Emerson Electric Power on Thursday announced the general availability of the Liebert XDR, a rear-door heat exchanger that removes heat from IT racks before it ever enters the data center. A version of the product has shipped from Sun Microsystems as the SCD5600 for about a year. The heat exchangers are mounted in a moveable door, which is fixed to a frame attached to the rear of the rack. It relies on server fans for hot air movement across a cooling coil, utilizing a pumped refrigerant that is 700% more efficient at removing heat than water. The pumped refrigerant also eliminates danger of equipment damage from water leakage, and air exits the rack at the same temperature it enters, simplifying data center cooling.

ScaleMP on Wednesday announced the vSMP Foundation for Cloud, which enables on-the-fly aggregation of x86 servers into larger symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) virtual systems. Features include on-demand provisioning and re-provisioning of SMP systems for cloud infrastructure, seamless integration with systems management and provisioning tools, support for any programming model (serial, throughput, multi-threaded or large-memory) without machine boundary and aggregation of up to 16 x86 servers to create virtual SMP with up to 128 cores and 4TB of main memory utilizing Intel’s latest generation of Intel Xeon 5500 processors.

HP on Wednesday introduced new offerings designed to provide flexibility to customers in unpredictable times. The new release of HP Neoview enterprise data warehouse platform supports real-time decision making regarding organizational data, with improvements in performance, capacity, footprint and manageability. HP Neoview Advantage helps reduce the cost of ownership with industry-standard components and prebuilt, pretested configurations optimized for warehousing. HP also announced the HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture, which provides a flexible network fabric for deploying applications through shared services. The architecture provides optimized use of virtual resource pools and improved energy integration and effectiveness across the data center through data center smart grid technology.

Emerson Electric Power on Thursday announced the general availability of the Liebert XDR, a rear-door heat exchanger that removes heat from IT racks before it ever enters the data center. A version of the product has shipped from Sun Microsystems as the SCD5600 for about a year. The heat exchangers are mounted in a moveable door, which is fixed to a frame attached to the rear of the rack. It relies on server fans for hot air movement across a cooling coil, utilizing a pumped refrigerant that is 700% more efficient at removing heat than water. The pumped refrigerant also eliminates danger of equipment damage from water leakage, and air exits the rack at the same temperature it enters, simplifying data center cooling.

ScaleMP on Wednesday announced the vSMP Foundation for Cloud, which enables on-the-fly aggregation of x86 servers into larger symmetrical multiprocessing (SMP) virtual systems. Features include on-demand provisioning and re-provisioning of SMP systems for cloud infrastructure, seamless integration with systems management and provisioning tools, support for any programming model (serial, throughput, multi-threaded or large-memory) without machine boundary and aggregation of up to 16 x86 servers to create virtual SMP with up to 128 cores and 4TB of main memory utilizing Intel’s latest generation of Intel Xeon 5500 processors.

HP on Wednesday introduced new offerings designed to provide flexibility to customers in unpredictable times. The new release of HP Neoview enterprise data warehouse platform supports real-time decision making regarding organizational data, with improvements in performance, capacity, footprint and manageability. HP Neoview Advantage helps reduce the cost of ownership with industry-standard components and prebuilt, pretested configurations optimized for warehousing. HP also announced the HP Converged Infrastructure Architecture, which provides a flexible network fabric for deploying applications through shared services. The architecture provides optimized use of virtual resource pools and improved energy integration and effectiveness across the data center through data center smart grid technology.

Knoa Software announced on Tuesday the availability of Knoa Virtual/Cloud Experience Manager (VCEM), an ‘off-the-shelf’ product that monitors and manages real end-user experience for enterprise applications that are running in virtualized environments, delivered via softare as a service or provisioned via cloud computing. Features include dynamic benchmarking, which provides before-and-after change performance metrics, comprehensive threshold alerting, which alerts management if a designated metric is exceeded, dynamic baselining, which signals when a metric deviates from long or short-term trends and advanced root cause analysis, which matches end-user behavior to deviations in performance.

