Thinking of a Logical Acquisition for Cisco – Citrix

Earlier this week Cisco announced its intention to acquire Whiptail, its 6th acquisition for 2013. The addition to the Unified Computing (UCS) line made sense, as it continues to support their vision to be the infrastructure that clouds run on. To achieve this vision, Cisco will need to make some strategic acquisitions to keep them on track. Even at its current $12 billion evaluation, Citrix would be a great buy. The synergies between the two companies have already been proven with joint development and sales efforts in the field. Let me speculate on what could happen with the products if Cisco picked Citrix up.

Security Questions from VMworld 2013

While at VMworld 2013, I started to ask 5 security questions that have been bothering me for some time now. Some of these questions apparently have no answers currently and others only have operational answers, no technology. Security of a secure hybrid cloud is a mix of procedures, policies, operations, and technology. These questions are about various aspects of virtual and cloud environments that have been nagging at me for some time now as well as problems I have faced managing our own cloud instances. Perhaps you have questions you would like to add to the list, if so please share.

Hyper-V Security: 5nine Software

On the 9/5 Virtualization Security Podcast we discussed Hyper-V Security and were joined by Alex Kibkalo, a former senior architect at Microsoft who works as a Director of Product Management in 5nine Software. 5nine Software has developed the first introspective virtualization security device for Hyper-V and is a very large step forward. Introspective security has been missing from Hyper-V for a number of years, while it was possible to implement, the market has been so small that is was not feasible until now. Which implies Hyper-V is gaining adherents so has a need for better security measures.

VMworld 2013: ViewSonic’s Android Based Thin Client, a Hidden Treasure

Amongst all the major infrastructure and cloud announcements at VMworld this year, I was looking for some interesting technology that would stand out from a EUC perspective. Released back in May, the ViewSonic SD-A225 and SD-A245 (22 and 24 inch respectively) smart display devices peaked my interest.

The Software Defined Data Center

The Software Defined Data Center: That was pretty much the biggest takeaway from this year’s VMworld in San Francisco. VMware made announcements about the new vSan that will be coming out soon and will enhance the software defined storage aspect and also the announcement about the NSX platform that addresses one of the final hurdles, network virtualization, to pave the path to finally have a completely software defined datacenter.