There hasn't been a PowerPC-based computer since Apple abandoned the dingus and bolted to Intel, a move that did wonders for Apple's volumes. Now a Mountain View start-up called CherryPal is about to introduce a $249 Debian-based desktop that's about the size of a dime store paperback built around the 2W MPC5121e mobileGT PowerPC chip that Freescale usually sells to Detroit for navigation devices.

The once darling of the software industry, VMWare, is currently struggling to recover to anything close to what it was. With stock once riding high at $124 per share, it is now struggling to break the $40 barrier. VMWare rode the initial wave of the virtualization revolution, producing high quality software to allow you to run and maintain multiple operating systems on one host. They were largely uncompeted for a number of years, but now that the computing world has decided that virtualization is indeed here to stay and will shape our landscape, a number of competitors have appeared, including solutions from Microsoft.

10gen announced $1.5 million in Series A financing from Union Square Ventures. The cloud computing company, founded earlier this year by DoubleClick veterans Kevin Ryan, Dwight Merriman and Eliot Horowitz, and former Joost engineering VP, Geir Magnusson Jr., aims to provide significant time and cost saving advantages by allowing developers to focus on solving business problems and delivering functionality rather than expending effort on infrastructure, scaling and system management.

Two weeks after its co-founder and CEO Diane Greene was abruptly dismissed, VMware - now run by one of Microsoft's old rulers, Paul Maritz - disclosed exactly how much under its promised 50% year-over-year growth 2008 is going to be. It's going to be 5%-8% short of the magic number. Reason of course dictates that 42%-45% growth may some day look heroic.

Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens, Citrix CTO Simon Crosby, Egenera CTO Pete Manca, Allen Stewart, Group Manager, Windows Virtualization at Microsoft, and Brian Duckering, Sr. Director of Products and Alliances at Symantec were the top industry executives who joined Jeremy Geelan in the 4th Floor Reuters Studio overlooking Times Square for a special SYS-CON.TV 'Virtualization Power Panel' recorded on June 22, 2008, the day before the opening of SYS-CON's 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo - which was held 23-24 June 2008 in New York City.

With the stock market crashing, or giving a good approximation of a crash Thursday, Yahoo, poor thing - well, it has behaved like a sick lost puppy, now hasn't it - announced a supposedly pressure-relieving reorganization just like its familiars in the press said it would. It is, as was widely observed, the company's third or fourth attempt in the last 18 months or so - one loses count after a while - to rearrange the deck chairs and supposedly prove it can stay afloat with Microsoft out of the picture.

Interphase Systems announced it has named Lew Smith as Product Manager, Virtualization Solutions. In this newly created position, he will be responsible for leading and building Interphase's virtualization practice and offerings, with a concentration on the key technologies that will benefit the company's customers. Smith will continue to build relationships with existing technology partners, as well as engaging in new partner relationships.

Emulex announced that its LightPulse Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs), available from Sun as the Sun StorageTek Enterprise Class 4Gb/s PCI Express HBA, now offer Virtual HBA technology within Solaris 10 Operating System (OS) environments. Enhanced capabilities such as virtual port management, available via Emulex's next generation HBAnyware management suite, are designed to enhance the overall functionality of Solaris Containers.

EMC recently addressed Qatar's business decision-makers on how can EMC help them have a flexible and efficient IT environment by realizing the full potential and advanced functionality of virtualization solutions from VMware. Executives in Doha heard how they can use virtualization solutions to pool storage capacity together and create a more effective data protection environment. They also heard how EMC content-enabled solutions can help them bring unstructured content into the process.

Net One Systems and 3Tera announced that the two companies have signed a multi-year agreement naming Net One Systems as the exclusive distributor of 3Tera's AppLogic, the commercial grid OS for cloud computing, in Japan. Starting immediately, Net One Systems will offer cloud computing infrastructure and services using 3Tera's AppLogic. First customer deployments will be announced later this month.

VMware reported financial results for the second quarter of 2008: Revenues for the second quarter were $456 million, an increase of 54% from the second quarter of 2007. GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $61 million, compared to $47 million for the same period last year. Non-GAAP operating income was $112 million, an increase of 52% from the second quarter of 2007.

Reminding people of how its backing was the making of Linux, IBM, to no one's surprise, has thrown its support behind cloud computing, that delicious nexus of every chi-chi buzzword technology currently in vogue: Web 2.0, rich Internet applications, software-as-a-service, SOA, grid computing, Web Services, virtualization and utility computing. IBM calls its initiative Blue Cloud - like it could have another name - and claims it's a 'game-changing model for Internet-scale computing,' providing customer with just the right size computer power while at one and the same time being 'green' as well as 'self-healing and self-managing' based on open standards and Linux. Lordy, if this thing was a cute guy with money, it would be every mother's dream.