Red Hat introduced on Tuesday the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers with a standalone hypervisor and virtualization management. Following up on the foundation release of Red Hat Linux 5.4, the new release includes Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor, a lightweight standalone hypervisor designed to host Linux and Microsoft Windows virtual servers and desktops and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers, which provides features required to manage large-scale virtualization deployments. Desktop virtualization remains in beta testing.

3Leaf Systems announced Tuesday the future availability of its Dynamic Data Center Server (DDC-Server) for AMD Opteron processors featuring the 3Leaf DDC-ASIC combined with DDC-Software. The ASIC and software combination is available in OEM-ready versions and certain fixed configurations are available for end-user purchase. A DDC-Server configured with 1TB of shared memory, 192 cores of AMD Istanbul processors at 2.8GHz, and 8TB of storage connected via an InfiniBand switch and complete with cables, Linux OS and DDC-Pool software lists for $250,000. A DDC-Server with 256GB of shared memory, 96 cores of AMD Istanbul processors at 2.4GHz, 4TB of storage with an InfiniBand switch, cables, Linux OS and DDC-Pool software is listed at $99,000. Shipments are expected to begin in December 2009.

 Super Micro on Monday announced new 2U twin servers that increase the maximum storage capacity per 1U server node by 50%. The new servers support six hot-swap 3.5” hard disk drives. Each 2U twin system also features two hot-plug dual-processor server nodes and redundant power for high availability. The architecture’s hard drives, power supplies and compute nodes are hot-swappable which facilitates ease of maintenance and reduces downtime. They feature non-blocking native Gen2 PCI-Express connectivity and redundant 1400-watt power supplies for maximum availability. Each server node features IPMI 2.0 remote management, optional onboard QDR InfiniBand and support for six hot-swappable 3.5” Serial ATA drives.

VMware on Monday announced that SAP Managed Services, SAP AG's internal IT infrastructure provider, has deployed the VMware platform across its IT environment as the main virtualization platform for SAP software. SAP Managed Services provides virtualized infrastructure solutions to internal SAP teams and customers. Advantages include resource savings through process automation and the ability of VMware to provide more efficient access to training and demo solutions, development landscapes and business-critical SAP applications without the cost, complexity or energy consumption of a traditional datacenter. VMware is a primary component of SAP’s Lean Demo System Landscape (LDSL) project to streamline its IT environment at its global datacenters.

The 451 Group on Thursday reported that the server and desktop virtualization software marketplace will grow nearly 400% over the next five years to reach more than $10 billion in 2013. The 451 Group expects a rebounding economy, hardware refresh and increased adoption of virtualization to drive the market from $2.8 billion in 2009 to $10.5 billion in 2013. This is supported by recent Gartner findings that only about 16% of current workloads are virtualized. While hypervisor software is becoming increasingly commoditized, revenue from support tool products will more than make up for lower unit costs at the hypervisor level. The 451 Group’s Virtualization Software Market Monitor tracks more than 115 vendors and segment revenue in 12 market subsectors.

Emerson Network Power on Wednesday announced the release of the latest version of its Liebert Nform infrastructure monitoring software. Liebert Nform combines real-time monitoring with cost-effective deployment through the use of the existing network infrastructure and monitors any Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) device that supports a network interface. The new software provides a management dashboard, trending capabilities, enhanced reporting and supports the Liebert MPX and Liebert MPH rack power distribution units.

Intel and Numonyx announced on Wednesday that they have reached a breakthrough in the research of phase change memory (PCM), a new non-volatile memory technology that has many benefits when compared with current solid state memories. Researchers have demonstrated a 64Mb test chip that enables the ability to stack or place, multiple layers of PCM arrays within a single die. PCM is based on a radical approach to "remembering" – one that involves no electrons – just a physical change in the substrate material that yields a closed or open circuit. Once embedded in a true cross point array, layered arrays are combined with CMOS circuits for decoding, sensing and logic functions.

