VMWARE
Arrcus | September 29, 2022
Arrcus, the hyperscale networking software company and a leader in cloud-to-edge network infrastructure, today announced the next evolution in their partnership with VMware, focused on transforming telco networks to deliver next-gen services from the edge to the cloud. The expanded partnership will provide communication service providers with the ability to monetize their 5G infrastructure quicker and deliver new enterprise services more efficiently and with greater flexibility.
The Arrcus ACE platform is now certified as a VMware Ready Telco Cloud Infrastructure solution and available in the VMware Marketplace. Arrcus ACE interoperates with the VMware Telco Cloud Platform to enable communications service providers to accelerate the deployment of 5G workloads and more.
“Programmability of the network extends beyond the RAN. With today’s announcement, Arrcus’ ACE switching and routing platform has completed further certification with VMware’s Telco Cloud Platform and enables service providers to increase the monetizability of their 5G networks and extend them to the edge, This builds upon further capabilities that Arrcus and VMware began demonstrating at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year.”
Ray Mota, CEO and principal analyst at ACG Research
The Arrcus ACE platform is highly programmable and secure, available in a flexible array of consumption options like VMs, containers and software on white-boxes. ACE supports solutions like FlexMCN that dramatically simplifies multi-cloud networking for telcos and CSPs, providing secure connectivity across cloud instances. Arrcus ACE is complemented well by VMware Telco Cloud, which is a single platform where service providers can run and manage all their containerized network functions (CNFs) and virtualized network functions (VNFs) in a multi-cloud edge.
“Arrcus ACE solutions running on the VMware Telco Cloud Platform can transform telco networks for delivery of next-gen 5G services from the edge to the cloud,” said Stephen Spellicy, Vice President of Product Marketing and Solutions for VMware’s Telco & Edge Cloud. “Our partnership with Arrcus will equip telecom operators to offer solutions like multi- and hybrid cloud connectivity at the edge where low latency is required.”
Today, Arrcus also announced that it is extending a “Fast Path” membership for VMware Telco Cloud ecosystem partners seeking to join Arrcus’ PACE partner program. Going forward, certified VMware Telco Cloud partners will be offered an accelerated path to join Arrcus’ PACE program, including instant approval and onboarding. All PACE ecosystem partners enjoy benefits ranging from solution validation, access to technical/training resources and go-to-market support.
“Arrcus is delighted to expand our partnership with VMware targeted at telcos and communications service providers seeking to launch transformative new services that can help them improve their top line,” said Shekar Ayyar, CEO and chairman at Arrcus. “Our partnership with VMware is also significant because it appeals to our mutual ecosystem partners that want to leverage both our platforms.”
Customers interested in learning more about Arrcus ACE with VMware Telco Cloud can download the latest solution brief. VMware Telco Cloud ecosystem partners seeking to take advantage of the fast-track PACE offer can contact an Arrcus PACE representative here.
About Arrcus
Arrcus was founded to enhance business efficiency through superior network connectivity. The Arrcus Connected Edge (ACE) platform offers best-in-class networking with the most flexible consumption model at the lowest total cost of ownership. The Arrcus team consists of world-class technologists who have an unparalleled record in shipping industry-leading networking products, complemented by industry thought leaders, operating executives, strategic partners and top-tier VCs. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California.
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VIRTUAL DESKTOP STRATEGIES
VMware | September 06, 2022
A majority of companies have implemented or plan to implement a hybrid work model moving forward.(1) However, supporting a hybrid work model creates new speed bumps for IT. VMware today outlined how autonomous workspaces powered by data science will ease this burden. It also unveiled innovations across its Anywhere Workspace platform that will inject automation into organizations’ end-user computing environments, enabling IT teams to do more with less.
“The reality of hybrid work is each employee, and each device is a front door into the organization and its resources. IT must not only make that front door secure, but also welcoming as employees access apps from anywhere. The only way IT teams will be able to support hybrid work is by implementing simplified, unified, and automated processes,” said Shankar Iyer, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “Autonomous Workspaces represent the next evolution of managing digital workspaces, and VMware is once again pioneering the path forward for organizations.”
Journey to Autonomous Workspaces
According to Gartner®, “By 2027, unified endpoint management and digital employee experience tools will converge to drive autonomous endpoint management, reducing human effort by at least 40%.”(2) At VMware Explore 2022 US, VMware will outline the journey of digital workspace from being manual and task-centric to an outcomes-driven autonomous workspace. The future of hybrid work will drive an evolution of the digital workspace – one that injects data science and proactive automations across endpoint management, security and end-user experience. This will enable a context-aware autonomous workspace that delivers a few primary outcomes:
Self-configuring: Workspaces are configured to a desired state instead of constantly monitoring for changes and enforcing reactive policies.
