Egenera announced that electronic trading systems pioneer NYFIX has standardized on infrastructure virtualization solutions from Egenera. Egenera systems are highly available, flexible platforms that eliminate the need to rigidly dedicate servers to applications. Instead, Egenera's patented Processing Area Network (PAN) replaces server infrastructure with software, and automatically repurposes and reallocates virtual and physical servers on demand, with high availability and disaster recovery.

CEO Hector Ruiz, increasingly blamed for the harrowing of AMD, stepped down during the company's Q2 conference call with Wall Street Thursday in favor of his sidekick, AMD president and patent-carrying engineer Dirk Meyer, the guy who used to run AMD's chip operation and was responsible for the Opteron chip that brought grief to Intel. Since the two have been so closed aligned it is unclear whether the change will make any substantive difference in AMD's fortunes.

BakBone is providing comprehensive, easy-to-manage VMware and heterogeneous data protection solutions for The Latin School of Chicago, helping the school keep its focus on students, rather than data protection. An independent, coeducational day school located on the Near North Side of Chicago, The Latin School of Chicago ranks among the nation's best schools in the informed use of technology in the classroom and for school administration. They utilize technology to support efficient, reliable operation of the school and provide tools that enhance both internal and external communications.

With Gartner predicting that virtualization will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012, Avnet Technology Solutions furthered its commitment to enable its value-added reseller partners to excel in this fast-growth market. Avnet Technology Solutions, an operating group of Avnet announced a dedicated training program called VirtualPath University for value-added resellers in the United States. Based on Avnet's successful HealthPath University and GovPath University programs, VirtualPath University provides partners with virtualization market understanding, knowledge, technology drivers and tools.

Catbird announced the Certified Virtual Security Professional (CVSP) Program, a professional training and certification program for virtual security. The CVSP program provides IT professionals with in-depth knowledge and tools required for best-practice implementation of security in a virtual environment.

Citrix on Tuesday announced Project Kensho, which is supposed to deliver Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools that will let ISVs and enterprise IT folk create portable hypervisor-independent enterprise application workloads that should run across XenServer, Hyper-V and VMware ESX virtual environments. Citrix is expecting to have a free technical preview for download in September.

General Dynamics C4 Systems has selected the OptiPlex 755 desktop by Dell as the computer hardware to host its Trusted Virtual Environment (TVE), a High Assurance Platform (HAP)-compliant workstation intended for classified work by government users. The workstation enables individuals to use a single computer workstation to securely access information and applications from multiple networks, at different classification levels, as opposed to limiting a computer to a single security level.

AppSense reported a 50 percent increase in U.S. revenue for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008. Its global business - which includes a growing customer base of over 4,000 - realized a 30 percent increase in worldwide revenue, continuing its trend of 30 percent growth each year since 2005.

Interphase Systems announced it has named Lew Smith as Product Manager, Virtualization Solutions. In this newly created position, he will be responsible for leading and building Interphase's virtualization practice and offerings, with a concentration on the key technologies that will benefit the company's customers. Smith will continue to build relationships with existing technology partners, as well as engaging in new partner relationships.

FalconStor announced its expansion in the Software as a Service (SaaS) market, collaborating with HiNet - the Internet service provider (ISP) arm of Chunghwa Telecom, an information and telecom service provider in Taiwan - to make online backup services available to customers and small-and-medium-size businesses in Taiwan.

Alternative Technology continues to expand its offerings by announcing it will supply a broad range of CA distributed enterprise IT management software. Those offerings include: application & development databases; application performance management; database management; dynamic & virtual systems management; governance, risk & compliance; infrastructure & operations management; IT service & asset management; project, portfolio & financial management; security management; and storage & information governance.

VMware reported financial results for the second quarter of 2008: Revenues for the second quarter were $456 million, an increase of 54% from the second quarter of 2007. GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $61 million, compared to $47 million for the same period last year. Non-GAAP operating income was $112 million, an increase of 52% from the second quarter of 2007.

VMware announced that more than 40 universities in Australia and New Zealand are using VMware virtualization to enhance the online experience of their students. VMware is working with the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) which paves the way for more than 40 member institutions to deliver virtualization solutions at standard and low costs, regardless of a school's size. CAUDIT members include nearly every university in Australia and New Zealand.

Leostream announced it raised US$3 million in a first round of venture capital funding led by Meakem Becker Venture Capital of Pittsburgh, PA. Leostream will use the proceeds from its sale of Series A shares for the expansion of sales and marketing.

