This week VMware announced its financial results for Q2 of 2010.

The company closes the Q2 quarter with $2.8B cash and $1.5B of deferred revenue, a year-over-year growth of 33%.
Total revenue for the Q2 was $674 million, up 48% from Q2 2009, while total license revenue was $324 million, an increase of 42% from the Q2 2009.
Software maintenance and support revenue was $290 million, an increase of 54% from last year, but the revenue decreased sequentially. Customers continue to buy on average more than 24 months of support and maintenance with each new license purchase.
Professional Services revenue was $60 million, an increase of 54% from last year, and up 11% sequentially, but VMware doesn’t expect a strong growth in the PSO revenue because of the investments in the partners ecosystem.

VMware also reported a great performance in the Americas: US revenues increased 43% from a year ago to $334 million, representing half of total revenue, and Latin America scored a 85% year-over-year growth.
VMware reported a mixed performance in Europe: losing ground compared to Q1 2010 in those countries that heavily adopt virtualization, UK and Germany, and improving in more challenging markets like France, Ireland and Russia.
APAC performance has been much better, with a 80% year-over-year growth, especially in China, Japan, India and Australia.

Total operating expense, including costs of services and costs of licenses, increased 6% sequentially to $487 million.

Sales and marketing expenses were $215 million or 31.9% of revenues, compared with 31.6% in the prior quarter.

Q3 revenues are expected to be within a range of $680 million and $705 million, or year-over-year growth of between 39% and 44%. VMware expects license revenue to be flat to slightly down from Q2.
The company currently forecasts the 2010 revenue between $2.725 billion and $2.8 billion, equal to a growth of 35% to 38% compared to last year.

Today an email VMware User Group Team listed the VMUG Board of Directors.

It reads:

VMware User Group Members,

As announced earlier this year, VMware is supporting the establishment of an independent, customer-led, customer-driven global VMware User Group (VMUG). The VMUG Steering Committee has been focused on forming the structure for this new organization and we are pleased to announce the inaugural VMware User Group Board of Directors.

The board is comprised of a group of experienced VMUG leaders whose knowledge, expertise and vision will provide an invaluable contribution to the VMUG organization. There is much for this Board of Directors to accomplish, as we look forward to the formal launch of the independent VMUG at VMworld in San Francisco this coming August.

The board has developed a VMUG mission statement to reflect the new organization:
The VMware User Group is an independent, global, customer-led organization, which maximizes members’ use of VMware and partner solutions through knowledge sharing, training, collaboration, and events.

The VMware User Group is a user community—of the users, for the users, by the users. Through an independent global VMUG, we believe we can strengthen our collective VMware and VMUG value proposition with expanded collaboration, member programs, and benefits.

As a VMUG member, your feedback and ideas will be critical to improving the VMUG experience and taking it to the next level. We believe that some of the benefits of the new model will be:

• Tap into new VMUG member benefits and programs, such as Special Interest Groups and VMware technical education offerings
• Increase your value to your organization by becoming the recognized VMware subject matter expert through knowledge and contacts gained through VMUG
• Gain more direct access to VMware subject matter experts
• Become part of a global, collective customer voice, impacting VMware products/services

While we are planning the official launch of the new group for August, there are several ways VMUG is already driving value to the members:

• The VMUG Voice—VMUG’s monthly newsletter—will provide news and updates for members
• New member recruitment activities at all VMware events
• Development of new onsite program for VMUG Regional Events
• VMware Technical Sponsors have been assigned to all VMUG Local Groups
• VMUG members will receive the discounted “Early Bird” pricing throughout the VMworld registration period

As we work to establish an independent VMUG, we want you to know that your voice will be heard. To that end, the VMUG Board of Directors is conducting a short survey of our members to better understand the members’ vision for VMUG and define the VMUG value proposition. It should only take about ten minutes of your time and all results will be kept completely confidential. In addition, all survey respondents can enter to win an Apple iPad—just complete the survey by July 30.

