Virtual Desktop Strategies, Virtual Server Management
Business Wire | August 28, 2023
VMware Explore 2023 — Data and intelligence play a key role in enabling automation and implementing a successful hybrid work strategy, but a holistic approach is required to maximize its advantages. Today, VMware announces modern AI integrations to the Anywhere Workspace platform, part of the VMware Cross-Cloud services portfolio, that automatically optimize employee experience, drive new vulnerability management use cases, and simplify application lifecycle management. VMware Anywhere Workspace is the only hybrid work platform that integrates digital employee experience (DEX), virtual desktop infrastructure and apps (VDI and DaaS), unified endpoint management (UEM) and security to enable a seamless and secure workspace on any device or location.
“Last year, we announced our Autonomous Workspace vision as a path forward for organizations to navigate the challenges brought on by hybrid work,” said Shankar Iyer, senior vice president and general manager, End-User Computing, VMware. “We are thrilled to unveil new advancements for our customers that expand data sources and insights, integrate with technology partners for improved security, and unify app delivery strategy across all virtual desktops and apps. These innovations continue to progress our vision of providing the next evolution of digital workspaces.”
Integrated AI-Driven Platform Scales Experience Management
VMware continues to leverage data, intelligence, and automation to improve the employee and IT experience by introducing new Insights and Playbooks based on greatly expanded data and machine learning algorithms that enhance DEX remediation capabilities. These updates broaden access to data, help strengthen VMware Insights, and allow for remediation of more issues.
VMware will now enable delivery of new app performance scores, in addition to existing mobile device, desktop, and virtual environment experience scores. If a SaaS app service goes down, IT is proactively alerted and employees are automatically notified. This allows IT to quickly resolve the outage without dealing with inbound support tickets and employees don't waste time trying to access unavailable services.
But simply providing IT with more data is not enough to empower them to work smarter. VMware’s AI-driven Insights feature now provides anomaly detection that informs IT of potential experience issues for frontline devices and VDI environments, in addition to mobile and desktop environments. Today’s announcement of new Playbooks enables IT to create step-by-step remediation workflows to resolve incidents more efficiently and use success rate analytics to automate the resolution process and streamline execution over time.
“Workspace ONE Intelligence has been a game changer for us when it comes to automating life cycle management inside UEM. We have been utilizing it for automatically tagging devices and assigning them into smart groups. We have also used several dashboard templates for monitoring our security stance and helping remediate high-risk security threats,” said George March, manager of digital workspace and development, Information Technology, USA Health. “Next on our roadmap is implementing the ITSM connector, and with the addition of remediation playbooks, we are so excited about the way it will streamline our help desk support teams workflows.”
Unique Partner Integration Powers New Security and Manageability Use Cases
Ensuring end-to-end manageability and security for today’s distributed workforce is critical and requires a holistic approach to vulnerability assessment, prioritization, remediation, out-of-band support, and reporting. Collaboration with a best-of-breed partner ecosystem that offers speed, breadth, and depth in vulnerability management is necessary to protect against sophisticated attack vectors. VMware is committed to innovating together with our technology partners to provide customers with more secure and seamless hybrid experiences.
Today, VMware continues this mission by announcing an expanded partnership with Intel through a one-of-a-kind, cloud-native integration of Workspace ONE with Intel vPro®. This chip-to-cloud integration makes it easier to secure and remotely manage work devices entirely from the cloud, with no additional on-premises infrastructure and management software needed. Through line of sight and out-of-band management of vPro powered devices, IT teams can have below-the-OS vulnerability insights, and visibility to reduce the impact of potential exploits quickly and efficiently. Using Workspace ONE, customers can have centralized visibility into Intel vPro-powered PCs and accelerate patch remediation cycles for devices located outside of office perimeters, even if the devices are sleeping or powered off. This improves security and compliance by accomplishing higher patch saturation with fewer remediation steps and reduces potential disruption to employee productivity.
Modern App Management Simplifies Virtual Environments
Managing and delivering apps across VDI, DaaS, and published app environments has become increasingly complex and inefficient due to silos of legacy tools used. VMware recently introduced Apps on Demand, powered by VMware App Volumes, to unify app management and intelligently deploy apps to published app hosts or non-persistent desktop environments, all based on real-time app usage.
Today, VMware announces additional expansion of App Volumes support to deliver apps on demand to persistent virtual desktops. Now in beta availability, customers with persistent VMware Horizon environments will be able to use App Volumes to capture their apps once and deliver to many persistent virtual desktops. This automates the app delivery process with up to 99% compatibility and reduces management time and costs for any desktop or published app environment. VMware App Volumes is the only solution to help organizations deliver and manage apps across VMware Horizon, Citrix, Microsoft, and Amazon virtual desktop and app deployments as part of VMware’s Apps Everywhere vision.
