Opalis Wins “Products of the Year” Award for Data Center Automation

Opalis Wins “Products of the Year” Award for Data Center Automation

Market Leader Recognized by SearchDataCenter.com for Innovation, Ease-of-Use, and Value in Data Center Automation Tools Category

TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Opalis Software, Inc., a market leader in IT process automation, today announced that SearchDataCenter.com, a popular TechTarget publication with a daily readership of 185,000, has named the Opalis Integration Server a Silver Award winner for its 2007 “Products of the Year” award in the category of data center automation tools. Opalis Integration Server provides orchestration, integration, and automation of IT processes across the enterprise, enabling companies to improve IT efficiency and increase business agility.

Judging for the awards was conducted by the editors of TechTarget’s SearchDataCenter.com, in conjunction with a team of users, industry experts, industry analysts, and consultants, on six criteria: innovation, performance, ease-of-integration into existing environments, ease-of-use and manageability, functionality, and value. Judges selected among data center products introduced, upgraded, and shipped between October 31, 2006 and November 1, 2007.

“We are honored to be recognized once again by industry experts for providing solutions that deliver value to our enterprise customers,” said Louise Johns, director of marketing for Opalis. “With more success in automating IT processes than any other independent vendor, we know automation is crucial for organizations that want to improve IT efficiency and reduce management costs. Acknowledgement as one of 2007’s best data center automation tools by SearchDataCenter.com is further proof of Opalis’ leadership and commitment to providing innovative and proven solutions for IT process automation to enterprise customers worldwide.”

Opalis delivers unique, out-of-the-box solutions that enable IT process automation inside and outside the data center for key IT initiatives and strategies, as well as across heterogeneous IT ecosystems. The Opalis solution automates workflow processes around critical IT initiatives, such as disaster recovery, security, provisioning, virtualization, consolidation, and ITIL. Through seamless integration with leading systems management tools from vendors including BladeLogic, BMC Software, CA, EMC, HP Software, IBM, Microsoft, and VMware, Opalis provides the integration bridge that allows IT management to orchestrate intelligent automation throughout the data center.

With Opalis, enterprises can quickly realize the benefits of IT process automation, driving down management costs and increasing productivity, while enforcing compliant best practices aimed at improving performance and availability of critical business applications.

tag: IT process automation, disaster recovery, security, provisioning, virtualization, consolidation, ITIL, Data Center Automation

Microsoft To Take On VMware With Calista, Citrix On Its Side

In a move to push it's virtualization software efforts, Microsoft will announce series of of initiatives, the acquisition of privately held Calista Technologies, lowering of the price of Windows Vista used on virtualized computers, and an alliance with virtualization software company Citrix Systems. Microsoft will also permit, reversing its previous policy, all versions of Windows Vista, including the least expensive Vista Home Basic, to be virtualized.
Microsoft also confirmed its plans to deliver its Hyper-V virtualization software within six months of the launch of Windows Server 2008. The Hyper-V or hypervisor, a software layer that enables applications programs to run on virtualized hardware.
For years VMWare had the dominance of virtualization market with some minor players playing along in the windows platform. But the Linux and Unix where most virtualization happens has a few more competitors like XenSource, which I am using along side VMWare.
Before being bought by Citrix, XenSource already had a deal in place with Microsoft to work on sharing virtual machines across the companies' various virtualization products.
You can find more information at microsoft Virtualization summit

tag: virtualization, microsoft, Hyper-V, hypervisor, VMWare, XenSource, Vista Home Basic, Citrix, Calista Technologies,

Oracle BEA In A New Deal

In the heels of Sun's announcement that it will acquire open source database company MySQL AB for about $1 billion, database giant Oracle said it had reached an agreement to acquire BEA for $8.5 billion.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Software giant Oracle Corp. reached a deal to buy rival BEA Systems Inc. for $8.5 billion Wednesday, just months after its initial offer was rebuffed.

Oracle agreed to pay $19.375 in cash for each share of BEA, representing a 24 percent premium to where BEA's shares closed Tuesday.

Oracle said the deal is worth $7.2 billion, since BEA has $1.3 billion in cash on hand. The deal is expected to close in mid-October.

"For Oracle, this deal is a very big step towards completing our [goal] of being a strategic software vendor of choice for our customers," Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said during a conference call with investors.

tag: oracle, BEA, SUN, MySQL

SUN Shines ON MySQL. (Sun Microsystems, Inc. to acquire MySQL AB)

Sun Growth Strategy Accelerates With New Position in $15 Billion Database Market

SANTA CLARA, CA January 16, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world's fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun's position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today's announcement reaffirms Sun's position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.

