New AppTitude 3.5 Adds Support for Citrix XenApp Virtualization To Leading Application Compatibility Testing Solution

AppDNA, the worldwide leader in compatibility testing for application environments, today announced the general availability of its AppTitude 3.5 solution. The new release adds support for the Citrix® XenApp™ application delivery solution for both hosted and streamed applications. A beta for the XenApp support was introduced at the Citrix Summit event in October 2008 and was tested by a wide range of Citrix customers and partners. AppTitude 3.5 provides business benefits that include vastly reducing the time, cost and risks associated with deployment of OS migrations, software upgrades, virtualization and other changes.

What’s New in AppTitude 3.5

The new release of AppTitude™ allows organizations to check for application compatibility with XenApp (versions 3.0 through 5) and Windows Terminal Services. The new release has two separate reporting modules – the Server-Based Computing (SBC) Module for compatibility with XenApp hosted and Terminal Services configurations and the Virtualization Manager for XenApp streaming. AppTitude 3.5 supports two types of analysis – static and runtime – including an extended runtime analysis that can import customized OS images. This allows the AppTitude algorithms to adapt to the build configuration of the target OS platforms, which generate more accurate and relevant reporting for those customers with customized applications. It also offers new performance and security analyses that are essential for assessing application compatibility for XenApp and Terminal Services environments. A new 64-bit report in the Server and Desktop Compatibility Manager provides a dedicated view on application suitability for 64-bit computing. New support for external data source lookups enables third party and vendor databases, such as Microsoft’s list of certified Vista-compatible applications, to supplement AppTitude’s direct analysis.

“Companies are looking to application virtualization and XenApp to reduce the cost and complexity of managing and delivering applications,” said Bill Hartwick, Senior Director of Product Marketing at Citrix. “AppTitude 3.5 can help identify up front what changes, if any, need to be made to the application to deliver it with XenApp. By providing rapid and comprehensive visibility into their potential application compatibility issues, AppTitude 3.5 enables our partners to help customers more quickly and cost-effectively manage their applications in our virtualization environment.”

“With AppTitude 3.5, we can now provide unprecedented insight into application DNA for those organizations delivering applications with XenApp,” said Mike Welling, CEO of AppDNA. “With its extended runtime analysis and enhanced reporting capabilities, AppTitude 3.5 provides more accurate reporting and an even more powerful analytic dashboard for dramatically improving XenApp rollouts.”

Pricing and Availability

AppTitude 3.5 for Windows platforms and AppTitude Virtualization Manager for Citrix XenApp are available immediately from AppDNA. AppTitude pricing varies based on configuration, ranging from $5,000 for a typical pilot installation to a starting range of $50,000 for enterprise-wide deployments.

Red Hat Moves to Expand Server Virtualization Interoperability

Today we made an announcement that I think is going to generate a lot of interest. Red Hat and Microsoft are working together to ensure virtualization interoperability. This is big news. Companies deploy virtualization to make their infrastructure more efficient. By allowing Windows Server to run as a guest on Red Hat virtualization, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to run as a guest on Windows virtualization, customers gain new level of compatibility, interoperability and support. This is a major step forward for the industry.

Both Microsoft and Red Hat now have the capability to provide complete end-to-end virtualization solutions, from hardware to operating system, on the two industry-leading operating environments, which IDC says represent about 80 percent of today’s virtualized operating systems. This breaks through a major hurdle to more widespread adoption of virtualization.

Of course, it is also big news because it is rare that these two companies publicly work together. The companies continue to compete vigorously. But virtualization interoperability is very high on customers’ wish lists, and I’m pleased both companies have been able to respond in this cooperative fashion.

But for the record, it isn’t the first time Red Hat and Microsoft have cooperated. For example, Microsoft has recently joined the open source AMQP high performance messaging project, of which Red Hat was a founding member. Red Hat customers are already deploying AMQP technology with Red Hat’s Enterprise MRG product. The messaging element (the “M” in MRG) provides messaging up to 100 times faster than some legacy technologies.

One of the big questions on the minds of many members of the open source community is whether Red Hat has compromised its ideals. Nothing could be further from the truth. Red Hat’s growth, and its differentiation, come from its belief in and commitment to, the open source community model. It is our view – and this view is institutionalized throughout our company – that we have to serve the community, as well as our customers, shareholders, and employees. The moment we stop doing so, we eliminate the differentiation which drives our growth.

So we undertook this interoperability effort with strict adherence to our principles. The companies signed two agreements: One in which Red Hat joined the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP), which validates Windows Server guests running on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies, and the other which certifies Red Hat Enterprise Linux guests running on Windows Server Hyper-V.

The agreements contain no patent or open source license components. There are no financial clauses beyond simple certification testing fees. These are straightforward certification and validation agreements.

I am excited about this step forward for the industry. And I am pleased we did it without compromising our commitment to open source. That’s leadership we can be proud of.