Boeing: A ‘Hybrid Workforce Innovator’
The Boeing Company (Boeing) has used VMware Workspace ONE across the United States and in more than 65 countries to support its global workforce of 140,000 employees who develop, manufacture and service commercial airplanes, defense products and space systems for its customers. At VMware Explore 2023 Las Vegas, they were named ‘Hybrid Workforce Innovator’ as part of the 2023 VMware Customer Achievement Awards for the Americas for enabling its workforce to work from anywhere in the world, improving the user experience while reinforcing and advancing security for devices and applications.
“VMware Anywhere Workspace helps us manage and protect end points, provide a common platform to access apps and tools, as well as helping facilitate a digital experience for our employees,” said Kristina Ross, Boeing Workplace Solutions director for Research & Technology. “Workspace ONE helped streamline our transition from traditional PC lifecycle management to Windows 10 modern management which was enabled by our shift to a SaaS-based solution for the company. Today, we have a unified view to oversee all endpoint requirements, and the adoption of SaaS enhanced our scalability and ability to shift focus from infrastructure to business facing solutions.”
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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Virtual Desktop Tools, Server Virtualization
businesswire | July 19, 2023
Spectro Cloud announces new Palette VerteX Edition and new Spectro Cloud Government practice to meet the growing need for powerful management and security for Kubernetes (K8s) in the public sector.
Kubernetes adoption is growing across the public sector, from federal and defense to state and local government. Public sector organizations are looking to K8s and the open-source, cloud-native ecosystem around it to help drive IT agility in pursuit of their mission. But IT and platform engineering teams are often held back from embracing their choice of K8s by limited resources and restrictions around security and compliance frameworks.
To get the most from Kubernetes, they need the flexibility and simplicity to manage the full lifecycle of multiple Kubernetes distributions deployed in diverse environments, from cloud to edge, including air-gapped locations. And they need this without sacrificing security.
Today Spectro Cloud announces a new edition of its award-winning Palette Kubernetes management platform to meet the needs of these government and public sector organizations, and other industries where security and compliance are paramount.
“We developed Palette VerteX with extensive input from government agencies and customers, along with our public sector team’s decades of experience in delivering secure IT to government,” said Dave Cope, CRO of Spectro Cloud. “Palette VerteX builds on the firm foundation of our Palette enterprise platform to address the specific security requirements of public sector environments, including both military and civilian agencies.”
Palette: trusted K8s management from data center to edge
The award-winning Palette platform is already enabling thousands of platform engineers and DevOps professionals to deploy and manage their full-stack Kubernetes clusters in production, at scale.
They have the power to choose all the components of their clusters and manage clusters consistently across edge, bare metal, data center and cloud. Palette’s deep automation of day 2 activities like patching and monitoring helps stretched teams focus on innovation and removes roadblocks to scale, whatever their mission.
Palette already provides a unique combination of power and simplicity that has attracted enterprise customers in demanding and regulated industries, such as T-Mobile and GE HealthCare, which deal with sensitive data and mission-critical infrastructure at scale.
From the start, Palette was engineered with robust security features including security scans, powerful RBAC, auditing and logging, and tamperproof edge device images. The Palette management platform can be deployed on-premises and even in air-gapped environments.
New VerteX edition adds security capabilities
Now the new Palette VerteX edition extends Palette’s security features further.
VerteX supports the environments and technology platforms essential to government workloads, including deploying Kubernetes clusters in AWS GovCloud, and supporting Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Ubuntu LTS and Ubuntu Pro as the managed OS layer. Support for Azure Government Cloud is coming later this year.
Furthermore, Spectro Cloud announces that Palette VerteX brings full FIPS 140-2 cryptographic features to both the Palette platform and the Kubernetes clusters it deploys and manages, whether in traditional compute environments or at the edge. FIPS 140-2 is a key security baseline for many public and private sector organizations.
"Palette VerteX is designed from the ground up with security in mind that permeates every aspect it touches, giving government IT, platform engineering, and security teams the confidence they need to deploy and manage any Kubernetes environment at scale,” said Matthew Appler, CEO, Corsec Security, Inc.
Mission-ready support you can rely on
Spectro Cloud is a US-headquartered company, with engineers located across the country, from California to Florida. Many are veterans or have spent their careers supporting defense and government IT organizations. As such Spectro Cloud is proud to offer a premium support tier, delivered exclusively by highly qualified US citizens on US soil, for agencies and departments that need it.
The non-disruptive answer to budget shortfalls
Together, the new features in the VerteX edition make Palette a compelling alternative to incumbent K8s management tooling, especially with its competitive and transparent usage-based pricing model. Palette presents a clear solution for organizations struggling with team resources and budgets. A recent study by analysts ESG found that Palette could cut operating hours and costs for a typical multi-cluster deployment by 90%.
But adopting Palette doesn’t mean ‘rip and replace’ for customers already tied into multi-year agreements with other vendors. One of Palette’s greatest differentiators is its broad support for different Kubernetes distributions and environments, including its ability to monitor and manage clusters built on Rancher RKE2 and Red Hat OpenShift.
Government organizations can leverage their existing investments while charting a course for modern Kubernetes, with openness as a core design principle in Palette VerteX.
