Archive
#Nutanix is the Visionary leader in #Gartner magic quadrant! – #IaaS, #PaaS, #DaaS, #Storage, #Converged
I’m not surprised at all and think that this is a good report by Gartner!
Nutanix is absolutely the visionary leader and once more and more units are shipped they will also climb higher into the leaders section and totally rule! I must say that this is a really impressive product that truly is web-scale ready for SMB to large enterprise workloads!! Contact us at EnvokeIT if you need more details! We know the product and how it can deliver value to you!
The integrated system market is growing at 50% or more per year, creating an unusual mix of major vendors and startups to consider. This new Magic Quadrant will aid vendor selection in this dynamic sector.
Nutanix has close working relationships with multiple top software vendors, and workloads like VDI, Hadoop and DBMS servers are well-represented among the installed base. Maximum neutrality is a major focus for Nutanix, as it works to build trust across a wide variety of vendors. The vendor frequently targets specific workload needs to penetrate new accounts, and then expands the workload reach to compete with incumbent vendors as client confidence is built. Nutanix claims that 50% of first-time clients expand their configurations within six months (and 70% do so within 12 months).
Market Definition/Description
Integrated systems are combinations of server, storage and network infrastructure, sold with management software that facilitates the provisioning and management of the combined unit. The market for integrated systems can be subdivided into broad categories, some of which overlap. Gartner categorizes these classes of integrated systems (among others):
- Integrated stack systems (ISS) — Server, storage and network hardware integrated with application software to provide appliance or appliancelike functionality. Examples include Oracle Exadata Database Machine, IBM PureApplication System and Teradata.
- Integrated infrastructure systems (IIS) — Server, storage and network hardware integrated to provide shared compute infrastructure. Examples include VCE Vblock, HP ConvergedSystem and IBM PureFlex System.
- Integrated reference architectures — Products in which a predefined, presized set of components are designated as options for an integrated system whereby the user and/or channel can make configuration choices between the predefined options. These may be based on an IIS or ISS (with additional software, or services to facilitate easier deployment). Other forms of reference architecture, such as EMC VSPEX, allow vendors to group separate server, storage and network elements from a menu of eligible options to create an integrated system experience. Most reference architectures are, therefore, based on a partnership between hardware and software vendors, or between multiple hardware vendors. However, reference architectures that support a variety of hardware ingredients are more difficult to assess versus packaged integrated systems, which is why they are not evaluated by this research.
- Fabric-based computing (FBC) — A form of integrated system in which the overall platform is aggregated from separate (or disaggregated) building-block modules connected over a fabric or switched backplane. Unlike the majority of IIS and ISS solutions, which group and package existing technology elements in a fabric-enabled environment, the technology ingredients of an FBC solution will be designed solely around the fabric implementation model. So all FBCs are an example of either an IIS or an ISS; but most IIS and ISS solutions available today would not yet be eligible to be counted as an FBC. Examples include SimpliVity, Nutanix and HP Moonshot System.
Read the whole Gartner Magic Quadrant for Integrated Systems here!
//Richard
#XenMobile Mobility promotion from #Citrix – #EMM, #BYOD, #XenDesktop
XenMobile mobile device management (MDM) or enterprise mobile management (EMM) capabilities for the price of Software Maintenance!
Personally I wonder if this is a move triggered by VMware’s acquisition of AirWatch where Citrix now is kind of pushing it’s MDM solution out the door to really get some more market, and at the same time push VMware to give their new MDM capabilities away together with Horizon View…
This is an interesting and good action, thank you Citrix!
XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Mobility Promotion
Promotion effective From January 31, 2014 to September 30, 2014
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The XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum Mobility Promotion is a limited-time promotion that offers new or existing XenApp or XenDesktop Platinum customers with perpetual licenses current on Subscription Advantage (SA) the ability to receive FREE XenMobile MDM edition licenses or get 20% off XenMobile Enterprise licenses with the purchase of first year Software Maintenance for all licenses obtained via this promotion. For either XenMobile promotion options, the maximum number of discounted licenses customers can purchase is based on the total number of XenApp and XenDesktop Platinum licenses owned. XenMobile MDM edition provides key device-level security capabilities for users accessing XenApp and XenDesktop desktops and apps on mobile devices. The mobile device management (MDM) solution lets you:
XenMobile Enterprise edition supports the next step in your EMM strategy by complementing the device-level security capabilities of XenMobile MDM edition with app-level security features. These include:
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Continue reading here!
