Posts Tagged ‘Citrix’

Queen’s University Belfast appoints Novosco to build private cloud

Belfast, June 10th 2010 - Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, today announced it has been appointed to implement a VCE based virtualised Data Centre infrastructure into Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). This project represents the first major V-Block deployment throughout the Higher Education sector in the UK and Ireland.

Built on Cisco’s Unified Computing System, the new virtualised infrastructure will facilitate significantly greater numbers of virtual machines on the same piece of hardware. Cisco UCS offers centralised management over the compute, networking and storage elements needed to deploy virtual ICT infrastructures. This “wire once, walk away” approach will help address the power management targets within the University’s data centres.

The flexibility of the VCE approach within QUB will also afford management greater control over the support and management of the environment, with the potential for new and improved innovations delivered to an increasingly sophisticated end user base. Future investments in the platform will also be significantly less than additions to physical environments, all of which future proofs QUB’s investment. Novosco’s DataCentre Architecture Solutions’ Practice is underpinned by the VCE “DataCentre 3.0” vision. This approach, allied with EMC storage, Cisco’s UCS and VMware’s VSphere Could Operating System allows QUB the potential to optimise DataCentre resources with increased flexibility compared to traditional hardware based solutions.

Queen’s University is recognised as one of the best universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is the UK’s Entrepreneurial University of the Year, and a member of the Russell Group of the UK’s 20 leading research-intensive universities, which includes Oxford and Cambridge.

Founded in 1845, Queen’s University Belfast has been providing higher education to students from around the world for over 165 years. Currently it caters for more than 17,000 students and 3,500 staff, with some 100,000 alumni graduates worldwide.

Jim Cunningham, Assistant Director for Information Systems said, “Novosco’s experience in delivering enterprise scale virtualisation environments, along with their strong relationships with each of the VCE technology partners, made them an easy choice to deliver V-Block into the University’s Data Centres.”

John Lennon, Sales Director for Novosco said, “QUB’s approach to the next generation data centre is instrumental in helping it remain one of the most innovative Higher Education providers in Ireland. Giving staff and students a better ICT experience within existing financial and resourcing commitments will ensure that this competitive edge is maintained”.

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud IT infrastructure and network services. With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Cisco, Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware, Novosco offers the highest level of accreditation in Ireland for Virtualisation solutions. The Novosco CloudStream™ range of solutions is leading the industry with Cloud networks and hosted Cloud servers / applications.    

Novosco has provided solutions to a range of clients including government establishments and private sector organisations of all sizes, such as the Queen’s University Belfast, Burlington Hotel, SIAC Construction, Windsor Motors and many more.

Novosco was recently recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as ‘Best System Integration Company, for 2009.

For more information visit www.novosco.com

About Queen’s University Belfast

Queen’s University is recognised as one of the best universities in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It is the UK’s Entrepreneurial University of the Year, and a member of the Russell Group of the UK’s 20 leading research-intensive universities, which includes Oxford and Cambridge.

Founded in 1845, Queen’s University Belfast has been providing higher education to students from around the world for over 165 years. Currently it caters for more than 17,000 students and 3,500 staff, with some 100,000 graduates worldwide. This is reflected in the University’s Mission Statement:

“Queen’s is a broadly-based, research-driven university with a dynamic world-class research and education portfolio and strong international connections. The University promotes the widest possible access to this portfolio of excellence in an environment of equality, tolerance and mutual respect, and it fully embraces its leadership role in Northern Ireland and beyond.”

Posted in: News, Press Releases Tags: business, business continuity, Centralised Management, Cisco, Citrix, Cloud Computing, EMC, Networking, Novosco, press, security, storage, Unified Computing System, Virtual Computing Coalition, virtualisation, VMware

Join Novosco for an exclusive Private Cloud Briefing

Agenda

• Introductions and Novosco Overview

• Overview of VCE/VBlock

• Overview of conventional Server Design for VMware implementations

• Challenges when Scaling Out VMware Infrastructure

• Demonstration of Unified Management Console

• Tour of the data centre and UCS infrastructure
  Discussion / Whiteboard

Who should attend?