Last week NetApp and Desktone announced that the Desktone Virtual-D Platform is now integrated with the NetApp Data ONTAP operating system, giving service providers a storage solution for their desktops-as-a-service (DaaS) offerings. Virtual-D provides virtual desktop capability to cloud users while NetApp deduplication technology reduces redundant data and NetApp's intelligent caching and Performance Acceleration Module (PAM) can reduce disk input/output operations while improving hosted virtual desktop performance. The combined solution is available immediately and requires purchase of both NetApp and Virtual D components from the appropriate supplier.

VMware on Tuesday announced that VMware Workstation 7 is now available. VMware Workstation 7 is VMware’s entry in the desktop virtualization space with support for Windows 7. The system provides maximum performance for 32- and 64-bit workstations running Windows 7 and integrates with FLIP 3D and Aero Peek to show live virtual machine activity. Enhanced 3D graphics supports 3D applications with support for Windows Aero, DirectX 9.0c Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.1 in Windows virtual machines. Features for software development and testing include new IDE integrations for the SpringSource Tools Suite and Eclipse IDE for Java & C/C++ along with Record Replay Debugging. Workstation 7 is available for download with upgrades for $100 and new licenses under $200.

IBM on Tuesday announced new software for managing data centers. VMControl for enterprises, combined with IBM Tivoli software, gives a single point of control across multiple types of IT systems and virtualization technologies, supporting Unix/Linux, mainframe, x86 servers and storage systems and networks. According to IBM, VMControl provides faster response to business needs in the virtualized environment, efficient use of resources and better predictability of operations. VMControl Enterprise Edition is expected to be available on IBM Power Systems running AIX in December 2009. Additional support for other platforms is planned for next year.

VMware on Monday announced that vCenter CapacityIQ is available. VCenter CapacityIQ is a new product that provides capacity management for VMware virtualized environments. The software provides visibility into past, present and future infrastructure capacity in order to analyze what is available and what is being used. It helps forecast what is needed and provides for planning when capacity will run out. CapacityIQ is a tool that helps eliminate infrastructure waste, reduce operational overhead and minimize business risk of outages, failures and disasters.

Gartner reported this week that server virtualization is not as widespread as many presume, but deployment is spreading rapidly. Only 16% of workloads are running in virtual machines today, but Gartner predicts that this will rise to around 50% of x86 architecture server workloads by the end of 2012, representing approximately 58 million deployed machines. Gartner said that the fastest growing market for virtual machines is the small business sector.

Wyse on Thursday announced Day One support for the new Windows products available today. Wyse thin client hardware and virtualization software now support Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. Thin clients and virtual desktops will immediately deliver Windows 7 end user experience in a virtual environment. Wyse clients based on Windows Embedded Standard can now run RDP 7 client. Wyse will soon release its TCX Suite 4 virtualization software which assures that Windows 7 will perform better on existing and prior generations of the RDP client.

Sun announced on Thursday the availability of the Solaris 10 10/09 Operating System. The Solaris 10 OS has been extended with new performance and power efficiency enhancements, more streamlined management of system installations, updates and fixes, new updates for Solaris ZFS and advancements to further leverage the functionality of the latest SPARC and x86-based systems. Solaris 10 10/09 improves the management of consolidated systems and provides several features to help streamline the upgrade and patching process, especially on systems deploying Solaris Containers. Solaris 10 provides a new automated framework for installing patches in single user mode, parallel patch installation of virtualized Solaris Containers and significant speedups for SVR4 package installation.

Parallels on Wednesday announced the availability of a new offering, Server 4 Bare Metal. Bare Metal integrates with Parallels' other virtual automation products to allow cloud-providers to launch new services. Bare Metal is a hypervisor-based product that supports a broad range of operating systems and applications and enables a wide range of usage scenarios from development and testing to elastic cloud computing. The product leverages hypervisor technology onto the server, offering a scalable architecture that supports up to 12 vCPUs, 64GB vRAM, 2TB virtual hard disk drives and 16 virtual network adapters per virtual machine for processor-intensive applications.

Veeam Software on Tuesday announced its newest versions of Veeam Monitor 4.5 and Veeam Monitor Free Edition 4.5 for VMware performance monitoring are now available. The products support and extend VMware's management framework, which offloads the monitoring burden from vCenter and results in enhanced performance. Veeam Monitor 4.5 is available immediately, with pricing beginning at $250 per socket. The upgrade is available at no charge to Veeam Monitor customers currently on maintenance.