We look forward to hearing your feedback and ideas about the new organization. Please direct all communications to memberservices@myvmug.org or 1.800.606.8695.

Together we look forward to launching the new VMUG at VMworld and we hope to see you there!

Sincerely,
The VMware User Group Board of Directors

Today VMware released a significant update for its vSphere virtual infrastructure.

vSphere 4.1 introduces an impressive number of new features:

• Scripted Install for ESXi. Scripted installation of ESXi to local and remote disks allows rapid deployment of ESXi to many machines. You can start the scripted installation with a CD-ROM drive or over the network by using PXE booting.
• vSphere Client Removal from ESX/ESXi Builds. For ESX and ESXi, the vSphere Client is available for download from the VMware Web site. It is no longer packaged with builds of ESX and ESXi.
• Boot from SAN. vSphere 4.1 enables ESXi boot from SAN (BFN). iSCSI, FCoE, and Fibre Channel boot are supported.
• Hardware Acceleration with vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI). ESX can offload specific storage operations to compliant storage hardware. With storage hardware assistance, ESX performs these operations faster and consumes less CPU, memory, and storage fabric bandwidth.
• Storage Performance Statistics. vSphere 4.1 offers enhanced visibility into storage throughput and latency of hosts and virtual machines, and aids in troubleshooting storage performance issues. NFS statistics are now available in vCenter Server performance charts, as well as esxtop. New VMDK and datastore statistics are included. All statistics are available through the vSphere SDK.
• Storage I/O Control. This feature provides quality-of-service capabilities for storage I/O in the form of I/O shares and limits that are enforced across all virtual machines accessing a datastore, regardless of which host they are running on. Using Storage I/O Control, vSphere administrators can ensure that the most important virtual machines get adequate I/O resources even in times of congestion.
• iSCSI Hardware Offloads. vSphere 4.1 enables 10Gb iSCSI hardware offloads (Broadcom 57711) and 1Gb iSCSI hardware offloads (Broadcom 5709).
• Network I/O Control. Traffic-management controls allow flexible partitioning of physical NIC bandwidth between different traffic types, including virtual machine, vMotion, FT, and IP storage traffic (vNetwork Distributed Switch only).
• IPv6 Enhancements. IPv6 in ESX supports Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) with manual keying.
• Load-Based Teaming. vSphere 4.1 allows dynamic adjustment of the teaming algorithm so that the load is always balanced across a team of physical adapters on a vNetwork Distributed Switch.
• E1000 vNIC Enhancements. E1000 vNIC supports jumbo frames in vSphere 4.1.
• Windows Failover Clustering with VMware HA. Clustered Virtual Machines that utilize Windows Failover Clustering/Microsoft Cluster Service are now fully supported in conjunction with VMware HA.
• VMware HA Scalability Improvements. VMware HA has the same limits for virtual machines per host, hosts per cluster, and virtual machines per cluster as vSphere.

