement for providing customers with certified solutions that have been tested to recognize industry standards like Common Criteria. VMware continues to be a leader in this regard.”

VMware has led the industry with the completion of the first Common Criteria certification for a virtualization product on x86 hardware with the certification of VMware ESX® Server 2.5 and VMware VirtualCenter™ in 2006.  Since then, VMware has maintained industry leadership with certifications of each subsequent release. The achievement of Common Criteria certification for vSphere 5.0 at EAL4+ continues to demonstrate VMware’s commitment to providing industry leading certified solutions.

Additional Resources

• Visit VMware’s Certifications webpage
• Read “VMware vSphere v5.0 Earns Common Criteria EAL4+ Certification” blog post by VMware Certifications Manager, Eric Betts
• Learn moreabout VMware vSphere 5

About Corsec Security, Inc.
Corsec Security, Inc. specializes in helping companies navigate through the complex process of achieving FIPS 140-2, Common Criteria (CC), and UC APL certifications. Corsec delivers unmatched expertise in the areas of security consulting, document creation, and project management, which can be leveraged to streamline the validation process. Corsec partners with companies around the world to achieve U.S. and international certification on a wide range of products. Corsec minimizes the time, effort and money a vendor needs to invest in validation, and performs its services at a firm, fixed price, ultimately maximizing the return on that investment. For further information, please visitwww.corsec.com.

About CGI
Founded in 1976, CGI Group Inc. is one of the largest independent information technology and business process services firms in the world. CGI and its affiliated companies employ approximately 31,000 professionals. CGI provides end-to-end IT and business process services to clients worldwide from offices and centres of excellence in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific. As at December 31, 2011, CGI's annualized revenue was approximately $4.1 billion and its order backlog was approximately $13.6 billion. CGI shares are listed on the TSX (GIB.A) and the NYSE (GIB) and are included in both the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Index. Website: www.cgi.com.

About VMware
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 350,000 customers and 50,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.
# # # 

Zeal Softech Enhances Service Offering with Nimsoft Unified Manager

Press Releases

Zeal Softech Enhances Service Offering with Nimsoft Unified Manager

India-based MSP Leverages Unified Monitoring and Service Desk Capabilities to More Efficiently Safeguard Customers’ Environments

Campbell, Calif.–May 30, 2012—Nimsoft announced that Zeal Softech, a managed service provider in India, has selected Nimsoft Unified Manager to provide unified monitoring and ticketing services across its customers’ server, network, application, cloud and storage assets.

The new capabilities will be delivered as part of the Zeal Softech’s Desktop Care Plus (ZDC+) offering, which provides its customers efficient, effective desktop management by automating up to 40% of routine, manual tasks, freeing IT staff to focus on higher-value work.

Nimsoft Unified Manager is a multi-tenant IT Management-as-a-Service solution that combines industry-leading infrastructure monitoring and ready- to-use ITIL®-based service management. This unified solution enables Zeal Softech to provide proactive troubleshooting and incident resolution across customer infrastructures, helping keep mission-critical systems and applications up and running.

“Precise, continuous monitoring of both hardware and software is essential for preventative incident management and for pinpointing the root causes of chronic service issues,” said Anand Chandel, CEO of Zeal Softech. “By cost-effectively providing this monitoring and automating the capture of relevant infrastructure insight into our trouble-tickets, Nimsoft Unified Manager helps streamline our support service processes and enables us to ensure the health of our customers’ environments.”

Prior to deploying Nimsoft Unified Manager, Zeal Softech used point solutions from other vendors, but found the lack of integration to be inefficient and time-consuming to manage. With Nimsoft, Zeal Softech can monitor and manage all systems and applications with a single integrated, web-based dashboard.

“Managed service providers like Zeal Softech have to maintain granular insight into all of their customers’ complex, business critical environments—while also rigorously controlling their operational costs,” said Mark Frost, general manager, Nimsoft Solutions Group.  “Nimsoft Unified Manger addresses this twin challenge by providing Zeal Softech the comprehensive management insight it needs to efficiently and effectively resolve infrastructure issues.”

About Zeal Softech

Zeal Softech is a leading end-to-end service provider of IT Services and Solutions encompassing Integration, Data Centre, IT Infrastructure Management and Networking through its robust world class delivery processes to varied corporations of high repute. It offers benefits of the next generation facilities and services to help customers achieve the safest and secured architecture for the hosted infrastructure. The top-of-the-notch services being served at this multi-faceted data center along with the high degree of consideration regarding the precious data of our customers. The data center is empowered with robust infrastructure and most advanced technology to make it secured and cost-effective solution for customer’s data center needs.

About Nimsoft

Nimsoft provides integrated, IT management as a service solutions for businesses and service provider customers globally, including 1&1, CDW, SoftLayer, SunGard Availability Services, Sur La Table, TriNet, and Virgin America. The company’s Nimsoft Unified Manager is an industry-leading solution that helps organizations easily monitor and manage IT services in increasingly complex business environments. Nimsoft solutions integrate with existing resources from the data center to the cloud, and are available on a pay-as-you-go basis. For more information, visit www.nimsoft.com.