According to a recent study by Computer Associates, including data collected from 323 IT organizations in North America, increasing server virtualization is creating the demand for more management tools. The study found that 72% of respondents are virtualizing production servers, and of those, 58% had stopped implementation at some point in order to revise management procedures. Sixty-four percent expressed comfort in virtualized business-critical servers. The study identified recommendations including host access, configuration and provisioning controls, configuration standardization, provisioning with approved build images, configuration discovery, change approval, change tracking and performance management.

Wright Line on Monday announced products for both hot aisle and cold aisle containment including its Heat Containment System (HCS), end-of-row doors, end-of-row curtains and aisle containment ceilings. HCS is a low cost solution that contains and directs the heat exhaust from IT equipment through a chimney at the top rear of the enclosure. End-of- Row-Doors increase the efficiency of cold aisles by blocking cold-air escape routes and preventing the entry of re-circulating hot air. End-of-Row-Curtains provide partial containment of air flow, although less efficient than end-of-row doors. Aisle Containment Ceilings are typically used to complete the total aisle containment solution.

OKI Network Integration announced Monday that it will begin offering CoolClover for IT device energy management. The software package uses power settings on network computers and other devices in order to provide an overall reduction of power consumption. The system provides an easy method of reducing power on idle computers and provides reporting to show the amount of energy used by each network component. By analyzing the amount of energy being consumed, users will become increasingly aware of the importance of conservation and actions which reduce consumption. CoolClover will be available Oct. 20.

Voltaire on Thursday announced that its Unified Fabric Manager (UFM) is available as part of HP's Unified Cluster Portfolio (UCP). Used in combination with Voltaire's 20G or 40Gbps InfiniBand switches, UFM software optimizes performance and management for high-performance scale-out data centers. UFM software provides IT managers with a logical view of their infrastructure that identifies servers, applications and fabric elements for better performance utilization and management. Voltaire UFM software is available today through HP. More information about Voltaire UFM software is available here. 

Raritan on Tuesday added two new KVM switches to its server management product line targeted at small and midsize server rooms and data centers. The TMCAT17 switch is in a 1U rack-mounted switch with an integrated 17-inch LCD display that controls multiple servers from a single console. Available in eight-port and 16-port versions, an additional feature allows two users to manage servers from the switch, one using the integrated display and the other accessing from a remote workstation via Category 5 cable from as far away as 650 feet. Multiple server connections are facilitated by fixed-length Cat 5 UTP cables with Computer Interface Modules for connecting servers within 20 feet of the switch.

Axios Systems on Monday revealed the results of a global survey showing that 57% of IT executives believe that their IT systems do not deliver the value expected by the business. The research identifies the need for organizations to adopt a Service Value Management approach to help IT deliver expected service levels. Sixty-three percent of respondents are focused on cost reduction as the principal driver for IT projects over the next 12 months, followed by change management and compliance. The major projects cited by respondents included Configuration Management Database (22%), Change Management (19%) and Service Catalog (18%) deployments.

Marathon Technologies Monday released the results of a global survey showing that more than half of the respondents indicated a high percentage of their Windows server applications require 'Always On' availability. Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange Server were cited as the two most important Windows Server applications. The survey found that more than 70% of participants revealed that the number of Windows Server applications that require high availability has increased significantly in the past two years. Seventy-six percent of the respondents reported that downtime to Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange Server caused the most disruption. Marathon has developed a set of high availability planning and implementation tools designed for companies upgrading or implementing Windows 2008.

Gartner on Friday announced the results of an interactive poll that showed limited use of data center tools for measuring, monitoring and modeling energy consumption. The Gartner webinar conducted in April 2009 among more than 130 attendees from the infrastructure and operations management found that 68% consider energy management important, but only 7% consider green procurement a top priority. Gartner recommends raising the temperature at server inlets to 75 degrees Fahrenheit and monitoring for hotspots. Consolidation through virtualization, SPECPower benchmarking and creation of an energy monitoring dash board are additional recommendations.