• VMware HA Healthcheck and Operational Status. The VMware HA dashboard in the vSphere Client provides a new detailed window called Cluster Operational Status. This window displays more information about the current VMware HA operational status, including the specific status and errors for each host in the VMware HA cluster.
• VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) Enhancements. vSphere 4.1 introduces an FT-specific versioning-control mechanism that allows the Primary and Secondary VMs to run on FT-compatible hosts at different but compatible patch levels. vSphere 4.1 differentiates between events that are logged for a Primary VM and those that are logged for its Secondary VM, and reports why a host might not support FT. In addition, you can disable VMware HA when FT-enabled virtual machines are deployed in a cluster, allowing for cluster maintenance operations without turning off FT.
• DRS Interoperability for VMware HA and Fault Tolerance (FT). FT-enabled virtual machines can take advantage of DRS functionality for load balancing and initial placement. In addition, VMware HA and DRS are tightly integrated, which allows VMware HA to restart virtual machines in more situations.
• Enhanced Network Logging Performance. Fault Tolerance (FT) network logging performance allows improved throughput and reduced CPU usage. In addition, you can use vmxnet3 vNICs in FT-enabled virtual machines.
• Concurrent VMware Data Recovery Sessions. vSphere 4.1 provides the ability to concurrently manage multiple VMware Data Recovery appliances.
• vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) Enhancements. VADP now offers VSS quiescing support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. This enables application-consistent backup and restore operations for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 applications.
• vCLI Enhancements. vCLI adds options for SCSI, VAAI, network, and virtual machine control, including the ability to terminate an unresponsive virtual machine. In addition, vSphere 4.1 provides controls that allow you to log vCLI activity.
• Lockdown Mode Enhancements. VMware ESXi 4.1 lockdown mode allows the administrator to tightly restrict access to the ESXi Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and Tech Support Mode (TSM). When lockdown mode is enabled, DCUI access is restricted to the root user, while access to Tech Support Mode is completely disabled for all users. With lockdown mode enabled, access to the host for management or monitoring using CIM is possible only through vCenter Server. Direct access to the host using the vSphere Client is not permitted.
• Access Virtual Machine Serial Ports Over the Network. You can redirect virtual machine serial ports over a standard network link in vSphere 4.1. This enables solutions such as third-party virtual serial port concentrators for virtual machine serial console management or monitoring.
• vCenter Converter Hyper-V Import. vCenter Converter allows users to point to a Hyper-V machine. Converter displays the virtual machines running on the Hyper-V system, and users can select a powered-off virtual machine to import to a VMware destination.
• Enhancements to Host Profiles. You can use Host Profiles to roll out administrator password changes in vSphere 4.1. Enhancements also include improved Cisco Nexus 1000V support and PCI device ordering configuration.
• Unattended Authentication in vSphere Management Assistant (vMA). vMA 4.1 offers improved authentication capability, including integration with Active Directory and commands to configure the connection.
• Updated Deployment Environment in vSphere Management Assistant (vMA). The updated deployment environment in vMA 4.1 is fully compatible with vMA 4.0. A significant change is the transition from RHEL to CentOS.
• vCenter Orchestrator 64-bit Support. vCenter Orchestrator 4.1 provides a client and server for 64-bit installations, with an optional 32-bit client. The performance of the Orchestrator server on 64-bit installations is greatly enhanced, as compared to running the server on a 32-bit machine.
• Improved Support for Handling Recalled Patches in vCenter Update Manager. Update Manager 4.1 immediately sends critical notifications about recalled ESX and related patches. In addition, Update Manager prevents you from installing a recalled patch that you might have already downloaded. This feature also helps you identify hosts where recalled patches might already be installed.
• License Reporting Manager. The License Reporting Manager provides a centralized interface for all license keys for vSphere 4.1 products in a virtual IT infrastructure and their respective usage. You can view and generate reports on license keys and usage for different time periods with the License Reporting Manager. A historical record of the utilization per license key is maintained in the vCenter Server database.
• Power Management Improvements. ESX 4.1 takes advantage of deep sleep states to further reduce power consumption during idle periods. The vSphere Client has a simple user interface that allows you to choose one of four host power management policies. In addition, you can view the history of host power consumption and power cap information on the vSphere Client Performance tab on newer platforms with integrated power meters.
• Reduced Overhead Memory. vSphere 4.1 reduces the amount of overhead memory required, especially when running large virtual machines on systems with CPUs that provide hardware MMU support (AMD RVI or Intel EPT).
• DRS Virtual Machine Host Affinity Rules. DRS provides the ability to set constraints that restrict placement of a virtual machine to a subset of hosts in a cluster. This feature is useful for enforcing host-based ISV licensing models, as well as keeping sets of virtual machines on different racks or blade systems for availability reasons.
• Memory Compression. Compressed memory is a new level of the memory hierarchy, between RAM and disk. Slower than memory, but much faster than disk, compressed memory improves the performance of virtual machines when memory is under contention, because less virtual memory is swapped to disk.
• vMotion Enhancements. In vSphere 4.1, vMotion enhancements significantly reduce the overall time for host evacuations, with support for more simultaneous virtual machine migrations and faster individual virtual machine migrations. The result is a performance improvement of up to 8x for an individual virtual machine migration, and support for four to eight simultaneous vMotion migrations per host, depending on the vMotion network adapter (1GbE or 10GbE respectively).
• ESX/ESXi Active Directory Integration. Integration with Microsoft Active Directory allows seamless user authentication for ESX/ESXi. You can maintain users and groups in Active Directory for centralized user management and you can assign privileges to users or groups on ESX/ESXi hosts. In vSphere 4.1, integration with Active Directory allows you to roll out permission rules to hosts by using Host Profiles.
• Configuring USB Device Passthrough from an ESX/ESXi Host to a Virtual Machine. You can configure a virtual machine to use USB devices that are connected to an ESX/ESXi host where the virtual machine is running. The connection is maintained even if you migrate the virtual machine using vMotion.
• Improvements in Enhanced vMotion Compatibility. vSphere 4.1 includes an AMD Opteron Gen. 3 (no 3DNow!) EVC mode that prepares clusters for vMotion compatibility with future AMD processors. EVC also provides numerous usability improvements, including the display of EVC modes for virtual machines, more timely error detection, better error messages, and the reduced need to restart virtual machines.
• vCenter Update Manager Support for Provisioning, Patching, and Upgrading EMC’s ESX PowerPath Module. vCenter Update Manager can provision, patch, and upgrade third-party modules that you can install on ESX, such as EMC’s PowerPath multipathing software. Using the capability of Update Manager to set policies using the Baseline construct and the comprehensive Compliance Dashboard, you can simplify provisioning, patching, and upgrade of the PowerPath module at scale.
• User-configurable Number of Virtual CPUs per Virtual Socket. You can configure virtual machines to have multiple virtual CPUs reside in a single virtual socket, with each virtual CPU appearing to the guest operating system as a single core. Previously, virtual machines were restricted to having only one virtual CPU per virtual socket.
• Expanded List of Supported Processors. The list of supported processors has been expanded for ESX 4.1. Among the supported processors is the Intel Xeon 7500 Series processor, code-named Nehalem-EX (up to 8 sockets).

