Virtualization Strategies for the CIO
The panel of judges for the Best of VMworld 2010 awards was a mix of industry experts, IT consultants and TechTarget editors. Entrants were scored on innovation, the value provided by the product, performance, reliability and ease of use.
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Categories included business continuity and data protection, security and virtualization, hardware for virtualization, desktop virtualization, private cloud computing, public/hybrid cloud computing and new technology. A best of show winner was selected from one of the winners of the previous categories.
In Business Continuity and Data Protection category, hardware products did not qualify and had to integrate with a hypervisor and support multiple operating systems, not just Windows. There was one finalist, Veeam Software for Veeam Backup & Replication 4, and the Gold went to Symantec Corp. for NetBackup 7.
Symantec won because it is "one of the only companies that can restore to any hypervisor, and they have changed the most in the past year," according to the judges.
HyTrust Inc. for HyTrust Appliance and Catbird for Catbird vCompliance 1.1 were the two finalists in the Security and Virtualization category. There, the Gold went to VMware Inc. for its vShield product, which the judges said gives third-party products in virtualization security reason to worry.In the Virtualization Management category, each product in the winner's circle offered tools that can be used daily by IT professionals "without a Ph.D." Finalists were Xangati Inc. for Xangati Management Dashboard and Veeam for Veeam ONE Solution for VMware, and the Gold went to VKernel for Capacity Management Suite. VKernel's Capacity Management Suite was lauded because it gives administrators one interface and quickly installs as a virtual machine appliance. It also presents reports quickly and offers easy-to-use waste management, capacity-sizing tools and inventory functions, one judge said. In the Hardware for Virtualization category, finalists were Compellent Technologies for Compellent Storage Center 5 and Xsigo Systems for VP780 and VP560 I/O Director. The Gold went to Cisco Systems Inc. for the Cisco Nexus 7000 Overlay Transport Virtualization product.
There were 29 products submitted in the Desktop Virtualization category, which also featured two finalists: Wanova Inc. for Wanova Mirage and Virtual Computer Inc. for NxTop.
The Gold winner was Kaviza for Kaviza VDI in-a-box 3.0, because it offers a full virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) environment that IT pros can have up and running in less than an hour.
"It's VDI that anyone can build," said Brian Madden, a desktop virtualization expert, blogger and category judge.
A new category this year was the Private Cloud Computing Technologies category, which were defined as on-premise cloud products. In this category, rPath won a finalist award for rBuilder, and newScale Inc. took the Gold award for its IT service catalog product, newScale 9.
The judges cited newScale because it "brings the iPhone experience to the enterprise."
In the Public/Hybrid Cloud Computing Technologies category, which encompassed Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings. Finalists were Skytap Inc. for Skytap Cloud and Microsoft for Windows Azure Platform. The Gold winner was Terremark Worldwide Inc. for its Enterprise Cloud offering.
According to the judges, Terremark's cloud offering, which is based on VMware virtualization, provides security services that supersede anything IT pros can build in-house.
In the New Technology category, for products that will ship by the end of this year, Gluster Inc. was a finalist for its Gluster Storage Platform, and the Gold went to Veeam Software for its Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 Enterprise Edition offering.
Veeam Software also won in the Best of Show category for its Veeam Backup & Replication 5.0 Enterprise Edition product, which the judges said was a "cut-and-dried winner."
Let us know what you think about the story; email Bridget Botelho or follow on @BridgetBotelho Twitter
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