HP on Thursday at its Securities Analyst Meeting addressed how it is positioned to grow and expand in the global IT market. Citing its broad product and service portfolio, HP expects to increase market share and extend its reach into higher margin markets. The fiscal 2010 forecasts calls for revenue of approximately $117 billion to $118 billion, GAAP diluted earnings per share (EPS) in the range of $3.60 to $3.70 and non-GAAP diluted EPS in the range of $4.20 to $4.30. Looking forward, HP sees significant opportunities to invest in innovation and sales to expand its portfolio and market coverage.

Wednesday's keynote address at the Intel Developers Forum included the disclosure of a new IBM four-socket blade using the next generation Xeon processor. The blade is based on IBM's next generation of X-Architecture, eX5. eX5 features the Nehalem-EX processor and has nine times the memory bandwidth of the Intel Xeon 7400 platform. It also doubles the memory slots per processor socket to 16 and offers four high-bandwidth QuickPath Interconnect links.

ScaleMP announced Wednesday benchmarking results for x86 systems using vSMP Foundation software. VSMP Foundation claimed top five results for two Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) benchmarks, representing more than a 10x improvement over the best results available for x86 shared memory systems. VSMP Foundation enables the creation of a virtual shared memory system by aggregating multiple industry-standard servers, providing up to 32 processors (128 cores) and 4TB of shared memory, allowing users to leverage entry-level systems for high-performance computing applications. Resulting benchmarks were SPECint_rate_base2006, which achieved 3,150 copies, and SPECfp_rate_base2006 which achieved 2,550 copies based on 16 dual-socket systems, aggregated into a single virtual shared-memory system.

HP on Monday announced that it has already met its energy reduction goal of 25% compared with 2005 by the year 2010, and has established reductions of its energy use and carbon intensity in operations and products. HP's new goal is to reduce the energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of all its products to 40% below 2005 levels by the end of 2011. Further, HP's goal is to reduce GHG emissions from HP-owned and HP-leased facilities 20% under 2005 levels by 2013. HP cited its line of ProLiant servers and Energy-Star rated power supplies, along with energy management systems as major contributions to this effort.

IBM last Friday announced it has developed a prototype of the semiconductor industry's smallest, densest and fastest on-chip dynamic memory device in 32-nanometer, silicon-on-insulator technology that can offer improved speed, power savings and reliability for products ranging from servers to consumer electronics. The new technology offers up to 30% improvement in performance and 40% reduction in power consumption compared to standard bulk silicon technology. The prototype offers 2 -nanosecond latency and access time, an order of 1000 improvement in soft-error rate and a 4-to-1 improvement in reduced standby current.

Dell and Perot Systems announced Monday that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Dell to acquire Perot for approximately $3.9 billion. In a move clearly intended to change the positioning of Dell from a box-oriented hardware company to a systems and services-based organization, the acquisition will make Dell a more lucrative choice for enterprise organizations that have traditionally selected IBM and HP due to their service capabilities. Another key strategic feature of the deal is the strong revenue stream Perot derives from the healthcare industry, which continues to grow at high rates in contrast to other market segments. Basically a cash deal at $30 per share, when completed, Perot Systems will become Dell's services unit and will be led from Plano, Texas, by Peter Altabef, the current Perot Systems CEO.

AMD announced on Monday the combination of its six-core Opteron processor with AMD Chipset platform and graphics processing unit into a server platform code-named Kroner. The very low power twin server design specification offers additional platform elements such as voltage regulation and the ability to remotely set power caps and improve performance of virtualization and HPC workloads with PCI Express 2.0, HyperTransport 3 technology and advanced AMD Virtualization and AMD-P features, including AMD's IO Virtualization Technology support. Blade, rack and tower configurations are expected to be available in coming weeks from server infrastructure providers including Tyan, Supermicro, Microway and ZT Systems.

