SERVER VIRTUALIZATION
Virtualware | December 28, 2021
Spain-based Virtualware, the leading European provider of virtual reality (VR) solutions for industrial and educational sectors, doubled its sales in 2021 to $5,6 million following the signing of several multi-year deals with international names operating in the energy and transport sectors.
This year's expansion of Virtualware attests to the firm's sustained growth after the pandemic. It sets the stage for a thriving operation in the 2022 virtual reality market.
Virtualware is one of the leading companies in the European immersive technologies landscape. Founded in 2003 by Unai Extremo and Sergio Barrera, the company was recognized as the world's most 'Innovative VR Company' at the latest edition of the VR Awards last month.
The company, which has been working to provide virtual reality technology solutions for industrial sectors for 18 years, is regarded as a European pioneer in the industry. It currently employs more than 40 people and plans to increase its workforce by 10 percent in the first half of 2022.
The company works for companies as relevant as GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy, ADIF, the Spanish Ministry of Defense, the Spanish Logistics Center, the Basque Country Technology Park Network, Biogen, and the Kessler Foundation.
The firm has created over 500 VR-driven industrial solutions to date in 33 countries for large multinationals such as Alstom, Land Rover Jaguar, Iberdrola, Petronas, Repsol, Bayer, and Merck.
The year 2021 has allowed us to consolidate our value proposition in the virtual reality industry. At a time when the concept of the metaverse is more relevant than ever, we want to continue developing the technology to offer solutions that support the real economy."
Unai Extremo, CEO of Virtualware
"Virtual Reality can improve the physical world intelligently and sustainably, and our company wants to work to bring breakthrough applications to the metaverse to support the most sophisticated companies," he added.
The company is well known for its patented and awarded VIROO platform. The firm has been spearheading over the last three years as the new standard for creating, managing, and deploying VR content that can solve complex problems.
In the past few years, when deployed with VIROO, the fuel movement VR simulator belonging to GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy has become an industry-standard safety and training in a complex context.
Virtualware's flagship VIROO is a boundless all-in-one VR solution that can create, manage and deploy VR without limitations. In extension, the VIROO room allows several users to work in full-scale in the same physical space, a critical advancement that will be observed as a must in B2B VR solutions. Furthermore, the proprietary software allows content creators to manage content for different end-users so that corporations can use it in complex training and engineering environments.
To date, Virtualware has deployed 18 VIROO rooms around the world, in Wilmington and San Jose in the United States, Toronto in Canada, Bogota in Colombia, Aguascalientes and Mexico City in Mexico, and others in Spain, including in Madrid and the Basque Country.
Earlier this month, GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) announced it will use its Nuclear Virtual Reality Solution (VRS) tool to help nuclear power plant operators train personnel for outage, operations, and maintenance work.
The Nuclear VRS technology also provides an immersive and interactive look at the BWRX-300, GEH's innovative small modular reactor.
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VIRTUAL SERVER INFRASTRUCTURE
Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) | September 18, 2021
The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation’s (SPEC) Virtualization Committee released the SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark, a new multi-host benchmark for measuring the performance of a scaled-out datacenter. The SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark uses real-world and simulated workloads to measure the overall efficiency of virtualization solutions and their management environments. The new benchmark complements the existing SPECvirt_sc 2013 server consolidation benchmark, which is designed for a single-host environment.
Today’s datacenters use clusters of servers to ensure reliability, availability, serviceability, and security. Adding virtualization to a clustered solution enhances server optimization, flexibility, and application availability while reducing costs through server and datacenter consolidation. While the SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark enables analysis of these more complex multi-host environments, it is much easier to use than the SPECvirt_sc 2013 benchmark, providing a single virtual machine (VM) template to set up its harness and workloads. The SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark supports multiple hypervisor vendor solutions and ships with support for RHV 4.x and vSphere 6.x and 7.x.
“The ongoing evolution of virtualized environments has made it imperative that suppliers and buyers have a fair, vendor-agnostic tool for measuring the performance of solutions that power virtualized multi-host infrastructures,” said David Schmidt, Chair of the SPEC Virtualization Committee. “The SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark is easy to use and creates an excellent foundation for examining and comparing performance in these complex environments that are increasingly becoming the norm.”
The SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark provides a methodical way to measure a virtualization platform’s performance in a dynamic virtualized datacenter environment. It models typical, modern-day usage of virtualized infrastructure, such as VM resource provisioning, cross-node load balancing (including management operations such as VM migrations), and VM power on/off. The benchmark exercises datacenter operations under load and dynamically provisions new workload VMs from a preconfigured template or powers on existing VMs. As the load reaches maximum capacity of the cluster, hosts are added to the cluster to measure scheduler efficiency and maximize throughput.
The SPECvirt Datacenter 2021 benchmark feature overview:
Multi-host benchmark – Minimum of four hosts required, scales in increments of four.
Datacenter operations model – Multi-workload benchmark measures performance of hypervisor infrastructure, including how the hypervisor manager controls resources.
VM resource management – Handled by the hypervisor manager, including scheduling policies. Workload VMs powered on or deployed during benchmark.
Ease of use – Single preconfigured template VM to set up harness and workloads. No tuning of guest OS/software necessary.
Five real-world and simulated workloads –
OLTP database, based on HammerDB benchmark
Hadoop/Big Data cluster, based on BigBench benchmark
Simulated departmental mail server
Simulated departmental web server
Simulated departmental collaboration server
About SPEC
SPEC is a non-profit organization that establishes, maintains, and endorses standardized benchmarks and tools to evaluate performance for the newest generation of computing systems. Its membership comprises more than 120 leading computer hardware and software vendors, educational institutions, research organizations, and government agencies worldwide.
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SERVER VIRTUALIZATION
MyndVR | February 14, 2022
Select Rehabilitation announced a strategic partnership with MyndVR, the leading provider of Virtual Reality (VR) solutions for senior care.
Select's commitment to clinical excellence, quality care provision, outstanding customer service and proprietary technology solutions have earned the company a strong reputation in the industry. Continuing its innovation leadership, Select will deploy MyndVR's industry-leading portfolio of senior-friendly therapeutic VR experiences to reach hundreds of thousands of seniors across the US.
The partnership will offer Select's valued clients' access to MyndVR's vast network of immersive content, state-of-the-art VR headsets, and proprietary care tablets provided by MyndVR through a monthly subscription plan including content across a wide variety of reminiscence, music, art, nature-immersion, meditation, and cognitive programs to help seniors achieve their skilled therapeutic goals.
"Our continued focus on cutting edge technology like MyndVR further enhances our clinical programming and outcomes and demonstrates our commitment to patient centered care and healthy aging in place solutions," states Anna Gardina Wolfe, CEO and cofounder of Select Rehabilitation.
The spirit of our partnership with Select is very much aligned with our commitment to improve the lives of seniors using VR. We believe advanced, engaging VR therapeutics with outcome-based analytics are a must-have tool in successful post-acute care and rehabilitation."
Chris Brickler, CEO and cofounder of MyndVR
Kathleen Weissberg, National Director of Education for Select, points out, "Virtual Reality can make therapy and rehabilitation fun, motivating and engaging." The two organizations are excited to partner together to bring Virtual Reality to post-acute care.
About Select Rehabilitation
Select Rehabilitation is the nation's largest provider of contract rehabilitation services employing 17,000 therapists delivering a range of clinical services at more than 2,400 facilities located in 43 states. Established in 1998, the founder-operated company's innovative approach to delivering exceptional patient outcomes, state-of-the-art technology infrastructure and compliance-driven patient-care model have earned it a strong reputation among skilled nursing, assisted living and independent living providers.
About MyndVR
MyndVR is the leading provider of Virtual Reality solutions for senior living communities, home health care agencies, Veteran homes, and individual adults aging in their own homes. The company has built a vast network of original and licensed therapeutic VR content. Their technology enables older adults to interact with the outside world in genuinely innovative ways that promote engagement, wellness, and above all, positive outcomes. MyndVR is committed to continued research and development to measure outcomes, including cognitive, visual, emotional, and physical effects on older adults.
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