Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

I guess putting VMware and pitting VMware against the typical low cost rivals may be unfair. Unfair since VMware has also indulged in “counter-disruptive” low cost strategy. They have so far responded adequately to counteract the moves of the “known competitors”. The knowledge of their products and its capabilities. Lets just take one competitor for instance , Microsoft’s Virtual Server ( software acquired from the firm connectrix ). They knew by releasing the GSX server (in the form of Free Virtual Server) would stall and force such low cost competitors to freeze. A pretty good example of a “strategic entry deterrence”. As Wikipedia would describe it. Strategic entry deterrence involves any action taken by an incumbent firm that seeks to discourage potential entrants from entering into and competing in the market, even if it is not profit maximising to do so in the short-run. A good move, but a move that was based on the knowledge that VMware had. A move also that made t...

Parallels challenging and luring VMware into the dark alleys. XenSource doing a cosmetic upgrade to attract Windows clients Virtual Iron comparing its pricing (80%* cheaper than VMware they say) against VMware Microsoft keeping mum (I'm sure Russinovich is up to something there, we'll know pretty soon for sure) but sure working on something SWsoft wooing Sun and integrating openVZ on their Servers. VMware needs to take a deep breath and think of a strategy to spin off catalytic innovations (and I mean on their Business Model as well) with inside-outs and outside-ins insights.Watch this space. I will finish post by tonite! Thanks to David (in comment) for the correction!

Check it out for yourself Beta3 and Transporter Beta3 . This discussion at Ars(?)technica is interesting too.

We know that Xen is moving slowly. We know that all the other guys (MS, Redhat , Novell et al ) are "standing behind" the Xen folks. But if I see this discussion Programmers have released a new version of Xen with a graphics feature that makes the virtualization software more useful on desktop computers. Xen lets a single computer run multiple operating systems simultaneously, which is useful today as a way to replace servers with one, more efficiently used computer. On a desktop system, Xen virtualization promises to keep separate zones for test, work, personal and management software. So far, however, that promise has been hampered by a major weakness: the inability to display multiple graphical user interfaces for these "guest" operating systems. Xen 3.0.4 changes this. By including what's called a virtual frame buffer, Xen's controlling "host" operating system can capture video data written to a specific part of memory and then send ...

Well that is what is going to happen beginning Jan 23 2007. Too bad its only in US, I wish VMware did such things in Europe as well. I wouldn't wanna push them to start such stuff in India, Africa, S America and China as well. Not yet... Anyways check your email, if you've been a customer or a partner then you'd have already been invited.

Wanna vote, then go here .

Avastu Director India has taken up the initiative of writing the business plan for us. We wholeheartedly agreed since he took a lot of pains also in doing the market research for the group. I will soon be writing the management summary. We have already (almost finalized) the CEO, COO, Director India, Director Argentina, Director Africa, Director China candidates ready. You will soon see them when the site is ahem.. "officially" launched! Keep watching this space for the news. And yes I also mean the VCs. You can always call me/Skype me or email me (info[at]avastu.com) if you can't wait for official launch and want to talk to me in investing right away (before we have someone else's interest ;)) Take care, Merry Christmas and God bless! Tarry

Citrix gets Ardence pushing virtualization on application level into the year 2007 even harder than ever. Next 2 years are not only going to bring radical and fundamental changes but many conventional technologies are going to disappear into the oblivion. What would VMware do to take the chunk of the "application virtualization" market share out of Citrix of Softricity's hands? I'll tell you in one of my weekend strategy sessions on "VMWare's diversification and penetration into the newer (previously considered dark and scary) markets/arenas!". Part of our HyperDisruptive MarketBusting Strategies for 2007/2008 series . And this I call a "saying yay while my lips say nay" Cristinziano downplays any idea of Citrix, with a market capitalization of $5 billion, itself becoming an acquisition target as technology titans Microsoft Corp. and IBM Corp. move into virtualization. And how could we forget Oracle ? I'm sure Oracle too would want to go...