Tripwire announced the availability of Tripwire ConfigCheck for VMware ESX 3.0. Tripwire ConfigCheck is a free utility that assesses configuration settings for VMware ESX 3.0 and 3.5 hypervisors, determines potential configuration risks, and provides prescriptive remediation advice so that administrators can ensure greater security.

3PAR announced the 3PAR Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI, an integrated virtual desktop provisioning and management solution for VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI). 3PAR Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI is designed to let customers automatically provision hundreds of high-performance virtual desktops that consume only a fraction of the bandwidth and storage capacity required with traditional storage. By leveraging the unique performance benefits of 3PAR Utility Storage, 3PAR Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI offers customers cost-effective and simple storage scaling for VMware VDI environments.

Trustware unveiled a new version of its powerful security software application, BufferZone Pro 3.0. With close to 2 million installations worldwide, BufferZone has become the de-facto standard for browser and application based virtualization security. By creating a 'buffer zone' between the Internet and the users' local PC environment, consumers can browse the Web, chat on IM, open email attachments, download files and other confidential information - all without the fear of malware attacks.

Likewise Software announced that Isilon Systems is licensing its technology to further streamline the management of mixed storage environments. Likewise Software products deliver state-of-the art authentication and audit capabilities for mixed network environments. Datacenter managers running clustered storage systems on single or mixed operating systems - including Windows, Linux, Unix and Mac OS - can now more easily manage the provisioning and security of these storage devices.

3Leaf Systems announced that is has successfully performed interoperability testing of the 3Leaf V-8000 Virtual I/O Server with the HP BladeSystem c-Class and an HP StorageWorks 8100 Enterprise Virtual Array running VMware ESX. Successful completion of interoperability testing with HP marks a key milestone in 3Leaf's strategy and commitment to delivering greater data center resource utilization and reduced costs through virtualization solutions for the x86 server market.

'Traditionally people have tied their software to their hardware. Virtualization changes all that,' said Dr Stephen Herrod, CTO of VMware, the 10-year old Virtualization giant. Herrod gave a highly informative Morning Keynote today in New York City at the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo, in the stately setting of the Grand Ballroom at New York's historic Roosevelt Hotel.

Fortisphere announced that it plans to support VMware VMsafe technology, expanding the market reach of its Virtual Essentials software suite, which provides customers with greater levels of visibility and control over their VMware virtualized environments. VMware VMsafe technology helps vendors combat the challenges of compliance, management and security in ways previously not possible in physical environments.

Mike Neil is general manager for virtualization strategy in the Windows Server Division at Microsoft. Mike is focused on the delivery of the Windows virtualization technology, including Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server and Virtual PC 2007. Mike also directs the technical enablement of Microsoft's broader vision for virtualization, to include virtualization management tools and virtualized desktop infrastructure. Prior to this role, Mike was responsible for Microsoft's server and PC virtualization efforts since 2003.

Open Source. Open Standards. Open Collaboration. At the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo, Red Hat's CTO Brian Stevens spoke about how, over the past five years, the open source community has turned its attention to virtualization and what has been achieved and what is under development, and most important why open source is critical when building integrated infrastructure solutions.

VMware has cut an OEM deal with Inspur, the Chinese company whose name used to be Langchao and said to be the largest native server maker. Inspur will bundle and support VMware's Infrastructure 3 widgetry on its servers. Inspur says there's little virtualization deployment experience in China.

Cloud Computing is the new buzz word in the technology industry. But even industry insiders don't agree on exactly what the term means. Mike Eaton, Founder and CEO of Cloudworks and Atticus Information Systems, will be giving a breakout session at SYS-CON's 'Cloud Computing Expo' (November 20-21, 2008) - an adjunct to the 4th International Virtualization Conference & Expo being held at The Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, CA.

TOLIS Group announced a partnership with Parallels. TOLIS' BRU Server network backup solution has been successfully tested for compatibility with Parallels Server for Mac virtualization software. TOLIS Group is the developer of the ultra-reliable BRU brand of data backup and restore solutions and is a Parallels Technology Partner. BRU Server is now listed in the Parallels Certified Products Catalog.