Self-healing: The solution intelligently detect and isolate end-user experience incidents, accelerate change management, and automatically remediate issues to normal working state.
Self-securing: The solution can take proactive actions to better secure workspace access, quarantine apps or devices, and remediate anomalies to enable a return to desired posture.
Innovations Across Anywhere Workspace
VMware Anywhere Workspace will include all tools needed to deliver autonomous workspaces.
Today at VMware Explore, VMware unveiled how it is advancing self-configuring, self-healing and self-securing outcomes across four key technology areas that are delivered by the Anywhere Workspace platform:
VDI and DaaS
Digital Employee Experience
Unified Endpoint Management
Security
VDI and DaaS
Hybrid work is driving demand for multi-cloud VDI. VMware is introducing a next generation of VMware Horizon Cloud that will enable multi-cloud agility and flexibility. This new release represents a major update to Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure that can dramatically simplify the infrastructure that needs to be deployed inside customer environments, reducing infrastructure costs in some cases by over 70% while increasing scalability and reliability of VMware’s DaaS platform.(3)
The new “Thin Edge” infrastructure continues to leverage the Horizon Control plane–a VMware-managed service that includes hybrid support and features like app management, universal brokering, image management, monitoring, and more. Plus, this next-gen Horizon Cloud is API-driven, so customers, partners, and ISVs will be able to build tools, services, and automations. Customers with Horizon subscription licenses are entitled to the new and improved Horizon Cloud at no additional charge.
VMware will also introduce VMware Horizon Managed Desktop – a flexible, cloud-hosted service that delivers fully-managed virtual desktops and apps with choice of deployment options: on-premises, hybrid or public cloud. This will better enable secure access for a distributed workforce for wherever work takes them. The solution relieves IT teams from time-consuming operations, provides cost-management with predictable OpEx spending, speeds deployments for faster time to value, and rapidly scales to meet changing workforce demands.
Additionally, Google and VMware are collaborating to bring access to any app on any device for the hybrid workforce. Organizations will be able to use hundreds of certified endpoints to connect to Horizon virtual desktops and apps. And now, with Google Chromebook as a validated endpoint, industries like healthcare can benefit from delivering a great user experience for more secure access to corporate resources.
“We rely on VMware Horizon to support access to corporate resources for our employees,” said Yehoshua Israel, IT director, Aperion Care, Inc. “In conversation with the Google product team, we learned that ChromeOS is a good fit to connect to Horizon for our environment, and our time from unboxing to ready for deployment is about three minutes. Using a managed guest session, the ChromeOS system is simple to use, locked down, HIPAA-compliant, and inexpensive. The transition from Windows-based laptops to Chromebooks with Horizon has been seamless.”
Digital Employee Experience
VMware is broadening the coverage of its Digital Employee Experience solutions beyond Workspace ONE UEM managed devices to now include VMware Horizon and third-party managed and unmanaged devices. This will result in increased support of remote, hybrid and frontline personas.
And, to support the rising number of devices used by frontline employees, VMware is introducing a Digital Employee Experience Management (DEEM) solutions pack for customers with frontline deployments. These out-of-the box dashboards span ROI, shared-device usage, device loss, critical application performance, and more, to measure and improve mission-critical deployments.
Finally, VMware Workspace ONE is introducing DEEM Guided Root Cause Analysis capabilities. With the increase in hybrid work, organizations have struggled to scale the helpdesk to support more devices, apps, and networks. With this new feature, machine learning algorithms will help IT correlate all the relevant data points to recommend possible causes with probability assigned; enabling IT to solve issues more quickly, create automations to prevent other users from experiencing the issue, and restore productivity for impacted employees.
Unified Endpoint Management (UEM)
VMware continues to roll out advanced UEM capabilities now supporting multi-platform automation and orchestration with the expansion of Workspace ONE Freestyle Orchestrator to mobile devices and third-party apps. Freestyle Orchestrator – a modern, no-/low-code automation framework in UEM – provides support for Windows and Mac desktop operating systems. Since its launch, the tool has seen a significant adoption with more than 26 million automation runs that are designed to help IT teams eliminate complex and manual configurations tasks. Freestyle Orchestrator continues to offer administrators the flexibility to create these automation workflows to fit specific process requirements for their organization, and now with the extended platform support, expected to further increase IT efficiency and productivity.