Now as you can see that’s one huge list, but there’s more! vSphere 4.1 also caters for the SMB market, adding VMotion to the Essential Plus license:

Content sourced from VMware 4.1 release and Virtualization.info

Today Microsoft published a huge poster showing in depth the different aspects of the Hyper-V 2008 R2 architecture.

It includes the following components: virtual networking, virtual machine snapshots, live migration, storage types, storage locations and paths, import and export, and of course the core architecture elements.

The info & details on this post were origanly sourced from Virtualization.info & Ben Armstrong’s “Virtual PC Guy” blog

VMware has just released the first minor update for all its hosted virtualization platforms: Workstation / Player and Fusion.

Workstation, Player and ACE 7.1 (build 261024) include the following new features:

• Support for 8 vCPUs / VM
• Support for up to 2TB virtual hard drives
• Support for OpenGL 2.1 (Windows Vista and 7 guest OSes)
• Support for OVF 1.1 specifications
• Support for Intel Advanced Encryption Standard instruction set (AES-NI) to speed up encryption/decryption performance
• Autologon for Windows guest OSes
• Guest OS applications direct launch from host OS (through Unity mode)
• Support for multiple new Linux distributions (RHEL 5.5, Ubuntu 8.04.4 and 10.04, Fedora 12, OpenSUSE 11.2, Debian 5.0.4 and Mandriva 2009.1)

As evident, there’s not a single new feature related to ACE, the security wrapper that VMware offers since December 2004.
The last time VMware seriously updated ACE was in May 2007, with the 2.0 release.
At this point it’s easy to guess that VMware may soon discontinue the product, possibly along with Server, and the two will join Stage Manger.