So I can finally get off and start talking about some really cool features of this workstation tool! And for that Sysop's regret on VMware 6 I can't prove it, but the beta of VMware Workstation 6 seems to be slower than version 5.5. It needs constantly about 15% -20% CPU power of my host system (Windows XP), even if the virtual machine is not busy. I don't remember VMware Workstation 5.5 showing a similar behavior. I also regret the upgrade because my Serial Number for version 5.5 is not valid, anymore. I have to use a new Serial Number for the trial version. I'll probably forget to buy an upgrade in time. Then, I will have to downgrade to get access to my virtual machines. I wished VMware would be a little bit more obliging to its customers. Duh, dude thats why they call it a beta :)! Anyways the changes in this Beta, yeah Beta are: • Multiple Monitor Support — At the click of a button, the guest can now span monitors and also reflect the monitor topology — meaning ...

We will soon be converting the appliances into XenSource Appliances. Do let me know if you have any other requests!

I'll try to sum up my thoughts on a weekly basis on articles where I will propose strategies of all sorts. This strategy, for instance, will attempt to address the challenges for both low cost rivals as well as established virtualization vendors. So hang on until weekend...

Matt has done an excellent job here. I have worked with Matt on cooking our openQRM Virtual Appliance (which you will see soon on our Avastu site!) and he is a great guy to work with. Here Matt is showing XenSource migration.

Check it out here .

Maybe the question should have been “What is your CSR strategy?” I think most corporations have some sort of CSR “thing” going on. What is CSR: Wikipedia says this (although this definition is still under review for its neutrality): Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept that suggests that commercial corporations have a duty of care to all of their stakeholders in all aspects of their business operations. A company’s stakeholders are all those who are influenced by, or can influence, a business’s decisions and actions. These can include (but are not limited to): employees, customers, suppliers, community organizations, subsidiaries and affiliates, joint venture partners, local neighbourhoods, investors, and shareholders. CSR requires that businesses account for and measure the actual or potential economic, social and environmental impacts of their decisions. In some cases the application of a strong CSR policy by a business can involve actions being taken w...

A lot of interesting things are happening in Avastu Project. We are also expanding our network and branch offices in Africa and South America (starting from Argentina, Brazil etc). I will also be testing and evaluating: XenSource Enterprise Server Converting some of our VMware images to XenSource 3 images Evaluating Virtual Iron So stay tuned for our official launch...

Its on the left pane but you can also go to the link and make a selection. View This Poll

I did once mention about some article touting XenSource on the brink of dethroning VMware. Anyways, I was wondering what has become of the polls. One you have on the right pane (Please use Firefox for better results/experience) and I'm putting the other one here as well (again). So why is VMware leading the pack then? They address the business needs effectively. They just lied to their customers! They have an amazing product. No product matches ESX servers capabilities! Free polls from Pollhost.com Keep polling...

All kinds of folks approach you when you're mad about virtualization. I got to hear this from some guy and he was proud to tell me about it. I was obviously interested! So we took a look at the cool features of this cool product! What does the VMware Workstation 6 Beta has to offer? This is the list I got... OS Support 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista (RC) as host and guest operating systems 32-bit and 64-bit Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.5 (Beta, formerly called 4.0 Update 5) and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 (Beta) as host and guest operating systems 32-bit and 64-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP4 (Beta) and SUSE Linux 10.2 (Alpha) as host and guest operating systems 32-bit and 64-bit Ubuntu Linux 6.10 as host and guest operating systems 32-bit and 64-bit Mandriva Linux 2007 as host operating system 32-bit and 64-bit Solaris 10 Update 3 (Beta) as guest operating system Features!!!! Integrated Virtual Debuggers — With the new Workstation IDE (integrated development environment) pl...

Ok so VMware is on to the 15 Billion dollar track (do I hear a Gartner analyst telling me that it has doubled, given the the Desktop virtualization and server-server, desktop-desktop, server-desktop virtualization screaming for attention?) and their message is " X86! here we come! ". But I am seeing (all around me) an ever increasing community that is growing and is realizing its own powers of a multi-tasking mini-versatilists. I am about to launch my Avastu Transnational firm (Not anymore Multinational as we could dare to speak in the older days)and I would like to believe in the "ship with cargo to destination" strategy will get us to steer the ship to safety. Plain and simple! Looking at VMware, I don't see it as a big and heavy ship. No sir, but it is pretty clear to see players like Parallels playing the flute to the "fan communities". Sure network ladies like techcrunch , gigaom , readwriteweb do also fan the flames. They scream on the web te...