VMware is also driving innovation by adding platform breadth of support and depth of management in its industry-recognized UEM solution. Additional UEM enhancements now include availability of multi-user mode for Windows OS – a use case that has seen significant adoption in both frontline shared use and in-office device loaner or hoteling scenarios as employees return to work. VMware is also announcing availability in this quarter of a distribution-agnostic Linux endpoint solution, XR Hub for AR/VR devices; and Tech Previews of its next-gen Windows Update management, support for new Chrome OS APIs for Education, work profile on Android AMAPI, and a dynamic, data-driven UI for iOS and Windows day-1 new policy support.
Workspace Security
Earlier this year, VMware announced a key innovation in the form of Workspace ONE Mobile Threat Defense [read press release]. Today’s mobile threat landscape is diverse, and mobile workstyles call for specialized protection from phishing and application, device, and rogue network originated threats. VMware Workspace ONE Mobile Threat Defense, an add-on to the Workspace ONE UEM platform, takes mobile protection to the next level. Specifically, the solution addresses application-based threats, Web and content vulnerabilities, Zero-day threats and device vulnerabilities, and more.
VMware Cross-Cloud™ services Helps Customers Navigate the Multi-Cloud Era
At VMware Explore 2022, VMware is unveiling new and enhanced offerings for VMware Cross-Cloud services to help customers navigate the multi-cloud era with freedom, flexibility and security. VMware Cross-Cloud services is a portfolio of cloud services that deliver a unified and simplified way to build, operate, access, and better secure any application on any cloud from any device. VMware Cross-Cloud service pillars include 1) App Platform 2) Cloud Management 3) Cloud & Edge Infrastructure 4) Security & Networking, and 5) Anywhere Workspace. For the latest news and more on how VMware is delivering a faster and smarter path to cloud for digital businesses, visit the VMware Explore 2022 media kit.
About VMware Explore
VMware Explore is an evolution of the company's flagship conference, VMworld. VMware Explore aims to be the industry’s go-to-event for all things multi-cloud. This year, it will feature industry-led solution and technical sessions, an extensive ecosystem of 90% of the top cloud partners, a thriving marketplace of multi-cloud ISVs and several networking events.
About VMware
VMware is a leading provider of multi-cloud services for all apps, enabling digital innovation with enterprise control. As a trusted foundation to accelerate innovation, VMware software gives businesses the flexibility and choice they need to build the future. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is committed to building a better future through the company’s 2030 Agenda.
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VPN
ExpressVPN | November 24, 2022
Leading consumer privacy and security company ExpressVPN has validated the security posture of all its desktop apps through three new independent audits by respected cybersecurity firms, Cure53 and F-Secure. The three new audits come just weeks after KPMG's audit of ExpressVPN's no-logs policy, underlining ExpressVPN's dedication to third-party privacy and security verifications.
Cure53 tested both ExpressVPN's macOS and Linux desktop apps through white-box penetration tests and source code audits. The assessments confirm that the apps are secured against cyber security threats from malicious adversaries. This also validates the extensive work done by ExpressVPN's engineering and security experts in building a safer, more open internet for millions of people worldwide.
F-Secure also reviewed ExpressVPN's Windows v12 app through penetration testing and source code auditing, and found no significant weaknesses. The audit verifies that ExpressVPN's latest Windows desktop app cannot be manipulated to leak information, such as a user's IP address, outside the VPN tunnel. It also confirms that the app is not susceptible to remote code execution attacks.
Having all of ExpressVPN's desktop apps audited means that users can go online with the assurance that their privacy is protected, and do so confidently.
The full audit report by Cure53 for macOS can be found here and Linux here. F-Secure's audit of ExpressVPN's Windows v12 app is available here.
"As part of our continuous trust and transparency efforts, we're proud to announce that all of our desktop apps have now been audited, These audits are a testament to the efforts we put into improving and securing our product, and we're glad to receive the validation from Cure53 and F-Secure. We're committed to delivering audits on our mobile apps soon, and will continue to ensure privacy and security at every touchpoint of our product."
Brian Schirmacher, penetration testing manager at ExpressVPN
About ExpressVPN
Since 2009, ExpressVPN has empowered millions of users to take control of their internet experience. The company's award-winning consumer VPN service is backed by its open-source VPN protocol Lightway, delivering user privacy in just a few clicks. ExpressVPN's Keys password manager and Aircove router make digital privacy and security easy and accessible for all. With a commitment to transparency, ExpressVPN products have been audited by PwC, Cure53, and others.
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