//Richard
#Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service – #IaaS
Market Definition/Description
Cloud computing is a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service using Internet technologies. Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a type of cloud computing service; it parallels the infrastructure and data center initiatives of IT. Cloud compute IaaS constitutes the largest segment of this market (the broader IaaS market also includes cloud storage and cloud printing). Only cloud compute IaaS is evaluated in this Magic Quadrant; it does not cover cloud storage providers, platform as a service (PaaS) providers, software as a service (SaaS) providers, cloud services brokerages or any other type of cloud service provider, nor does it cover the hardware and software vendors that may be used to build cloud infrastructure. Furthermore, this Magic Quadrant is not an evaluation of the broad, generalized cloud computing strategies of the companies profiled.
In the context of this Magic Quadrant, cloud compute IaaS (hereafter referred to simply as “cloud IaaS” or “IaaS”) is defined as a standardized, highly automated offering, where compute resources, complemented by storage and networking capabilities, are owned by a service provider and offered to the customer on demand. The resources are scalable and elastic in near-real-time, and metered by use. Self-service interfaces are exposed directly to the customer, including a Web-based UI and, optionally, an API. The resources may be single-tenant or multitenant, and hosted by the service provider or on-premises in the customer’s data center.
We draw a distinction between cloud infrastructure as a service, and cloud infrastructure as atechnology platform; we call the latter cloud-enabled system infrastructure (CESI). In cloud IaaS, the capabilities of a CESI are directly exposed to the customer through self-service. However, other services, including noncloud services, may be delivered on top of a CESI; these cloud-enabled services may include forms of managed hosting, data center outsourcing and other IT outsourcing services. In this Magic Quadrant, we evaluate only cloud IaaS offerings; we do not evaluate cloud-enabled services. (See “Technology Overview for Cloud-Enabled System Infrastructure” and “Don’t Be Fooled by Offerings Falsely Masquerading as Cloud Infrastructure as a Service” for more on this distinction.)
This Magic Quadrant covers all the common use cases for cloud IaaS, including development and testing, production environments (including those supporting mission-critical workloads) for both internal and customer-facing applications, batch computing (including high-performance computing [HPC]) and disaster recovery. It encompasses both single-application workloads and “virtual data centers” (VDCs) hosting many diverse workloads. It includes suitability for a wide range of application design patterns, including both “cloud-native”….
Figure 1. Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service
Source: Gartner (August 2013)
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Upgrading to #Citrix #Receiver for #Windows – why and how?
This is something that all Citrix admins should read! How many questions don’t U get about which version of the client to use and why etc?
This document describes the various versions of Receivers for Windows, lists the reasons for upgrading, and recommends best practices for upgrading to the latest version of Receiver based on specific circumstances.
Note: The Online Plug-in 12.x will reach end of its maintenance in March 2013. Customers using Online Plug-in with XenApp 5, XenApp 6.x, XenDesktop 4.x, or XenDesktop 5.x must upgrade to the latest version of Receiver for Windows 3.X prior to that date where practical.
Citrix Receiver is the latest Citrix software you install on Windows end points to gain access to virtualized apps and desktops. It is also regularly installed on virtual desktops to enable access to virtualized apps.
The name of Citrix client software and the built-in functions are changed over the years. The clients in common use today are the Online Plug-in for Windows 12.X and the Receiver for Windows 3.X.
Where the Online Plug-in for Windows 12.X provided Web and PNAgent support, Receiver for Windows 3.X provides additional support. It can be configured for self-service access to applications, VPN-less remote access, single sign-on the Windows, Web, and SaaS applications, and has a built-in method to check for updates.
Both the Online Plug-in and Receiver have two versions.
- The Online Plug-in Web is used solely for Web access to applications and the Online Plug-in (Full) supports Web access as well as PNA Services. The Full version supported SSO, Smart Cards, and access to apps through the Start menu
The standard Receiver for Windows, CitrixReceiver.exe, can be considered is a complete replacement for the Online Plug-in Web and largely a replacement for the Online Plug-in (Full). It can be used for web access. It can be configured to access PNA Services. And it can also be used with the latest versions of StoreFront, CloudGateway (App Controller), and Access Gateway to provide a rich set of services. It contains the latest, multithread, multi-stream HDX engine.
#Microsoft finds a new way to deliver a private #cloud in a box – #Azure via @maryjofoley
Interesting!!!! 🙂
It took three years from when it was first announced, but Microsoft may have found a way to deliver a private cloud in a box.
The company’s vision and strategy for doing this has gone through many twists and turns.
Microsoft’s original plan was to provide its largest partners and even a few, select enterprise users a so-called Azure Appliance. Announced in 2010, the Azure Appliances were to be carried by Dell, Fujitsu and HP. These OEMs were to provide the servers which could be installed in partner and select enterprise customers’ datacenters. Microsoft was supposed to provide and maintain Windows Azure as a service to these servers.
The only partner that ever delivered an Azure Appliance was Fujitsu, which announced availability in August 2011. But some time in the past few months, Microsoft ended up dropping its Azure Appliance plans, without ever officially announcing it was dead.
