Scoop - mValent Extends Automated Application Configuration Management to Virtualized Environments
mValent, provider of application configuration management solutions, plans to announce tomorrow that it will be extending its configuration management software to include virtualized environments. The new product, Virtual Automation Module, is designed to work with the vendor’s current line of Integrity application configuration management software to provide a single view of application environments, regardless of whether they are running on physical servers or in virtual layers.
mValent’s founder and chief strategy officer, Swapnil Shah, told 5 Minute Briefing that the vendor has been seeing a profound shift as of late within its customer base. "Our traditional customer base used us to manage application infrastructure running on physical servers," he said. Increasingly, that same application infrastructure - including Web servers, application servers, databases and middleware - is running on virtual servers "and as a result of that, you are seeing an exponential increase in the number of environments," he observed.
mValent Integrity enables IT teams to capture the current state of code and configuration settings for virtual application environments, monitor them for authorized and rogue changes, and automate processes for provisioning changes and setting up new environments throughout the application lifecycle - from development, testing and through production.
Virtualization adds new management requirements above what was needed for physical server-based environments, Shah said. "Virtualization reduces and removes the complexity of the operating system and the hardware interaction, but what is running inside the virtual machine still has to be managed," he explained. "In fact, what virtualization introduces is an increase in the configuration management complexity just because of the number and volume of components that have to be managed now - and our product is needed even more to manage those increased number of environments."
With the release of the Virtual Automation Module, IT managers can use mValent Integrity to customize and instantiate virtual environments with appropriate versions of code and configurations, as well as enable the rapid repurposing of existing virtualized software to support varying snapshots of the same or different applications, the vendor said. In addition, the new tool enables users to perform ongoing configuration setting changes and provide an audit trail and version history to support compliance initiatives. The new module can also be used to create configuration snapshots as metadata for virtual images, enabling off-line capabilities such as comparisons to determine differences between the contents/configurations of different images, mValent said.
The Virtual Automation Module will allow customers to "have a single pane into application environments whether they are running on physical or virtual servers," said Shah. "By extending our core product to support virtual environments, customers can now manage their virtual application environments with the same level of automation that they can, with our product, manage application environments running on physical machines." For more information, go here.
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Emulex Announces Support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet
Emulex Corp. said it has introduced a new line of converged network adapters (CNAs) that enable both network and storage traffic to be combined onto a single unified fabric.
The vendor’s new LightPulse LP21000 family CNAs employ a 10Gb/s enhanced Ethernet network to support the Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocol that converges Ethernet-based LAN and fibre channel-based SAN connectivity, enabling reduced data center complexity, management costs and power consumption. Emulex's family of LP21000 CNAs will be available this quarter.
"We see growing demand for SAN in the enterprise data center and that is driven by server virtualization," Joe Gervais, senior director of product marketing for Emulex, told 5 Minute Briefing. "We are seeing customers having a big influx of new servers that they have to put on a SAN, and they would like to do that on a unified fabric. This product enables them to put this new class of servers on to the storage area network and preserve how they operate that SAN."
Many companies have already made substantial investments in Fibre Channel technology and SAN management tools, Emulex said. The vendor said customers deploying the new LP21000 CNAs benefit from many of the same features associated with the LightPulse family of Fibre Channel HBAs, such as OEM-supported drivers based on a common architecture that spans both product lines. Providing a common driver architecture enables end-users to integrate Emulex FCoE-based CNAs into existing data centers using the same software infrastructure across the SAN.
Emulex also said it is working with partners to bring interoperable FCoE-based solutions to market. The vendor is currently collaborating with Cisco to help ensure interoperability of LP21000s with the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series of switch products. Emulex is also working with its OEM partners on product qualification and support. For more information on Emulex's FCoE products, go here.
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Information Builders Announces Mashup Capabilities with Google Maps
Enterprise BI vendor Information Builders announced the release of WebFOCUS for Google Maps, a tool for rapid mashup application in the business intelligence market. WebFOCUS for Google Maps provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for development of geographically aware composite applications and does not require training or coding by developers, the vendor said.
By overlaying maps with operational data and reports such as those created using WebFOCUS, users can gain a clearer indication of performance and quickly identify local and regional trends, such as volume of service calls made to a specific call center or number of stores with low inventory on certain items.
The new tool is an extension of Information Builders' current line of WebFOCUS tools, which provide front-end BI capabilities for data coming from System z and System i servers on the back end. "It's literally embedded into the same software as WebFOCUS," Jake Freivald, vice president of corporate marketing at Information Builders, told 5 Minute Briefing. "If you have a mainframe, and you're trying to create reports off your VSAM files, and somebody wants to put a marker up by ZIP Code for each of the items that you're creating in a report, you can do that almost instantaneously. You normally think of those kinds of systems in the mashup process, but it's absolutely there."