EMC recently addressed Qatar's business decision-makers on how can EMC help them have a flexible and efficient IT environment by realizing the full potential and advanced functionality of virtualization solutions from VMware. Executives in Doha heard how they can use virtualization solutions to pool storage capacity together and create a more effective data protection environment. They also heard how EMC content-enabled solutions can help them bring unstructured content into the process.

That thud you heard yesterday was the European Commission hitting Intel with a second supplemental indictment-like statement of objection (SO) charging the company with three more instances of antitrust violations designed to keep AMD out of the market. Miraculously the news arrived just as AMD was posting its seventh consecutive quarterly loss.

In response to Symantec's recent announcement regarding its direct sales and automated renewal policies, Astaro announced a new promotion aimed at Symantec resellers. Astaro, a 100 percent channel-focused company, is offering a 20 percent discount on Astaro products through its 'Symantec Switch' promotion to help alleviate the strain these partners may feel in the wake of Symantec's new policies.

FastScale announced a new North America Channel Program with eight partners already signed including Blackhawk Technology Consulting, Continental Resources, International Computerware, New Age Technology, SecureTek Group, VirtaCORE, Whitewater Data, and Xcedex. Data center demand for the company's innovative technologies exceeded expectations during the first year of availability, and skilled partners will provide customers with greater access to products, technical expertise, and related services offerings centered on FastScale?s technologies.

VMware is supposed to report its second-quarter results on Tuesday July 22 and people will be tuning in to see how EMC's abrupt ouster of the virtualization leader's CEO and co-founder Diane Greene last week is handled and what is added to the news that VMware isn't going to make its full-year 2008 guidance of 50% growth over 2007. Parent company EMC said last week that VMware would come in 'modestly below' its revenue goals because of a more challenging spending environment but left Q2 guidance of 55% growth in place.

3PAR announced a partnership with Tokyo-based ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) to deliver 3PAR Utility Storage products and maintenance services to customers throughout Japan. With this partnership, 3PAR gains the leverage of CTC's network of 4000 sales and pre-sales engineers and approximately 100 maintenance centers across Japan to expand market coverage and value delivery to CTC customers nationwide. The partnership between 3PAR and CTC creates a strategic alliance designed to meet the demand for storage solutions to support the growth of utility computing, infrastructure virtualization, and green datacenter deployments in Japan.

For many years secondary sites have been a part of the enterprise computing equation. Recent natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina opened the eyes of many IT administrators to the devastation that can compromise primary and backup IT facilities. The widespread confusion that followed Hurricane Katrina brought into sharp focus the need for comprehensive business continuity plans that incorporated secondary data center sites located far enough away so as to be untouched by the disaster affecting the primary data site. However, many IT organizations believe the costs involved in establishing secondary data centers are out of reach for all but the largest organizations.

Cisco announced that BT Global Services intends to deploy the new Cisco ASR1000 Series Aggregation Services Routers. BT Global Services has been involved in testing the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers prior to the product's launch in March this year.

Sun, whose stock has been teetering on the brink of disaster, pre-announced its fourth quarter Tuesday and said it could have non-GAAP earnings somewhere between 25 cents and 35 cents because of a $100 million restructuring charge (five-15 cents GAAP) on revenues of $3.725 billion-$3.8 billion. Its gross margin is supposed to be 44%-45. Wall Street folks figured it would do 27 cents on $3.8 billion.

IBM and Juniper Networks announced they have signed a five-year, data center hosting agreement with IBM to support Juniper's global operations. As part of the agreement, IBM will provide Juniper with a next-generation, global hosting environment to support its enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) application deployments worldwide. IBM will host Juniper's operations from its new energy efficient 'green' data center in Boulder, Colorado.

Such speculation makes one wonder if that means Fujitsu, whose track record in the United States hasn't been anything to write home about either, would be reluctant to buy Sun, which has been looking anemic enough lately to have spawned reports it's looking for a new CEO to replace Jonathan Schwartz and may need an exit strategy. Fujitsu, which makes and sells Sparc machines, has always been Sun's backstop.

2X Software announced that it has teamed up with Azlan. With the 2X Server Based Computing software portfolio, Azlan can now provide a fully integrated and highly reliable virtualization business grade solution to its customers.

eMeter announced it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. The VMware TAP program helps technology vendors integrate their products with VMware virtualization software and deliver timely, joint solutions to mutual customers.