Samsung on Thursday announced that its 60G and 120GB solid state drives have been selected as an option across the entire range of HP ProLiant G6 servers and select ProLiant G5 servers. By using single-level-cell 3Gbps Serial ATA SSDs instead of 10,000 or 15,000 RPM hard disk drives, depending on workload, the SSDs can be up to 40 to 50 times faster and use about one-fifth of the energy. The SSD is rated for random read commands at 25,000 IOPS and random writes at 6,000 IOPS. It has a sequential read speed of 230MBps and a sequential write speed of 180MBps.

Citrix on Wednesday rolled out enhancements to XenApp5 that add the ability to deliver on-demand applications from virtual machines (VM) running desktop operating systems such as Windows 7, Vista and Windows XP. With the addition of VM-hosted applications, XenApp 5 now offers 100% application compatibility with minimal testing and validation requirements. XenApp 5 also features capabilities for power and capacity management, as well as Citrix HDX Technology enhancements, such as HDX MediaStream for Flash, that deliver high-definition for intensive multimedia applications. The new features in XenApp 5 will be available for download on Sept. 29. More information can be found here.

According to an IDC survey of 300 end-users, nearly one-half of respondents indicated they plan to increase annual spending on mainframe hardware and software. The study identifies the emergence of a blended, or hybrid, approach to computing on the IBM System z platform. The mainframe is still seen by respondents as an element of centrally managed corporate data and high value computing workloads by providing them with a layer of highly controllable enterprise management software. Additionally the survey found that IBM has revitalized the mainframe by implementing new processor strategy, and that processing power and reliability remain the mainframe's advantage. Price of hardware was the primary reason for migrating applications from mainframe systems.

Intel on Monday announced that it has reorganized its business units around core competencies of the Intel architecture. As post of the reorganization, the company consolidated all its product divisions into the Intel Architecture Group, co-headed by Sean Maloney and Dadi Permutter. The company also announced that its global manufacturing group will report to Andy Briant and that its micro-architecture planning, microprocessor and chipset development, system on a chip solutions and wireless teams will be managed by Steve Pawlowski, Sunil Shenoy, Rony Friedman, Rob Crooke and Raviv Melamed respectively. Separately, Intel announced that Pat Gelsinger and Bruce Sewell have left the company.

The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) on Monday announced its Common Information Model Simplified Policy Language (CIM-SPL) standard. CIM-SPL helps IT personnel to more effectively manage their computing resources by providing a standard language for writing system management policies based on CIM profiles. The new standard can be used with any CIM-based implementation, including those comprising DMTF's DASH, SMASH and VMAN initiatives. "Because CIM is the basis for most DMTF standards, IT personnel can take advantage of CIM-SPL to greatly simplify the process of adding automation policies that can be integrated into a wide variety of DMTF-enabled management systems," says Winston Bumpus, president of the DMTF.

Dell announced on Wednesday new PowerEdge Servers with integrated software and services to help smaller organizations take advantage of virtualization, reduce downtime and enhance security. The software, Dell Lifecycle Controller 1.2, simplifies the deployment of new server platforms by automating the operating system installation of local and remote servers. The Dell PowerEdge T110 and T310 tower servers and the R210 and R510 rack servers are equipped with the Intel Xeon 3400 series processor for the performance necessary to run business workloads with the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system and Hyper-V. Included in the announcement were 28 new uninterruptible power supply products with an efficiency rating of up to 95%, providing reduced downtime. Server products are available in September with prices starting at $600. UPS products will be available in October with prices starting at $270.

Intel on Tuesday introduced new desktop and server processors based on the Nehalem micro-architecture. The new processors include the Intel Core i5 processor family, two new Intel Core i7 processors and the Intel Xeon processor 3400 series. Developed under the code name 'Lynnfield,' the processors contain no lead or halogen, and feature 'Turbo Boost Technology.' Also announced, the Intel P55 Express Chipset will be a baseline building block component for motherboards worldwide. The high-end Core i7 and i5 processors are the first Intel processors to integrate both a 16-lane PCI Express 2 graphics port and two-channel memory controller, enabling all input/output and manageability functions to be handled by the single-chip Intel P55 Express Chipset. A new Direct Media Interface connects between the processor and chipset. The chipset supports eight PCI Express 2.0 x1 ports (2.5GBps) for device support. Dual graphics cards are supported in a '2x8' configuration. The chipset also supports six SATA 3Gbps ports with Intel Matrix Storage Technology providing RAID levels 0/1/5/10. Up to 14 USB 2.0 ports can be supported with the chipset's integrated USB 2.0 Rate Matching Hub, along with Intel High Definition Audio for premium digital sound. The new processors are the first to be supported by the new Land Grid Array 1156 package and socket technology. Prices range from $189 to $589.