CIO’s looking to build their own private cloud infrastructure

or extend into the cloud

Posted in: Events Tags: Citrix, Cloud Computing, EMC, Novosco, virtualisation, VMware

Novosco wins three-year IT hosted services contract

Pictured from left:Mike Tesar, Chief Technical Officer, ezetop with Eddie O'Rourke, Sales Director, Novosco and David Shackleton, Chief Operating Officer, ezetop

Dublin, 6th Oct, 2009 — Novosco, Ireland’s leading provider of virtual and cloud IT infrastructure and services, today announced that ezetop, the Irish-headquartered international mobile top-up group, have chosen them to host their key line of business applications.  The hosted applications service will provide ezetop with dramatically improved levels of application availability and resilience. ezetop enables people living or working abroad to instantly top-up mobile phones of family and friends back home. Services are available from retail stores across North America, Europe and the Middle East region as well as from a significant online website, www.ezetop.com.

Providing the service for over 80 mobile operators , ezetop services are available online via the ezetop e-commerce website or at over 80,000 retail stores that rely on ezetop’s large global network.   Due to the critical and real-time nature of ezetop’s e-commerce business, ezetop required a highly available application system which would also allow it to grow globally, without infrastructure constraints.

To deploy a new virtual infrastructure to support ezetop’s platform, Novosco was the chosen provider to first host their critical ‘business to consumer’ (B2C) applications, in particular their key e-commerce website applications supporting hundreds of thousands of consumers across the globe.  In addition, Novosco were also selected to host and fully manage ezetop’s internal user applications, which include various Microsoft tools.

David Shackleton, Chief Operating Officer at ezetop said, “The performance and stability of our online platform is of paramount importance. Novosco demonstrated their understanding of our commercial and technical requirements and came up with a robust solution, to cost effectively meet our requirements as well as most importantly, being able to scale to meet our future growth”.

Eddie O’Rourke, Novosco Sales Director for Ireland said,  “Instead of ezetop buying traditional infrastructure to support the internal company services, which were not core to their service offering, they availed of Novosco’s existing cloud platform which allowed greater operational and financial benefits”.

Mike Tesar, Chief Technical Officer with ezetop was impressed with Novosco’s integration skills: “What was important to us was having our applications tailored to work the way we need to use them.  This meant that Novosco had to understand our requirements in detail.  The transition was made easier by the fact that Novosco had such strong experience in systems integration, meaning that they could help with all aspects of the changes.”

About Novosco

Novosco is one of Ireland’s leading providers of virtual & cloud based IT infrastructure and network services.  With established hardware/software vendor partnerships with Citrix, EMC, Microsoft and VMware, Novosco offers the highest level of accreditation in Ireland for Virtualisation solutions.  The Novosco CloudStream™ range of solutions is leading the industry with Cloud networks and hosted Cloud servers / applications.

Novosco was recently recognised at the annual ICT Excellence awards as ‘Best System Integration Company, for 2009. For more information visit www.novosco.com.

About ezetop

ezetop enables people living or working abroad to instantly top-up mobile phones of family and friends back home. Services are available from over 80,000 retail stores across North America, Europe and the Middle East region as well as from a significant online website, www.ezetop.com.

ezetop’s services benefit mobile operators as they generate additional revenue outside their domestic market.  ezetop currently offers services in over 80 mobile operators/countries across Asia Pacific, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and Eastern Europe and is adding operators on a regular basis.  Existing operators include Airtel, Claro, C&W, Dialog Telecom, Digicel, Globe Telecom, MTN, Orascom, Singtel, Telefonica, Telenor, Tigo, Ufone, Vodafone, Warid and others.

ezetop’s global headquarters is in Dublin, Ireland with regional headquarters in Miami, USA and Dubai, UAE.

Posted in: Press Releases Tags: Citrix, Cloud Computing, EMC, Microsoft, virtualisation, VMware

Realise the cost reduction benefits of virtualisation, even with a severely stretched budget.

“XenServer being made available for free download means that all companies, especially those with restricted budgets, can now realise the tangible benefits of server virtualisation”. 