With millions of global deployments including Facebook, Google, Nokia, Baidu and China Mobile, MySQL will bring synergies to Sun that will change the landscape of the software industry by driving new adoption of MySQL's open source database in more traditional applications and enterprises. The integration with Sun will greatly extend the commercial appeal of MySQL's offerings and improve its value proposition with the addition of Sun's global services organization. MySQL will also gain new distribution through Sun's channels including its OEM relationships with Intel, IBM and Dell.

"Today's acquisition reaffirms Sun's position at the center of the global Web economy. Supporting our overall growth plan, acquiring MySQL amplifies our investments in the technologies demanded by those driving extreme growth and efficiency, from Internet media titans to the world's largest traditional enterprises," said Jonathan Schwartz, CEO and president, Sun Microsystems. "MySQL's employees and culture, along with its near ubiquity across the Web, make it an ideal fit with Sun's open approach to network innovation. And most importantly, this announcement boosts our investments into the communities at the heart of innovation on the Internet and of enterprises that rely on technology as a competitive weapon."

MySQL's open source database is widely deployed across all major operating systems, hardware vendors, geographies, industries and application types. The complementary product line-ups will extend MySQL's database reach and are expected to bring new markets for Sun's systems, virtualization, middleware and storage platforms.

"The combination of MySQL and Sun represents an enormous opportunity for users and organizations of all sizes seeking innovation, growth and choice," said Marten Mickos, CEO, MySQL. "Sun's culture and business model complements MySQL's own by sharing the same ideals that we have had since our foundation -- software freedom, online innovation and community and partner participation. We are tremendously excited to work with Sun and the millions of members of the MySQL open source ecosystem to continue to deliver the best database for powering the modern Web economy."

MySQL's open source database is the "M" in LAMP - the software platform comprised of Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP/Perl often viewed as the foundation of the Internet. Sun is committed to enhancing and optimizing the LAMP stack on GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows along with OpenSolaris and MAC OS X. The database from MySQL, OpenSolaris and GlassFish, together with Sun's Java platform and NetBeans communities, will create a powerful Web application platform across a wide range of customers shifting their applications to the Web.

More than 100 million copies of MySQL's high-performance open source database software have been downloaded and distributed and an additional 50,000 copies are downloaded daily. This broad penetration coupled with MySQL's strength in Web 2.0, Software as a Service (SaaS), enterprise, telecom and the OEM embedded market make it an important fit for Sun. With MySQL, Sun will have the ability to deepen its existing customer relationships and create new opportunities with companies seeking the flexibility and ease-of-use of open source systems.

Following completion of the proposed transaction, MySQL will be integrated into Sun's Software, Sales and Service organizations and the company's CEO, Marten Mickos, will be joining Sun's senior executive leadership team. In the interim, a joint team with representatives from both companies will develop integration plans that build upon the technical, product and cultural synergies and the best business and product development practices of both companies. MySQL is headquartered in Cupertino, CA and Uppsala, Sweden and has 400 employees in 25 countries.

As part of the transaction, Sun will pay approximately $800 million in cash in exchange for all MySQL stock and assume approximately $200 million in options. The transaction is expected to close in late Q3 or early Q4 of Sun's fiscal 2008. Completion of the transaction is subject to regulatory approval and other customary closing conditions. The deal is expected to be accretive to FY10 operating income on a GAAP basis.

The management teams of both companies will host a media and analyst conference call today at 10:00 am EST, 7:00 am PST. The call can be accessed at http://www.sun.com/investors. For those unable to listen to the live conference call, a telephone replay will be available for one week following the call by dialing (888) 566-0103 or outside of the U.S. by dialing (402) 998-0958. No passcode is required to access the replay.

tag: MySQL AB, SUN, MySQL, GNU, Linux, LAMP, Sun Microsystems,

IBM is buys Israel-based storage company, XIV.

IBM is buying an Israel-based storage company, XIV, for its grid-like storage product design, signaling Big Blue's interest in Web 2.0 storage technology.

The system with its NEXTRA architecture can scale up quickly and hugely, and self-tunes its performance as well as correcting data storage errors. The company said that this made management of Web 2.0 applications much easier. Changing or upgrading storage systems disruptively can cause significant data access and capture problems can adversely impact business growth when every piece of data and every second of uptime is vital.

Such applications can store petabytes of data, feature extremely rapid data growth, and very high access rates. These applications have been associated with the term 'cloud computing'.

Andy Monshaw, general manager for IBM system storage, said: "The acquisition of XIV will ... put IBM in the best position to address emerging storage opportunities like Web 2.0 applications, digital archives and digital media. The ability for almost anyone to create digital content at any time has accelerated the need for a whole new way of applying infrastructure solutions to the new world of digital information."

Continue to IBM buys grid storage company at Techworld

tag: Grid Storage, Grid Technology, IBM, cloud computing, XIV, Web 2.0, digital archives, digital media, NEXTRA,