Apple App Store's New Rival: Jailbroken Paid Apps

With more 1.5 million jailbroken iPhones out there by some estimates, a new alternative to Apple's App store launched over the weekend to great interest in the iPhone community. Cydia Store, the de-facto app store for jailbroken iPhones, now offers paid apps, ending Apple's monopoly.

If jailbreaking your iPhone is not a big price to pay (besides losing your Apple warranty) in order to get all those cool applications that Apple deemed as unauthorized or kicked out of its App Store, then maybe you should have a look at the new version of the Cydia Store, which now features paid apps as well.

By now, Cydia allowed jailbroken iPhone users to install countless free (read: unauthorized) third-party apps, welcoming a growing community of developers that got their applications rejected from Apple's official store. The latest update to Cydia, released on Sunday, now includes a full-fledged app store, together with payment processing -- basically competing with Apple's solution, but on the grayer realm of legality.

It's clearly worth mentioning that Apple does not endorse jailbreaking or hacking into the iPhone's OS, allowing installation of third-party apps that were not approved by the Cupertino company. Actually, Apple tries to convene that jailbreaking your iPhone is a violation of copyright laws. However, hacking your iPhone proved to be a popular practice among many users.

Cydia brings for free to jailbroken iPhones highly requested features like copy/paste, camcorder possibility, or tethering options (iPhone as a modem). The new version of the Cydia app store, now supporting paid for applications opens a new world for those iPhone developers whose Apps were rejected by the official Apple App store. The first paid app in Cydia is a contacts application that puts contact photos alongside names and costs $1.

Nevertheless, the Cydia Store has downsides as well. Besides the main inconvenience of having to jailbreak your phone (which can be achieved easily these days), the store accepts payments only via Amazon Payment accounts (but a recent Twitter post from the store's creator, Jay Freeman, says PayPal payment is coming soon). Also, the store accepts only a limited number of app submissions at a time (submissions are halted now), highlighting the limited personnel to handle approvals.

But Cydia Store is certainly an interesting development in the iPhone world to watch over the coming years. The iPhone still lacks some features that many of its users crave for and it looks like plenty will try and get them, regardless of the legal uncertaintly they tackle in the process. And even though Apple tries to block jailbreakings with every iteration of the iPhone's software update, a few days later a new hack makes its way on the Internet.

System trouble halts Japanese weather data

A computer problem halted the flow of weather data from the Japan Meteorological Agency to media organizations and other users today.

The cause of the problem, which occurred around 3 a.m. local time (6 p.m. GMT) in systems of the Japan Meteorological Business Support Center, is unknown, and the system hadn't been brought back online as of 1 p.m. local time.

As a result of the problem, the Meteorological Agency and many news organizations haven't been unable to publish current weather data and weather forecasts. The most up-to-date forecast on the agency's home page is that from 11 p.m. local time, Sunday night. On a typical Monday, it would have been updated at least twice before lunchtime.

Windows Server will Run in Enterprise Cloud

Future versions of Windows Server will enable companies to efficiently manage and provide virtualized applications through the Web just like Microsoft Corp.'s upcoming platform-as-a-service, Windows Azure, a company executive said this week.

"The innovation in Azure and future versions of Windows Server will be shared, and that code base will continue to cross-pollinate," said Steven Martin, senior director for developer platform product management at Microsoft, in an interview. "The corporate data center at some point in time will look like a mini-cloud, partitioned by application workload."

First previewed last fall, Windows Azure is Microsoft's foray into bringing Windows Server online as a cloud computing platform. Developers will be able to port or write applications using Microsoft's popular .Net tools and Web standard interfaces such as REST, SOAP and Atom, and host them on Azure, similar to Amazon.com Inc.'s EC2, Salesforce.com's Force.com, or Google Inc.'s App Engine.

Azure is expected to be released later this year. Detailed pricing hasn't been released. Microsoft is expected to talk about Azure at its MIX Web development conference in Las Vegas next week.

Conventional hosting entails companies buying or leasing a server from a data center operator and running a set number of applications off it. That can be complicated to manage, entail a lot of upfront cost, and can be difficult to scale quickly on demand.

Azure, like other newer-generation cloud platforms, enables faster setup and easier scaling, and lets users pay for usage, thus avoiding upfront investment.

"Our goal is to completely hide the complexity of hardware from developers," Martin said.

Martin mentioned several Azure beta testers. One, a company called S3Edge, helps manufacturers recall defective products.

"Ideally, a product doesn't get recalled and they don't need to activate our service," Martin said. "But if it does, they need to be prepared to scale very fast."

An independent software vendor, Epicor Software Corp., is writing the next version of its ERP software so it can be hosted via Azure, Martin said, while another, Micro Focus, is taking Cobol applications off a mainframe and hosting them on Azure (as well as Amazon.com Inc.'s EC2) for its customers.