Fusion 3.1 (build 261058) shares some of the new capabilities with Workstation 7.1, like the support for 8 vCPU and 2TB virtual hard drives or the support for OpenGL 2.1, plus some specific ones:

• Support for overlapping Unity windows in Exposé and Dock Exposé
• Import and export OVF packaged virtual machines and upload to vSphere with bundled OVF Tool 2

Interestingly, Fusion 3.1 doesn’t share the same list of newly supported guest OSes with Workstation 7.1: Red Hat Enteprise Linux (RHEL) 5.5, Fedora 12, Debian 5.0.4 and Mandriva 2009.1 are not in the list.

Earlier today VMware released the information about a new training certification program called VMware Certified Advanced Professional (VCAP).

VCAP is obviously focused on vSphere and other 4.0 products wave, and it’s divided into two sub-certs: Datacenter Administration and Datacenter Design.

Both require that candidates already hold the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) status. None of them requires attending a mandatory classroom or workshop but VMware suggests specific training paths:

The exams won’t be available before July (VCAP-DCA) and August (VCAP-DCD).

post content from Virtualization.info

PHD Virtual Technologies, pioneer and innovator in backup and recovery for virtual machines, announced today that it has signed an investment agreement with Citrix Systems, a leading provider of virtual computing solutions that help companies deliver IT as an on-demand service .  In coordination with the arrangement, Insight Venture Partners made an additional funding investment. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

“PHD Virtual Technologies is a prime addition to the rapidly growing XenServer ecosystem with the recent expansion of its enterprise-class backup and recovery offerings to include Backup for Citrix XenServer,” said Andy Cohen, senior director of strategic development, Citrix.  “The technology and team make PHD Virtual Technologies a strong partner and attractive investment opportunity.  We look forward to working with them to meet the needs of joint customers and continue to grow our opportunities in the server virtualization market.”

“As our customers virtualize increasingly critical workloads, they want the flexibility of a heterogeneous hypervisor environment and scalable systems management tools.  The business objectives of the Citrix XenServer Product Group and PHD Virtual are very much aligned,” said Thomas Charlton, Chairman and CEO of PHD Virtual Technologies. “We will use this financing event to accelerate our worldwide expansion and capitalize on the market opportunity that exists for our technology in XenServer and XenDesktop deployments.”

“We are happy to have Citrix join PHD Virtual as shareholders and strategic partners.  XenServer and XenDesktop are both growing very strongly and have tremendous growth potential in the virtualization market,” said Michael Triplett, Managing Director, Insight Venture Partners. “We are pleased to extend PHD Virtual’s unique software architecture, and best-in-class backup and disaster recovery for virtual environments to support both XenServer and XenDesktop.”

PHD Virtual has just announced their new Backup for Citrix XenServer® product which builds on the robust legacy of the award-winning esXpress 4.0.  PHD Virtual’s products are the only enterprise data protection solutions that operate independent of the hypervisor offering greater stability and more security.  Customers got their first look at the new XenServer product during the recent Citrix Synergy™ in San Francisco.

Using PHD Virtual Backup for Citrix XenServer, customers will enjoy the benefits of

• The fastest and most cost effective backup that minimizes storage requirements
• The most reliable solution for data integrity with source side deduplication and enhanced self healing backups
• And since PHD Virtual’s products already support XenDesktop®, leveraging the same solution across their virtual environment.

PHD Virtual Backup for Citrix XenServer will be commercially available in September.

VMware, Inc., today announced a series of technology collaborations with Google to deliver solutions that make enterprise software developers more efficient at building, deploying and managing applications within any cloud environment; public, private and hybrid. Announced today onstage at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco by Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware, the two companies will bring together technologies and expertise to help accelerate enterprise adoption of cloud computing.

“Companies are actively looking to move toward cloud computing. They are certainly attracted by the economic advantages associated with cloud, but increasingly are focused on the business agility and innovation promised by cloud computing,” said Paul Maritz, president and CEO of VMware. “VMware and Google are aligning to reassure our mutual customers and the Java community that choice and portability are of utmost importance to both companies. We will work to ensure that modern applications can run smoothly within the firewalls of a company’s datacenter or out in the public cloud environment.”

