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Market Roundup Sun and Microsoft Expand Strategic Alliance DMTF Accepts New Format for Portable VMs nCircle Helps Feds Meet OMB Mandates for Configuration Compliance |
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Sun and Microsoft Expand Strategic
Microsoft Corporation and Sun Microsystems have announced
that Sun has become a Windows Server OEM and that the two companies will
collaborate to enable further deployment of Windows Server on Sun x64 systems.
Among the components of the announcement are a Windows Server OEM Agreement
whereby Sun will offer Windows Server on its x64 hardware and will provide
additional value-added software for systems carrying Windows Server; Microsoft
and Sun will work together to test and validate the Windows platform for Sun
x64 Systems and Storage for scale-up enterprise computing; and Sun and
Microsoft will work together to ensure that Solaris runs well as a guest on
Microsoft virtualization technologies and that Windows Server runs well as a
guest on Sun’s virtualization technologies. In addition, the companies will
continue collaborating to advance the deployment of the Microsoft Mediaroom
IPTV and multimedia platform on Sun servers and storage systems as well as
collectively build an
This continued investment in interoperability builds on the
initial cooperation agreement between the two companies initiated in April
2004. Since then, Microsoft and Sun have collaborated on interoperability for
Web services, identity management, thin clients, systems management, and
Windows Server engineering. Sun offers Windows Server installation and staging
services through its Customer Ready Systems program, providing support for
customers with more advanced pre-integration and testing needs. The two
companies have also created a basis for tighter interoperability between Java
Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE), the .
If Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep in 1997 and awoken a decade later, would he recognize the marketplace he had left behind or would he be in a state of disbelief? The intellectual and competitive rift between the Redmond Giant and the Copernican Company has been legendary, and although at times the two were forced to play nice on the IT playground at the behest of their mutual customers, until recently there was no love lost between the two creative colossuses. A scant three years ago, things began to thaw as changes in the marketplace and upper management saw the two firms begin to realize that their petty bickering in many cases was not serving themselves and was especially distasteful to their customers. This announcement is just one of many in which the two companies have decided that the drought times of the early 21st century was sufficient reason for shifting gears and pursuing the “rising tide raises all ships” strategy.
Given Sun’s penchant for x64 systems, considering its
initial relationship with
DMTF Accepts New Format for Portable VMs
The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) recently
announced the acceptance of a draft specification submitted by leading
virtualization companies that seeks to establish an industry-standard format
for portable virtual machines. The specification envisions that virtual
machines packaged in this format will be capable of installation on any
virtualization platform supporting the standard and as a result would simplify
interoperability, security, and virtual machine lifecycle management for
virtual infrastructures. Companies collaborating on this specification include
Dell, HP,
The proposed format, called the Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF), uses existing packaging tools to combine one or more virtual machines together with a standards-based XML wrapper, giving the virtualization platform a portable package containing all required installation and configuration parameters for the virtual machines. This allows any virtualization platform that implements the standard to correctly install and run the virtual machines. OVF specifies procedures and technologies to permit integrity checking of VMs to ensure that they have not been modified since the package was produced. This security enhancement seeks to alleviate concerns regarding adoption of virtual appliances produced by third parties. OVF also provides mechanisms that support license checking for the enclosed VMs, and allows an installed VM to acquire information about its host virtualization platform and run-time environment for localization and optimization. In addition, to supporting existing virtual hard disk formats, OVF is extensible to support future virtual hard disk formats whose specifications are openly available.
We find this announcement interesting as it is further evidence of the growing acceptance of virtualized environments and also an indication that the industry at large is taking seriously the need to provide for standardized, virtual-machine distribution mechanisms that can be easily managed while protecting the interests of both the VM distributor and its customers. For organizations that have embraced the consolidated virtualized approach to computing, the ability to continue scaling upward while supporting multiple disparate workloads is essential, but requires as much if not more agility in the management of resources. If left to a manual process, this management overhead can be a significant gating factor preventing organizations from fully benefiting from all that virtualization has to offer.
We do note the absence of Sun Microsystems from the list of industry stalwarts that are driving this proposed specification. With all the efforts that the Copernican Company invested in the x86 architecture, and its expertise in virtualization with Solaris and its own UltraSPARC platform, we are surprised to not see its name included in the roster of talent. However, being the standards -ocused company it positions itself as, we expect that over time we shall see its endorsement as well. Overall, we are pleased that to see the continued focus on making virtual environments as rich as the physical ones and that many of the major players are taking the efforts to ensure user trust in distributed VMs while seeking to make the deployment and management of said environments as easy and straightforward as possible.
nCircle Helps Feds Meet OMB Mandates for Configuration Compliance
nCircle, a provider of agentless security risk and
compliance management solutions, has announced the availability of new Federal policy
capabilities in the nCircle Configuration Compliance Manager product to assist
organizations in complying with the OMB directive M-07-11. nCircle offers
enterprise-wide automated assessments of the configuration of Windows XP
devices against the Federal Desktop Core Configuration and FISMA policies, a
requirement for all agencies by the OMB-mandated date of
This capability is now available and will assist
organizations in complying with the directive of meeting these configurations
by
The most fundamental marketing messages in IT have always
been: make money, save money, help meeting government compliance mandates.
Unlike the squishy SOX regulation which has yet to have a newsworthy
prosecution, mandates by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget impact buying
decisions every day. Countless government employees are always looking for the
easy way to check (or tick for my
Reporting on your success to your boss is also a sound marketing message. It would appear that the reporting flexibility of the Compliance Manager would help agencies and bureaus inventory their success and earmark recalcitrant systems for updates and budget allocations. It is also noteworthy that the software is agentless which we believe is preferable in most cases.
eIQnetworks Seeks Status Industry Acceptance
eIQnetworks, Inc. has announced Open Log Format, the industry’s first open source event-logging standard. Unlike proprietary standards, the multi vendor-supported OLF promotes interoperability that enables organizations to more easily manage and understand the log data collected from network devices, systems, and applications. OLF does not require certification and is available for any vendor or organization to adopt at no cost. A number of vendors including Astaro, Clavister, Cyberoam, iPolicy Networks, Secure Computing, and Top Layer Networks have pledged support for the OLF standard. OLF is available for immediate download at http://www.openlogformat.org.
OLF provides a fully extensible open source event-logging
standard across all devices, systems, and applications that vendors can adopt
to support logging requirements. Vendors and end users can also add additional
log details to showcase specific solution functionality. eIQnetworks promotes
the ability of OLF to alleviate concerns around log-format compatibility with
existing
Evolving security challenges coupled with compliance and regulatory mandates have made it essential for organizations to collect, monitor, and analyze log data across the enterprise. Unfortunately each device, system, and application uses a unique and proprietary format, making it almost impossible to decipher log data. OLF offers the industry an alternative that eases the log collection and management process. Event logging is essentially the plumbing of Security Information Management. A Holy Grail of sorts has always been the ability to perform correlation analysis across the variety of sensors and devices that accumulate log data. Larger software vendors in particular have tried to implement management suites that help to make sense of the mounds and mounds of data that is thrown off by security devices in particular. Analysis of complex, heterogeneous data is a nightmare and we are a strong believer in the need for standardization of event data to facilitate analysis and information sharing.
As the nature of attacks and threats continues to morph, adapt, and accelerate in variety, defenders will have to be equally cagey in minimizing their vulnerability to attack. A standard also has the potential of significantly reducing the cost of analysis by minimizing the need for expensive proprietary connectors for vendor-specific logs. We applaud the efforts of eIQnetworks and hope that larger, more entrenched vendors will adopt such standards to benefit the industry as a whole.