BLADE Network Technologies announced at VMworld availability of VMready, which supports thousands of virtual switch ports for use with the HP 1:10Gb Ethernet BL-c switch. BLADE's VMready switch-resident software is part of BLADE's Cloud Ready Network Architecture, which equips data center managers to build virtual infrastructures. VMready enables virtualization across the data center infrastructure for greater productivity, better resource utilization, advanced energy efficiency and improved business continuity. The BLADEHarmony Premium Service provides HP BladeSystem customers with 24x7 support and upgrades to BLADE software products for a three-year period. This service is priced at $600 for the HP 1:10Gb BL-c switch.

Red Hat and HP announced Thursday an expanded collaboration to develop converged server, storage and networking infrastructure solutions with the launch of open source software designed to improve administrator productivity, lower costs and maximize resource utilization. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4 is now available on HP BladeSystem and HP ProLiant servers. Customers can obtain increased performance improvement and cost savings by deploying Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and JBoss Enterprise Middleware on HP ProLiant G6 platforms.

Hyperformix on Wednesday announced the availability of release 5.0 of its Capacity Manager for maximizing server utilization in virtualized environments. The release includes a Virtualization Scenario Wizard that automates the process of migration to a virtualized environment. The wizard supports hypervisors from companies such as VMware, HP, IBM, Sun, Xen and Microsoft and automatically identifies underutilized virtual machines and consolidation candidates. Virtual Cluster Planning helps predict CPU utilization, memory consumption, disk and network interface utilization. Preconfigured reports provide business decision support.

Dell and VMware on Wednesday announced that Dell will bundle VMware View as an option on select Latitude, OptiPlex and PowerEdge servers. Dell will also offer services to help customers with the initial scoping, design, implementation, ongoing support and management of these solutions, including monitoring and reporting performance and capacity issues in real-time. With this new bundling option, IT managers can run virtual clients in the data center, while offering end users a single view of all their applications. Bundles will be available on certain Latitude and OptiPlex client platforms and PowerEdge server platforms.

According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker, factory revenue in the worldwide server market declined 30.1% year over year to $9.8 billion in the second quarter of 2009. This is the fourth quarterly decline and the lowest quarterly revenue since IDC began tracking the server market in 1996. Blade server revenue share increased relative to other platforms, falling only by 12.1%. IBM remained No. 1 with 34.5% market share gaining 1.8 points of share in the quarter. HP was No. 2 spot with 28.5% share for the quarter. Dell and Sun held the No. 3 and 4 market positions with 12.4% and 10.0% share, respectively. Fujitsu/Fujitsu-Siemens maintained fifth with 3.5%.

HP announced on Tuesday new management and service solutions that extend the benefits of virtualization to the desktop. Included in the announcement is a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution for less than $1,000 per user seat. The price includes the VDI hardware and software components (VMware View Premier, Microsoft VECD, and HP software licenses) for a fully loaded virtual desktop configuration for 750 productivity users. New service offerings reduce TCO and risk while deploying best practices with the new HP SAN Readiness Assessment for Server Virtualization and the newly packaged HP Migration Services for VMware vSphere.

Vizioncore on Monday rolled out vEssentials Complete, a product bundle comprising the entire Vizioncore solutions set. The full bundle includes all six processes – Analyze, Convert, Protect, Monitor, Optimize and Automate. Bundles are also available in a pick-any-three version. VEssentials Complete is for small-to-midsize businesses to enterprise-size customers that are using VMware vSphere Standard Edition or higher and is priced at $1,500 per socket. Discounts for upgrades from at least one existing Vizioncore product are available.