Combining the power of WebFOCUS with Google Maps gives users flexibility to enrich maps with analytic content. WebFOCUS can drive what is displayed on a map, use location indicators to visually convey operational trends, and navigate the map from a related report to zoom in and out of critical areas. Users can leverage Google Maps to pre-filter and drill down to WebFOCUS reports containing all the details on one or more locations of interest.
Key features in WebFOCUS for Google Maps include a GUI-driven development environment, dashboard integration, color coding for mapping, and interactive map navigation.
WebFOCUS for Google Maps is the only tool of its kind that currently runs natively on IBM's recently announced System z10, Freivald said. This offers an additional value proposition for z10, he explained. "What IBM is trying to do is introduce green IT and server consolidation. So now you create a ton of different applications - all running on these large, very powerful mainframe systems. Each of them is also a platform for mashups, where you can take the information off the mainframe. You have them running on a Linux partition there, have them talking to the Web via WebFOCUS, and communicating via Google Maps. It's a totally different kind of thing than you would ever be able to do with the mainframe five years ago." For more information, go here.
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BluePhoenix and Cicero Ink Partnership Agreement
BluePhoenix Solutions, a legacy modernization vendor, and Cicero, a provider of desktop integration solutions, have announced that BluePhoenix will include Cicero's desktop modernization tool as part of a complete modernization solution addressing back-end systems and desktop productivity.
Through the agreement, BluePhoenix will include Cicero as part of its legacy modernization toolset. Cicero enables companies working on legacy modernization projects to further extend the benefits to the end-user desktop. Using Cicero, customers can rapidly modernize the desktop in order to meet business requirements and IT needs by non-invasively integrating applications and services into a unified desktop. Cicero's desktop integration framework also enables organizations to reuse existing application objects and services to create new applications, extend the functionality of existing applications and automate workflow and processes.
"Cicero's unique, non-invasive approach to integrate applications at the desktop, to generate and consume Web services, and to build a unified desktop can be seamlessly integrated into an overall BluePhoenix modernization strategy," stated Arik Kilman, CEO of BluePhoenix, in making the announcement. "Adding Cicero to our toolset will further enhance our product offerings to customers by providing a method of quickly modernizing the desktop to streamline workflow and data sharing across applications and improve end-user productivity."
For more on BluePhoenix, go here.
For more on Cicero, go here.
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IBM Expands Business Events Software Portfolio
IBM announced new additions to its business events processing software portfolio that enable users to identify and analyze cause-and-effect relationships among events in real time to make proactive business decisions. At last week’s Impact SOA conference, IBM also announced a new Business Process Management (BPM) suite.
The new product, IBM WebSphere Business Events, is built on technology IBM acquired from AptSoft in January 2008, and is designed to establish connections between events and identify possible opportunities and threats by automatically initiating a trigger when trends emerge.
IBM calculated that more than 10 million random and scheduled events occur in companies every day. With WebSphere Business Events, users can sift through events flowing per second throughout their companies. The new product is available through a free, limited-use trial download, as well as a supported, commercially licensed version. In a future release, IBM will add linkage to WebSphere eXtreme Scale and technology from Solid Information Technology, which was acquired in December 2007.
"Business events processing is becoming more important as it enables companies of all sizes and in all industries to proactively analyze and respond to minute market changes that can significantly impact their businesses," said Tom Rosamilia, general manager for IBM WebSphere. "By expanding our BPM arsenal with the addition of WebSphere Business Events, IBM is helping clients identify critical business opportunities and mitigate risk."
The new tools can be used to better spot fraud, manage inventories, and improve customer service. IBM said that the tool can also be coupled with Tivoli IT event management capabilities to correlate IT and business events to detect and isolate issues such as firewall outages.
IBM also announced the IBM Business Process Management (BPM) Suite, an integrated set of role-based, SOA-enabled software that provides companies with the ability to design, execute, and optimize core business processes. The suite brings together capabilities from across IBM and includes a choice of two foundational “Starter Sets,” the vendor said. The Starter Sets are designed to address typical customer scenarios involving systems, applications, content, people, and decisions. Additional offerings expand the value of the suite and include advanced analytics, BPM repositories, and collaboration tools.
The IBM BPM Suite helps companies improve business processes across heterogeneous environments, which include high-volume transactions, extensive human interaction, and broad uses of content, data and information. IBM said it is also continuing its partnership with the American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) to build industry process models and best practices to accelerate projects and facilitate collaboration. For more information, visit the IBM Website.
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