Join Novosco at a free breakfast briefing in conjunction with Citrix and Marathon to learn:

How Citrix and Marathon Technologies automated solutions provide high availability and disaster recovery for both physical / virtual environments plus how this technology can deliver large cost savings for your business.

Agenda

- Overview of Xen Server (Server virtualisation)
- Marathon Technologies automated fault tolerance and high availability software
- Driving the TCO of application delivery down with XenApp 5 & Platnium upgrades
- Citrix Application Delivery Centre DEMO 

Who Should Attend

*Exisitng IT Managers looking to maximise their virtualisation investment
*New clients looking to realise Citrix benefits such as reducing capital IT expenditure costs whilst increasing business agility.

Posted in: Events Tags: Citrix, virtualisation

Understand how to maximise your current citrix investment…

This Citrix seminar gives you the opportunity to understand how to get the most out of your existing Citrix application delivery investment.  Learn about new Citrix features and upgrade options, end of life products and in some cases how customers are entitled to free upgrades from existing licenses.   

For new clients this seminar also offers the ability to realise Citrix benefits such as effective and secure remote working, how to dramatically reduce capital IT expenditure costs whilst increasing business agility and centrally managing / delivering applications faster.
 
AGENDA in brief:

- Overview of XenApp Upgrade options including: Presentation Server end of life, XenApp 5  Provisioning server & streaming functionality now available, XenApp Platnium Edition

- Informal break out sessions offering advice on features & benefits within your existing Citrix licenses

- Speak to other Novosco customers on recent Citrix upgrades

- Hear about Marathon Technologies automated fault tolerance & high availability software. 

Latest ‘Citrix Application Delivery Centre’ DEMO on display including lastest XenApp (Presentation Server) versions etc.

Join Novosco at our free morning briefing in conjunction with Citrix and Marathon representatives.

Posted in: Events Tags: business continuity, Citrix

“The announcement of XenServer being made available for free download means that all companies, especially those with restricted budgets, can now realise the benefits of server virtualisation.  For any existing customers running XenApp or Presentation Server, this news makes the virtualisation of their existing farms extremely compelling.  In addition, the performance statistics for workloads such as Microsoft Exchange on XenServer has resulted in an unprecedented level of demand from our customers for demonstrations and trials of this technology.”

Eddie O’Rourke, Novosco Sales Director, Ireland

Posted in: Technology Tags: Citrix, Microsoft, virtualisation

IDC – IT in Government Conference, Dublin

Achieving excellence in innovative government service is at the top of the public sector agenda. 

In today’s challenging economic times, governments are also under pressure to reduce costs, whilst improving efficiency, ensuring data security, 24/7 resilient public services and much more…

As Ireland’s leading Virtualisation expert, Novosco will exhibit to offer best practice IT consultation & advice. 

On display will also be a demo of Citrix XenServer. 

Who Should Attend

Local Government
Central Government
Healthcare
Education
Military
Garda

For further information visit www.idc.com 

If you have any questions on the event please email edwina.nugent@novosco.com or telephone +353 (0) 1 245 5114 / +44(0)2890 817171 /

Posted in: Events Tags: Citrix, IT in Government

Learn how to reduce your IT costs and increase performance at this free one-day Citrix Virtualisation Solutions Seminar, Dublin.

Are you excited about the power of VDI, but find the economics and performance lacking? Join us at Clontarf Castle to find out how Citrix is changing the way the world looks at end-to-end virtualisation.

Topics Covered

Citrix XenDesktop – Virtualising Windows-based desktops.
XenDesktop is the industry’s first complete Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) system – moving beyond the limitations of existing products to ensure the simple, secure and cost effective delivery of Windows desktops to any office worker.

Citrix XenApp – Delivering Windows-based applications.
This application delivery system automatically selects the best delivery method for the user, the application, and the location.

Citrix XenServer – Virtualising Windows-based servers.
The XenServer product line is an enterprise-class server solution for virtualising servers in the data centre as a flexible aggregated pool of computing and storage resources. XenServer combines comprehensive server virtualisation capabilities with unparalleled scalability, performance and ease-of-use.