HP Middle East launched the first phase of the 'Alternative Thinking about Virtualization' Roadshow for the Middle East in Dubai. The roadshow begins in Dubai and will then follow through to Riyadh, Doha and Cairo between the 13th and 17th of July. The roadshow will focus on the key business implications around 'virtualization', focusing on energy efficiency and reduction as well as hardware and maintenance costs in the office environment.

There's a little puddle on Wall Street where VMware, the virtualization leader and the most brilliant IPO since Google went public, used to be. EMC, VMware's parent company, announced mid-morning that VMware co-founder Diane Greene was out presumably because the company isn't going to make its full-year 2008 guidance of 50% growth over 2007 and it hasn't reported its second quarter yet. EMC said it would come in at 'modestly below' its goal.

As part of Pillar Data's Emerald Partner Program initiative, Adeara has been elevated to the Emerald Partner Program. In order to participate, Adeara met specific requirements around sales and technical Pillar accreditations which have enhanced Adeara's overall storage go-to-market strategies. With over 7 installations now since striking a partnership with Pillar Data over 24 months ago, Adeara is in a position to offer its end-to-end storage solutions including consolidation, disaster recovery and backup solutions in a very cost-effective manner.

Hitachi announced that is has signed two new partnerships in Saudi Arabia with Al Moammar Information Systems (MIS) and Business Management Company (BMC), as part of the vendor's strategy to strengthen its presence in the Kingdom. Both MIS and BMC will work with customers across the various tiers of Hitachi Data Systems solutions, from low-end and modular storage to high-end enterprise.

api software announced it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program as a Premier Partner. The VMware TAP program enables partner organizations to take advantage of VMware resources and expertise to deliver enhanced value to shared customers. The program also supports its partners' development of VMware infrastructure solutions, helping them virtualize their clients' data centers.

Real-Time Systems introduced the latest version of its Real-Time Hypervisor software. This software product, which enables the simultaneous running of multiple operating systems on multi-core processors, also supports Microsoft Windows XP.

Transitive announced that its QuickTransit software will run within Hyper-V, the Windows Server 2008 hypervisor released this month by Microsoft. This innovative product combination will allow enterprise customers to run Solaris/SPARC applications on the latest Windows-based servers without porting or recompilation, resulting in cost-effective new solutions for scalability, high availability, disaster recovery and legacy application re-hosting.

HCL Technologies announced it has signed a Global System Integration contract with VMware. This relationship combines VMware virtualization products and services with HCL's proven experience and globally benchmarked capabilities in enterprise IT infrastructure operations and transformation, thereby providing best-of-breed virtualization lifecycle services to global enterprises.

Configuresoft announced its expanded partner program designed to maximize customer satisfaction and provide a more seamless relationship between Configuresoft and its partners. Enterprises are challenged with reducing costs, meeting compliance demands and managing additional complexity introduced by technologies such as virtualization and SOA, Configuresoft partners are experiencing increased demand for best-of-breed solutions such as Configuresoft's Enterprise Configuration Manager (ECM).

VMware's Board of Directors announced that it has made a change in the leadership of the company with the departure of Diane Greene as President and CEO. VMware's Board of Directors has appointed Paul Maritz as President and CEO of VMware effective immediately. Maritz was also named to VMware's Board of Directors.

In a series of reports released in March, Editor Paul McWilliams advised readers it was time to buy specific tech stocks. All of his selections went up with some nearly doubling. Realizing the highs we were seeing in mid-May were unlikely to hold, McWilliams released a special report as the markets were peaking that month suggesting to his readers it was time to take some profits or at least hedge long positions with covered calls.

Peak 10 has been chosen by Apogee Global Resources to support its enterprise-class delivery services. The company will receive a fully-managed virtual environment out of Peak 10's state-of-the-art Jacksonville facility. Apogee is relocating its headquarters from Columbia, S.C. to Jacksonville, Fla., which involves a merging of all company data and the consolidation of its division Web sites to the Peak 10 data center. Peak 10 will facilitate the company's data management and consolidation by providing Apogee with virtualization services as well as regular back-ups and network security to ensure data protection.

BLADE Network Technologies announced that it has joined the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, a non-profit organization dedicated to reducing computer power consumption by 50 percent by 2010. As a pioneer of energy-efficient data center networking, BLADE is recognized on AlwaysOn's GoingGreen 100 list of the world's foremost 'green' companies. BLADE views organizations such as the Climate Savers Computing Initiative as key to the energy-efficient data center of the future.