With a "tip of the cap" to creators of Planet V12n blog, we've just launched a blog and Twitter aggregator for virtualization. It's called VirtualizationFeed. Like Planet V12n, this site aggregates virtualization blogs from lots of sources. In this case, 18 independent bloggers and 14 Microsoft bloggers on either TechNet or MSDN. I'm sure you'll recognize many of the names/blogs ... and maybe you'll discover new ones. For example:
Tarry Singh (Netherlands)
Andrew Dudgell (Australia)
Kevin Fogarty (CIO.com)
Allesandro Perilli (Italy)
David Marshall (U.S.)
Mark Bowker (ESG - analyst firm)
Ben Armstrong (aka, Virtual PC Guy)
Rakesh Malhotra (VM management blog)
The App-V team blog
Tony Soper's blog
The blog aggregator will show a short (200-character) excerpt from the blog and point you to the blogger's site for the full post.
In addition to blogs, you'll see a tab for Tweets. VirtualizationFeed.com is also a Twitter aggregator (in case you're not using Twitter's useful search tool) that pulls all virtualization-related tweets.
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Filed under: virtualization, System Center, Application Virtualization, Community, Enterprise Strategy Group, integrated virtualization, Mark Bowker, Microsoft Application Virtualization, SoftGrid, System Center Virtual Machine Manager, virtual machine, virtualization management, Management, Management tools, VMM 2008, Hyper-V, Virtual PC
So we just announced the intent to acquire Kidaro, a desktop virtualization vendor based in Silicon Valley and with R&D in Israel. Kidaro entered the desktop virtualization management market nearly 17 months ago with their Kidaro Managed Workspace product. With this acquisition, Kidaro's product will lead to new capabilities within Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack for customers with Software Assurance. We'll be shipping this solution under the name Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization within MDOP - the timing wasn't disclosed.
Kidaro's Managed Workspace product allows enterprise data and applicatiosn to run within a "transparent virtual machine wrapper." Kidaro's product is built upon Microsoft Virtual PC, and the wrapper provides "enterprise class" management, deployment and a clean user experience. You can read more on Kidaro's site. With this acquisition, the wrapper becomes Microsoft Virtual PC. I know ... it's been a while since we've blogged about Virtual PC on this site - but Ben is the definitive source for Virtual PC blogs.
I'm told that the three founders of Kidaro will be joining Microsoft and play similar roles here, and that the plan is to keep Kidaro's R&D team in Israel. That makes sense since Microsoft already has an R&D center in Israel.
So if you're keeping track, this acquisition is roughly 45 days after we announced the acqusition of Calista Technologies. Here's how Neal explained Calista's software:
I am sure by now, you are wondering, “who is Calista Technologies, and what exactly do they do?” Well, think of us as the people that have set out to create technology which, when IT departments deploy centralized desktops and applications, ensures that users will enjoy the same rich user experience as with a locally executing desktop: Full 3D graphics with support for DirectX, Vista Aero and WPF applications, full frame rate video with 100% coverage for all media types, and fully synchronized audio. Except that “their” desktop is actually running in the data center, and they are accessing it remotely using Microsoft’s remote desktop protocol (RDP).
We haven't said how Calista's software will be packaged, but there's expectations for improvements to Terminal Services and presentation virtualization capabilities in Windows Server. But no word yet. And roughly 20 months ago we acquired Softricity, which has resulted in somewhere around 4.5 million seats of SoftGrid application virtualization being adopted by customers. Added together (and reading tea leaves) we're seeing changes to how customers want to adopt/deploy client apps and client computing, and virtualization will play a key role. See Shanen's post from Jan. 22 for more perspective.
Patrick
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Hello, I’m Larry Orecklin, general manager at Microsoft focused on the System Center family of management products and Virtualization. If you picked up a newspaper in the last few weeks, you are more than likely aware that the virtualization industry
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Greetings! An important heads up about Black Hat next week in Las Vegas. For those of you who don’t know what Black Hat is, Black Hat bills itself as a security convention that puts you face to face with people on the cutting edge of network security.
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In my first couple of blogs, I wanted to remind everyone of the recent release of Virtual PC 2007 and Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1. I received feedback asking about some of the differences between the two and compatibility of virtual machines between the
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Greetings! I’m Jeff Woolsey, a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft focused on Microsoft Virtualization. I’ve worked on virtualization technology for over ten years such as Virtual PC for Mac, Virtual PC for Windows and Virtual Server. These days I spend
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