#Citrix #NetScaler 10 on Amazon Web Services – #AWS
Yes, it’s here! 🙂
Mainstream IT is fast embracing the enterprise cloud transformation and selecting the right cloud networking technologies has thus quickly emerged to be an imperative. As mainstream IT adopts IaaS (Internet as a service) cloud services, they will require a combination of the elasticity and flexibility, expected of cloud offerings and the powerful advanced networking services used within emerging enterprise cloud datacenters.
Citrix® NetScaler® 10 delivers elasticity, simplicity and expandability of the cloud to enterprise cloud datacenters and already powers the largest and most successful public clouds in the world. With NetScaler 10, Citrix delivers a comprehensive cloud network platform that mainstream enterprises can leverage to fully embrace a cloud-first network design.
Citrix and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have come together to deliver industry-leading application delivery controller technology. NetScaler on AWS delivers the same services used to ensure the availability, scalability and security of the largest public and private clouds for AWS environments. Whether the need is to optimize, secure or control delivery of enterprise and cloud services, NetScaler for AWS can help accomplish these initiatives economically, and according to business demands.
The full suite of NetScaler capabilities such as availability, acceleration, offload and security functionality is available in AWS, enabling users to leverage tried-and-true NetScaler functionality such as rewrites and redirects, content caching, Citrix Access Gateway™ Enterprise SSL VPN, and application firewall within their AWS deployments. Additional benefits include usage of Citrix CloudBridge™ and Citrix Branch Repeater™ as a joint solution.
Citrix NetScaler transforms the cloud into an extension of the datacenter by eliminating the barriers to enterprise-class cloud deployments. Together, NetScaler and AWS delivers a broad set of capabilities for the Enterprise IT:
Hybrid Cloud Environment
Hybrid clouds that span enterprise datacenters and extend into AWS can benefit from the same cloud networking platform, significantly easing…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
Ten websites that teach coding and a bunch of other things – via @caleweissman
This is a great summary blog post with many good references to where you can start learning to code!
Seemingly every day there’s a new article or blog post imploring you to learn how to code. “Those who code have the power to transform their dreams into reality.” “Coding will help you keep [your job], or help you make a case for a raise.” “You should learn to program because it’s easy, it’s fun, it will increase your skill set, and… it will fundamentally change your perspective on the world.” What’s more, “If you want to start a technology company, you should learn to code.” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s New Year’s resolution was to learn how to code. Douglas Rushkoff, who calls coding “the new literacy of the digital age,” wrote an entire book about it. And didn’t Marc Andreessen say that “software is eating the world?” As a result, companies from Codecademy to edx and many others have popped up to meet this rising demand.
As a person who’s grown up in the digital age, I have often heard the cry, “digital literacy or die.” Conventional wisdom – at least today – is that in the way you know how to read and write English, “you need to have some understanding of the code that builds the Web… It is fundamental to the way the world is organized and the way people think about things these days.” If you buy that then you’ll want to start now.
But where should you go? I’ve been dabbling in the black arts, although I am by no means a ninja coder, and am ready to report back. The courses below offer everything from HTML to Python and beyond. HTML and CSS are good, because they’re the basic building blocks of Web design, and in my opinion, Python is useful, because it’s the most universal in many respects. Others say Java is better to learn, because its so prominent on the Web. I would rebut that you can learn Java from Python. Potayto. Potahto.
In any case, each program below emphasizes different pedagogical techniques and philosophies, and they are all mass market in the sense that anyone is welcome. No previous experience is necessary.
MIT Courseware Online
MIT has long been a pioneer of online courseware. One course is their Intro to Computer Science & Programming class, thought by many to be the best, most encompassing intro computing course offered. Taught by tenured MIT faculty, the online course is structured via taped lectures, written assignments, and self-assessment quizzes.
The course itself is quite rigorous as it was an intro course for MIT students. This isn’t a sort of online class you can do some parts and not the other. It requires a certain amount of pre-existing math knowhow to be truly successful. The course description says it only requires high school algebra as a prerequisite but I don’t buy this. I remember being pretty stumped by the second assignment, and I passed AP Calc with flying colors. This doesn’t mean the math is terribly high-level, but that it probably requires a certain amount of mathematical aptitude beyond algebra unless you want to spend the entire course scouring forums for help. As with any MIT course, there is an expectation that you not only know how to do a function, but why that function is performed and from where it stemmed. After attempting to follow this courseware for two sessions, I was officially stumped and dropped it.
edX
MIT and Harvard partnered up to create edX. It is a conglomeration of all of their available open courseware, along with a new department for the two institutions to perform research about the future of online courses and new pedagogical technologies. For MIT courseware, you can watch the lectures anytime, read the assignments, and self-assess. EdX has you follow the course in real time and complete the assignments and exams to receive a physical certificate from the program. It currently offers numerous classes in more subjects than just coding and far beyond the purview of Computers Science….