VMware and Google are collaborating on multiple fronts to make cloud applications more productive, portable, and flexible. These projects will enable Java developers to build rich web applications, use Google and VMware performance tools on cloud apps, and deployments of Spring Java applications on Google App Engine.

“Developers are looking for faster ways to build and run great web applications, and businesses want platforms that are open and flexible,” said Vic Gundotra, Google vice president of developer platforms. “By working with VMware to bring cloud portability to the enterprise, we are making it easy for developers to deploy rich Java applications in the environments of their choice.”

Spring, Google App Engine, and SpringSource Tool Suite Google is announcing support for Spring Java apps on Google App Engine as part of a shared vision to make it easy to build, run, and manage applications for the cloud, and to do so in a way that makes the applications portable across clouds. Using the Eclipse-based SpringSource Tool Suite, developers can build Spring applications in a familiar and productive way and have the flexibility to choose to deploy their applications in their current private VMware vSphere environment, in VMware vCloud partner clouds, or directly to Google App Engine.

Spring Roo and Google Web Toolkit VMware and Google are working together to combine the speed of development of Spring Roo, a next generation rapid application development tool, with the power of the Google Web Toolkit (GWT) to build rich browser apps. These GWT powered applications can leverage modern browser technologies such as AJAX and HTML5 to create the most compelling end user experience on both smartphones and computers.

Spring Insight and Google Speed Tracer The two companies are also collaborating to more tightly integrate VMware’s Spring Insight performance tracing technology within the SpringSource tc Server application server with Google’s Speed Tracer technology to enable end to end performance visibility of cloud applications built using Spring and Google Web Toolkit.

Over the last month VMware has confirmed multiple times that a major new release of vSphere is due for release some time this year.
Earlier this week virtualization.info obtained a leaked list detailing the features that will appear in the next vSphere release, tentatively named 4.1, but it’s unclear if this is the major update that the VMware’s CEO Paul Maritz mentioned during the last earnings call.

It’s important to clarify that while the features below, partially unveiled in March, are already part of the current beta builds, there’s no guarantee that VMware will keep all of them before reaching the GA status.

Additionally it’s important to note that the list below may be incomplete:

• Storage I/O can be shaped by I/O shares and limits through the new Storage I/O Control quality of service (QoS) feature
• Network I/O can be partitioned through a new QoS engine that distinguish between virtual machines, vMotion, Fault Tolerance (FT) and IP storage traffic.

• Memory compression will allow to compress RAM pages instead of swapping on disk, improving virtual machines performance.
• Distribute Resource Scheduling (DRS) now can follow affinity rules defining a subset of hosts where a virtual machine can be placed
• Virtual sockets can now have multiple virtual CPUs. Each virtual CPU will appear as a single core in the guest operating system.
• A team physical network interface cards in a vNetwork Distributed Switch can now dynamically load balance traffic.
• Health check status and operational dashboard are available for HA configurations.
• vSphere Client is no more part of the ESX and ESXi installation packages. At the end of the installation process administrators are redirected online to download the client.
• ESXi installation can be scripted. The script can start from a CD or over a PXE boot source, and can install the hypervisor on local or remote disks.
• ESX can boot from iSCSI targets (support for iBFT)
• NFS performance stats are included in esxtop and vCenter Server, as well as through the vSphere SDK.
• Virtual machines serial ports redirection over the network
• Support for up to 4 vMotion concurrent live migrations in 1GbE networks and up to 8 concurrent live migrations in 10GbE networks
• Support for USB pass-through (virtual machines can use ESX/ESXi local USB devices)
• Support for administrator password change in Host Profiles
• Support for FT in DRS clusters with with Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC)
• Support for iSCSI TCP/IP Offload Engine (TOE) network interface cards (both 10GB an 1GB)
• Support for 8GB Fibre Chanell HBAs
• Support for IPsec on IPv6 network configurations
• Support for multiple Data Recovery virtual appliances
• Support for Microsoft Volume Shadow Service (VSS) in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2 guest operating systems for vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP)
• Update Manager (VUM) can now patch additional 3rd party modules for ESX (like EMC PowerPath)
• Virtual to Virtual (V2) migration for offline Hyper-V virtual machines in vCenter Converter
• ESX and ESXi direct support for Microsoft Active Directory through Likewise technology integration
• Support for Intel Xeon 7500 / 5600 / 3600 CPU series (this includes EVC support)
• Support for AMD Opteron 4000 / 6000 CPU series (this includes EVC support)