Who Should Attend

All IT Decision Makers

When

From 09.30 to 16.30 on 16th October 2008

Where

Clontarf Castle, Dublin

Places are limited and allocated on a first come, first served basis – so register now, by clicking the following link, to ensure your free place. We look forward to seeing you there!

Posted in: Events Tags: Citrix, virtualisation

At VMworld 2008, VMware announced VMware FT, their solution for continuous availability (zero downtime on hardware component failures – different from HA. HA is a crash and reboot). This will stack up nicely against the likes of Marathon Technologies and Stratus who have been doing this for a while.  And since everyone and their granny are rolling out a VMware based infrastructure, they will be best positioned to take advantage of it.

Stratus is currently a hardware based solution and Marathon’s is software, running on Windows Server 2003. Both of these companies have enjoyed a certain level of exclusivity but that of course will not last. I have very little info on where Stratus is going other than it can run ESX on its FT kit. Marathon have embraced the Xen hypervisor and have jumped in bed with Citrix, helping Citrix initially provide a host based XenServer HA solution (on a per VM basis!), along with their on HA solution for XenServer adding component level HA. And eventually in Q1 2009, their XenServer based FT solution will be released.

What this means, is that we will still have a choice about which hypervisor to use across all availability levels: Marathon on XenServer and VMware.  This is good!

After reading a blog post from Marathon about VMware FT and some retort from a VMware supporter, I thought I’d throw in my 2p, as there appeared to be some problems with these arguments.

Firstly, the comparison is Marathon’s existing FT product that only runs on Windows against VMware’s that only runs on VMware’s hypervisor. This is a pointless comparison as they dont compare like for like and  VMware’s product has not been released and wont be until some time in 2009. It would be a much fairer comparison to pitch Marathon’s new XenServer based FT against VMware’s FT…when they both arrive.

Secondly, Marathon argued against the requirement for shared storage with the VMware FT solution and the VMware guy stated that where you’d want to use FT you’ll likely have a SAN in place anyway. I have a slight issue with this. Quite often, FT solutions are used for critical production lines, health systems and emergency services. These systems may not run anywhere near a SAN, nor require one. It would be a considerable expense to require a SAN just for a 2 node FT solution. Also consider the site that has two data centres connected via fiber. We have Marathon FT systems running like this, which would allow for the likes of a site failure. This kind of setup requires that the writes are done to each system and that shared storage just doesn’t work in all cases.

Judging by the review of the FT session at VMworld by Scott Lowe, VMware may change their minds about the need for shared storage for FT. I hope so.  I think it’s great that VMware is getting into this game.  We have a lot of VMware sites that would be reluctant to add another virtualisation platform into the mix at this time. Being the pioneers and market leaders of server virtualisation gives them a big advantage. It widens their scope and will certainly provide decent competition for Citrix and Marathon. But, Marathon have been in the FT game for a long time too and know the problems and limitations that can be encountered in FT land. I wouldn’t underestimate them either.

Posted in: Technology Tags: Citrix, fault-tolerant, Marathon, virtualisation, VMware, Xen

With the acquisition of XenSource, Citrix now offers the industry’s broadest end-to-end Virtualisation portfolio extending across servers, applications and desktops. DataCore, the leading independent software vendor specialises in storage virtualisation, storage management and storage networking.

The session will provide practical advice, product information and a live demonstration of virtualisation from applications and desktops, through to servers and storage the only demo of its type in Ireland.

The demonstration and briefing will benefit all those responsible for managing and securing business critical IT environments. Novosco and DataSolutions will provide a practical demonstration on how to incorporate end-to-end virtualisation into IT environments, while addressing the main priorities of IT managers today cost control and consolidation.

Technologies including Citrix XenDesktop, Citrix XenServer, Citrix XenApp, Citrix Provisioning Server, Marathon everRun VM and DataCore SANmelody will be demonstrated.

When

Friday, 5th September 2008 from 10:00am to 12:30pm

Where

DataSolutions
Training Centre
Unit B3
Nangor Road Business Park Nangor Road
Dublin 12

Posted in: Events Tags: Citrix, virtualisation