Continue reading here!
//Richard
XenMobile product overview… and It’s nice! via @BasvanKaam – #BYOD, #MDM, #Citrix
Wow! I must say that Bas van Kaam has done a great wrap-up here! I highly recommend you to read this blog post!!! 🙂
It was only about a month ago when I was writing my Blog about the CloudGateway that I wondered which route Citrix would take now that they acquired Zenprise, well… here it is… XenMobile, another Xen sibling sees the light! Lets jump right in…
I had the opportunity to make use of one of Citrix’s demo environments to have a closer look at MDM, which is an awesome way to explore new and existing products by the way, if your company is a Citrix partner and has access I definitely recommend having a look. Besides that I used the Citrix E-Docs website as well as Citrix.com to find as much information as possible.
The main focus of this article will be on XenMobile MDM as the Mobile Solutions Bundle (one of the two editions available) focuses primarily on the CloudGateway which I already discussed in one of my previous blogs.
MDM?
MDM stand for Mobile Device Management and it’s just that! Here’s what Citrix has to say about it: As per Citrix: XenMobile MDM is a robust mobile device management solution that delivers role-based management, configuration, and security for both corporate and employee-owned devices. Upon user device enrollment, IT can provision policies and apps to devices automatically, blacklist or whitelist apps, detect and protect against jailbroken or rooted devices, and selectively wipe a device that is lost, stolen, or out of compliance. Users can use any device they choose, while IT can ensure compliance of corporate assets and secure corporate content on the device.
Editions
There are two editions: XenMobile MDM and the Mobile Solutions Bundle. XenMobile MDM primarily focuses on (hardware) device management, more on it’s extensive feature set shortly. Every major platform is supported including: iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Microsoft Windows 8. It includes the XenMobile Secure Mobile Gateway (SMG) and XenMobile SharePoint Data Leak Prevention (DLP) as well as the XenMobile Mobile Service Provider (ZSM) and the XenMobile Remote Support Application Toolset.
VDI Smackdown: Head-to-head analysis of Citrix XenDesktop, Microsoft etc… via @rpruijt
Great work!!!! 🙂 Continue reading!!!
Are you looking for an independent overview of desktop virtualization solutions and curious about the different strategy questions? Do you want detailed information about the features and functions each desktop virtualization vendor is offering!? If so the VDI Smackdown you definitely must read!
In the current market there is an increasing demand for unbiased information about desktop virtualization solutions. This white paper is focused on solutions that are anticipated to have an important role in desktop virtualization deployments. An overview of available features of each solution has been created to allow an understanding and comparison of capabilities.
The latest solutions included in the feature matrix are: Citrix XenDesktop 5.6FP1, Citrix VDI-in-a-Box 5.2, Dell vWorkspace 7.6, Microsoft RDVH Windows8/Server 2012 and VMware View 5.2; The English whitepaper can be downloaded here. The Japanese version will be available as soon as possible.
Empowering the end-user by giving access to Windows, Web and Mobile applications so he can access data and information systems from both private and public datacenters regardless of the device or location is the ultimate strategic objective.
The delivery of the classic (Windows) desktop interface can be divided in two segments:
- the classic desktop and laptop, running Windows, Linux or Mac OS X;
- the virtual desktop running in the datacenter or local on the classic workstation.
In essence “desktop virtualization” is the de-coupling of the desktop, operating system and the applications from the underlying endpoint or device. This kind of virtualization can be subdivided into two types:
- With the first type applications are executed remotely, server hosted, and presented at the endpoint via a remote display protocol.
- With the second type applications are executed at the endpoint, client-side and presented locally.
Making Windows, Web and Mobile applications available to the end-user, regardless of the technology being used, is an important strategic objective of an advanced IT infrastructure. The Virtual Desktop (vDesktop) is an essential component in the range of Application and Desktop delivery solutions and in essence, it provides the following functions:
- Flexibility: Detach the vDesktop from the endpoint; Several vDesktops can be used next to one another
- BYO: enables delivery of applications and desktops for BYO scenario’s;
- Access: vDesktop works independently of location, endpoint and network;
- Security: Server Hosted – VDI; data in the computing center;
- Freedom: Every user can have his own desktop with administrator privileges when needed;
- Management: Centrally managed and hardware independent;
- Legacy: It is simple to offer legacy applications on a state-of-the-art platform;
- Sustainability: Power Management, handling the necessary resources in an efficient manner
The transition to a dynamic and optimized desktop is causing many IT organizations to reevaluate traditional IT operations, deployment, delivery, packaging, support, and management methods.
Desktop virtualization is a key component in the optimized desktop. It’s important to have a Vision and Strategy around application and desktop delivery and enterprise mobility. Designing, building, managing and maintaining the desktop virtualization…
Continue reading here!
//Richard
The IT Melting Pot! 