Posts Tagged ‘Citrix’

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

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

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

Posted in: Events Tags: Citrix, virtualisation

A couple of days late, but I wanted to wait a while just in case it was an April Fool.  Citrix have just announced a new “per server” pricing model for XenServer – not per socket or per core, just per physical server.

This is interesting for a couple of reasons: It will increase the size of servers being purchased – a 4U powerhouse can do much more than a blade, in terms of capacity.  So what becomes the expensive part, the license or the rackspace? The other reason, is that it puts it on a par with Microsoft Windows and Hyper-V, since the pricing model is the same.  I’m sure VMware will have an answer to this, otherwise the competition might start to get some traction.  Either way, competition like this is always good for the customer and will only ensure that virtualisation get’s further entrenched into IT infrastructures and datacentres that bit quicker.  And when the pricing differences become negligible, it will be all down to capabilities, that’s when we’ll really start to see some innovation…hopefully!

Posted in: Technology Tags: Citrix, Microsoft, VMware, Xen

It has started. All over the internet there’s a battle going, to command mindshare in relation to the virtualisation space. Microsoft and Citrix are making a full frontal attack on VMware’s dominance. Broadly speaking, the rhetoric goes some thing like this:

The vendor story

Microsoft – “We have a complete end to end management solution for all your assets both physical and virtual. Why invest in a point solution such as VMware when we can provide all of the important features at a fraction of the cost ? Our hypervisor is more efficient and smaller,  is architecturally superior and has the features that most customers need. The hypervisor is a commodity and the important elements in a virtualisation solution are really the management toolset.”

Citrix – “We have the most cost effective hypervisor on the market offering all of the really relevant advanced features that are missing from Microsoft, but provided by VMware, for an expensive premium.  Our technology set provides an integrated solution around virtualising, not just servers, but desktops and applications too. Our core product has strong pedigree in supporting non MS O/S and our partnership with MS guarantees the best all round fit no matter what server O/S you wish to virtualise.”

VMware – “We own this space, with a ten year track record and the most advanced product set that is available on the market today. Our hypervisor is the most cost effective because advanced features such as: VMotion, DRS, Host mgt and memory over-commit, provide a consolidation ratio which our competitors can only dream about. In fact, some of them haven’t shipped a product yet. We manage your complete virtual infrastructure from a single interface without the complexity of multiple consoles and technologies. Our reliability is legendary and our track record in solid dependable code release is enviable across the industry.”

Who has the answers?

• So as a customer what do you do?
• Who do you believe?
• Which vendor has the answers for your environment or your unique set of circumstances?

<Shameless Plug>
Of course, all of the vendors have valid points and they are all in a way correct. It really is a minefield trying to figure out the right infrastructure technology to use and manage your environment. What you need is a trusted advisor, an organisation with a unique field of vision across all the main infrastructure technology vendors who stands independently and can offer you the right advise based on your requirements without prejudice.

Often, the correct solution does not sit with a single vendor.  If I look at some of our recent projects, there is a common thread based on best fit, not vendor fit. We recently commenced a project to virtualise the server infrastructure of a local building society with branches throughout the country. The customer had diverse requirements in terms of desktop management, application deployment and a desire to improve their disaster recovery capability and at the same time reduce server footprint. In the end we deployed Citrix XenApp, Microsoft System Centre Ops Mgr, Softgrid and VMware ESX based on these requirements.
</Shameless Plug>

Make sure you choose wisely

Make sure when looking for a technology partner they have  a broad view of virtualisation and a track record in multi-vendor deployment. Rarely, if ever, does one size fit all.

Posted in: Technology Tags: Citrix, Microsoft, virtualisation, VMware, Xen