Post content sourced from Virtualization.info

PHD Virtual Technologies, pioneer and innovator in backup and recovery for virtual machines announced today the PHD Virtual Xpress Backup for Citrix XenServer®.  The new backup and recovery solution is purpose-built for the growing number of virtualized XenServer environments and is certified Citrix Ready®.   Customers will be able to get their first look at the product during the upcoming Citrix Synergy™, Booth 600, San Francisco, May 12-14.

“We are pleased that Citrix has demonstrated their confidence in our ability to deliver high performance, cost-effective and reliable backup and recovery solutions for customers with large virtualized environments,” said Thomas Charlton, Chairman and CEO of PHD Virtual Technologies. “Our customers, formerly exclusive users of VMware, are embracing Citrix virtualization technologies such as XenServer and XenDesktop so it is necessary for PHD Virtual to respond with technology that meets the requirements of our heterogeneous customers.”

“This announcement is a great example of the momentum we are seeing with our server virtualization ecosystem partners,” said Lou Shipley, VP and GM, XenServer Product Group, Citrix Systems.  “PHD recognizes the value of XenServer and rapidly developed an enterprise backup solution to meet the needs of the growing server virtualization market.  We look forward to working with PHD and other virtualization management partners.”

PHD Virtual Backup for Citrix XenServer builds on the robust legacy of the award-winning esXpress 4.0. PHD Virtual’s products meet enterprise requirements for flexibility and scalability by using the virtual appliance itself to perform backups, in less time, more reliably, and at a lower cost. They are the only enterprise data protection solutions that operate independent of the hypervisor offering greater stability and more security.  PHD Virtual also provides a collaborative path to integrate with all major physical backup solutions (including products from Data Domain, Quantum, Symantec, EMC, HP, IBM, etc.) for end-to-end data protection throughout the enterprise.  Today, thousands of customers worldwide trust their mission critical data to PHD Virtual’s solutions.

Using PHD Virtual Backup for Citrix XenServer, customers will enjoy the benefits of

• The fastest and most cost effective backup that minimizes storage requirements
• The most reliable solution for data integrity with source-side deduplication and enhanced self healing backups
• And since PHD Virtual products will support both XenServer and XenDesktop®, customers can leverage the same solutions across their virtual environment.

PHD Virtual Backup for Citrix XenServer will be commercially available in September.

About the Citrix Ready Program

The Citrix Ready program identifies verified solutions that are trusted to enhance virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions  from Citrix, including Citrix® XenDesktop, XenApp™, XenServer, NetScaler® and GoToMeeting ®. The Citrix Ready designation is awarded to third party products that have successfully met verification criteria set by Citrix, and gives customers an added confidence in the compatibility of the joint solution offering. The Citrix Ready program leverages industry-leading alliances across the Citrix partner eco-system to meet a wide variety customer needs, and currently incorporates over 2,800 partners who have demonstrated more than 12,000 product verifications. It also includes the Citrix Ready Community Verified  program which allows customers to see thousands of products that have been verified by other customers to work in their production environments. The Citrix Ready program received the Alliance Excellence Award from the Association of Strategic Alliance Professionals (ASAP) for creating a strong community of alliances through implementation of new, innovative best practices.  More information about the Citrix Ready program can be found at www.citrix.com/citrixready.  Reach Citrix ready using social media via the Citrix Ready blog site and Twitter.