“The Palette VerteX announcement comes at a pivotal time in the public sector where managing Kubernetes across organizations using multiple cluster types, across multiple cloud and on-prem environments is very much a challenging reality,” said Josh Slattery, Vice President of Technology Sales at Vertosoft, the leading technology distributor focused on the public sector. “It’s great to see Spectro Cloud launch a truly mission-ready Kubernetes management solution for government straight out of the gate, and we are excited to see the impact it will have on our public sector customers.”
Today’s announcement is the first step on Spectro Cloud’s government roadmap. Furthermore, Spectro Cloud is already working to make Palette the first multi-environment SaaS Kubernetes management platform to become FedRAMP Moderate certified.
“Palette was built to be secure and mission-ready from the start, and over the past year we’ve seen a lot of interest from public sector organizations of all kinds,” said Kyle Goodwin, VP of Public Sector at Spectro Cloud. “Today, with the announcement of these important enhancements, Palette VerteX provides a genuine best-in-class experience for demanding agencies and departments looking to simplify, secure and scale their Kubernetes infrastructure. Our message to government is this: Spectro Cloud is here, and we’re ready to accelerate your mission.”
About Spectro Cloud
Spectro Cloud uniquely enables organizations to deploy and manage Kubernetes in production, at scale. Its Palette enterprise Kubernetes management platform gives platform engineering and DevOps teams effortless control of the full Kubernetes lifecycle even across multiple clouds, data centers, bare metal and edge environments. Ops teams are empowered to support their developers with curated Kubernetes stacks and tools based on their specific needs, with granular governance and enterprise-grade security.
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Virtual Server Management, Security
prnewswire | July 14, 2023
Scale Computing, the market leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions, today announced that Scale Computing Platform (SC//Platform) has been qualified on the Lenovo M90Q and the Simply NUC Topaz and is available as a part of the HE100 series of products. The company also announced that SC//Platform is now available from Simply NUC as a pre-integrated enterprise offering through their website. Scale Computing's award-winning SC//Platform allows users to run and manage applications from anywhere with cloud-like simplicity and performance built for edge computing.
"No matter what hardware configuration customers choose, it is the same innovative software and simple user interface powering their infrastructure and managing the heterogeneous fleet of hardware. SC//HyperCore and SC//Fleet Manager make it easier for IT to manage edge infrastructure and for customers to afford," said Jeff Ready, CEO and Co-founder of Scale Computing. "We are excited to partner with Simply NUC; they are a trusted and reliable partner with extensive knowledge of the NUC and other small form factor systems. By combining the power, simplicity and reliability of Scale Computing Platform with Simply NUC's expertise, expansive network and online configuration tools, we are providing organizations with a comprehensive and scalable edge computing solution with the fastest path from pilot to production."
SC//Platform is a powerful, all-in-one platform uniquely designed for running applications at the edge. Lightweight software is packaged for uncontrolled, non-IT environments and managed centrally, making it easy to run applications anywhere they are needed, while also reducing workloads for IT teams. Using patented HyperCore™ technology, the self-healing platform identifies, reduces, and corrects problems in real time. Users achieve results quickly and easily, even when local IT resources are scarce. SC//HyperCore makes ensuring application uptime simple for IT to manage and more affordable for customers.
Also available as part of SC//Platform is Scale Computing Fleet Manager with zero-touch provisioning (ZTP) and Secure Link features. ZTP provides cloud-like simplicity for administrators, allowing them to centrally configure clusters in SC//Fleet Manager prior to nodes arriving on-premises, decreasing the installation time by 90% or more. Secure Link enables cloud-like simplicity for administrators, allowing them to access the HyperCore UI for in-depth cluster management with the click of a button without needing expensive or complex remote access solutions. Edge deployments are just a click away on any browser, on any device, anywhere.
"Scale Computing is the leader in delivering highly performing, highly available, and highly reliable IT infrastructure solutions. SC//Platform is unique in that it provides expandable, fault-tolerant architecture, automated intelligence for self-healing, and remote management with cloud-like orchestration, creating the most highly available environment for edge computing," said Aaron Rowsell, Simply NUC CEO and Founder. "Today's business leaders need efficient application deployment and management, which SC//Platform on Intel® NUC and other small form factor devices delivers — with high performance, in a smaller, easier to manage solution. We're excited to partner with Scale Computing to take Simply NUC's offerings to a new level for distributed enterprise and edge computing."
About Scale Computing
Scale Computing is a leader in edge computing, virtualization, and hyperconverged solutions. Using patented HyperCore™ technology, Scale Computing Platform automatically identifies, mitigates, and corrects infrastructure problems in real-time, enabling applications to achieve maximum uptime, even when local IT resources and staff are scarce. Edge Computing is the fastest-growing area of IT infrastructure, and industry analysts have named Scale Computing an outperformer and leader in the space, including being named the #1 edge computing vendor by CRN. Scale Computing's products are sold by thousands of value-added resellers, integrators, and service providers worldwide. When ease-of-use, high availability, and TCO matter, Scale Computing Platform is the ideal infrastructure platform.
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