Azure runs on Windows Server 2008 inside Microsoft's data centers. The fact that Microsoft offers both Windows Server software and the Azure service as part of its "software+services" strategy, is a plus for companies unsure about committing completely to a cloud infrastructure, Martin said, whether because they think they can run it cheaper or with more agility, or because regulations require them to do so.

"We make it really easy for you to transition back to on-premises without having to completely rewrite your app. You control your own destiny," Martin said. By contrast, "if I'm a startup, it's gotta be in the back of my mind when I look at Amazon.com's 10-K, that 'Gosh, they may want to go back to just selling books.'"

Besides corporations, Web hosting companies may be interested in hosting Azure to make their infrastructure more nimble and efficient. Martin said hosting companies and other application service providers won't get access to Azure before enterprises, though.

Server Vendors Stung by Falling Sales

If companies around the world are freezing technology spending, then it's the server market that appears to be bearing the brunt of the financial chill.

According to the latest Gartner figures, worldwide server shipments declined by 11.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 compared to the same period a year earlier, which added up to a nasty 15.1 percent contraction in overall revenue.

All vendors and most market segments posted declines, but the strange geographical concoction known as EMEA (European, the Middle East and Africa) posted the worst figures, showing revenue declines of 20.6 percent, ahead of the US which dropped 14.6 percent. Only Japan posted a rise, reflecting the fact that the worst of the slump had yet to reach the Far East.

Unix server shipments were down 10.5 percent, which sounds bad but was still less severe than the 11.4 percent experienced by the more mainstream x86 market. The single bright spot for server technology was blade servers which posted gains in a year, 2008, Gartner still predicts revenues will have increased by 30 percent.

As to vendors, IBM was the biggest loser, down 22.4 percent in server shipment numbers, with Dell (-7.1 percent), Sun (-3.9 percent), and HP (-1.6 percent) less affected. It is worth pointing out, however, that shipments don't tell the whole story; all of the above saw substantial falls in server revenue, which suggests that some have kept shipment numbers up by cutting prices.

"The weakening economic environment had a deep impact on server market revenues in the fourth quarter as companies put a hold on spending across most market segments," said Gartner's senior research analyst, Heeral Kota, perhaps stating the obvious. "Almost all segments exhibited similar behaviour as users sought to reduce costs and spending, deferring projects where possible."

What the figures underscore is that US spending has contracted sharply, while spending in Europe and other parts of the world has also dropped off sharply, not helped by fluctuating currency rates which can cause prices to rise.

The next year won't be much better. "The continued weak economic environment will cause users to be extremely cautious with levels of expenditure which will make for a particularly challenging environment for vendors. The server market already has high levels of vendor consolidation but the conditions expected during 2009 will increase the threat of further consolidation," said Kota.

Seagate, AMD Showcase Super Fast SATA Drive

As the year marches on, work proceeds apace on the next big step in the Serial ATA specification. Alternately called SATA Revision (or just Rev) 3 or SATA 6Gbps, the updated specification was finalized late last year. This week at the FOSE '09 government tech show in New Orleans, Seagate is becoming the first hard drive manufacturer to publically demonstrate a SATA 6Gbps hard drive. Seagate's technology demo is in partnership with AMD, which has supplied the necessary chipsets to achieve the third-generation SATA interface's fast speeds.

The SATA spec bump is a natural evolution. Notes Seagate's Marc Norblitt, "We need to make the interface faster, so the interface doesn't become a bottleneck that causes performance to suffer dramatically. The higher the capacity of the drive, the higher the areal density; the higher the areal density, the more bits you get under the head in the same amount of time." That, Norblitt adds, translates into data being output faster.

The read speeds that Seagate has achieved, and will be demonstrating at the show, are about 550 megabytes per second (including command overhead). By comparison, SATA 1.5 achieved 120Mbps, and SATA 3 achieved 250Mbps. The demonstration uses an AMD reference motherboard, with an AMD SATA 6Gbps chipset and CPU, and a prototype 6Gbps drive. The drive uses the same SATA connectors as current-generation SATA drives, and is backward compatible with earlier SATA versions.

Although SATA 6Gbps will be here by year's end, Norblitt says he doesn't expect the technology to be needed for another two years. When such drives do ship, they will provide a future-proofed way for individuals to plan ahead. Norblitt expects Seagate will have a SATA 6Gbps drive to market in "late 2009." The company expects to focus on placing the drives in high performance PCs, gaming PCs, and low-end server PCs. -targeting channel. "We're targeting customers who want high capacity, high performance disc drives," explains Norblitt.

Among the big improvements for SATA 6Gbps: Better power management, and improved native command queuing. With regard to power management, the new spec gives more control to the host or device. Instead of shutting the interface off, it allows it to into a slumber mode, one that's initiated by either the device or the host. The updated native command queuing allows streaming commands. So how will SATA 6Gbps stack up against the other forthcoming interface speed bump, USB 3.0? "SATA is a storage interface; USB is a universal interface," Norblitt says simply. The two interfaces, he adds, will be able to co-exist.