CEO Hector Ruiz, increasingly blamed for the harrowing of AMD, stepped down during the company's Q2 conference call with Wall Street Thursday in favor of his sidekick, AMD president and patent-carrying engineer Dirk Meyer, the guy who used to run AMD's chip operation and was responsible for the Opteron chip that brought grief to Intel. Since the two have been so closed aligned it is unclear whether the change will make any substantive difference in AMD's fortunes.

Aerohive announced the availability of Virtual HiveManager, a new feature of the company's HiveManager network management system (NMS) appliance. Virtual HiveManager provides network management virtualization and permits the flexible delegation of network management authority, including by company or business unit, geographic location, and user role. The capability benefits managed wireless LAN service providers and large, distributed enterprises seeking flexibility in the management of their wireless LANs. Virtual HiveManager is available as a free upgrade to all HiveManager appliance owners.

Citrix on Tuesday announced Project Kensho, which is supposed to deliver Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools that will let ISVs and enterprise IT folk create portable hypervisor-independent enterprise application workloads that should run across XenServer, Hyper-V and VMware ESX virtual environments. Citrix is expecting to have a free technical preview for download in September.

3PAR, the utility storage company, says it's got an integrated virtual desktop provisioning and management solution for the VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) that will also scale VDI storage. It's supposed to automatically provision hundreds of high-performance virtual desktops that consume only a fraction of the bandwidth and storage capacity required with traditional storage, hence the name Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI.

That thud you heard yesterday was the European Commission hitting Intel with a second supplemental indictment-like statement of objection (SO) charging the company with three more instances of antitrust violations designed to keep AMD out of the market. Miraculously the news arrived just as AMD was posting its seventh consecutive quarterly loss.

General Dynamics C4 Systems has selected the OptiPlex 755 desktop by Dell as the computer hardware to host its Trusted Virtual Environment (TVE), a High Assurance Platform (HAP)-compliant workstation intended for classified work by government users. The workstation enables individuals to use a single computer workstation to securely access information and applications from multiple networks, at different classification levels, as opposed to limiting a computer to a single security level.

vmSight announced that the company's patented Connector ID technology is now available for thin clients used in virtual desktop deployments. The new capability allows virtual desktop administrators to more effectively manage end-to-end performance and reliability of VDI deployments where thin clients are used, as well as to provide more detailed user tracking for security and compliance.

SteelEye announced the general availability of SteelEye Protection Suite, a comprehensive solution that provides disaster protection of virtual machines running on Citrix XenServer. SteelEye Protection Suite delivers real-time LAN and WAN replication of XenServer virtual machines. It is designed for companies that have migrated critical enterprise applications to XenServer virtual machines and want enhanced protection against data center outages to ensure business continuity.

The Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) has selected Infinera to support its research on the experimental network testbed dubbed BEN (Breakable Experimental Network), which links RENCI to sites at three universities in North Carolina's Research Triangle Park.

Verari Systems announced that the Verari Systems' VB1257 VMware ESX 3.5 certified blade delivers twice the number of VMware virtual machines per blade than similar competitive blade offerings while consuming 50% less power. On a per VMware image basis, the VB1257 for the BladeRack 2 XL (BR2-XL) platform provides better total cost of ownership than any competing blade server products. VMware provides TAP program members with tools to develop products that are complementary to VMware virtualization software and help deliver high-value solutions to our joint customers.

In response to Symantec's recent announcement regarding its direct sales and automated renewal policies, Astaro announced a new promotion aimed at Symantec resellers. Astaro, a 100 percent channel-focused company, is offering a 20 percent discount on Astaro products through its 'Symantec Switch' promotion to help alleviate the strain these partners may feel in the wake of Symantec's new policies.

FastScale announced a new North America Channel Program with eight partners already signed including Blackhawk Technology Consulting, Continental Resources, International Computerware, New Age Technology, SecureTek Group, VirtaCORE, Whitewater Data, and Xcedex. Data center demand for the company's innovative technologies exceeded expectations during the first year of availability, and skilled partners will provide customers with greater access to products, technical expertise, and related services offerings centered on FastScale?s technologies.

FastScale announced the newest release of its flagship product, FastScale Composer Suite. FastScale Composer Suite fully automates the process of building, managing and deploying server software environments for enterprise class data centers and Web farms, whether the infrastructure is physical, virtual or both. The new release extends the benefits of FastScale's sleek software management solution to Windows Server 2003 environments, adds new capabilities in lightweight application provisioning, and delivers a range of scalability and usability enhancements.

VMware is supposed to report its second-quarter results on Tuesday July 22 and people will be tuning in to see how EMC's abrupt ouster of the virtualization leader's CEO and co-founder Diane Greene last week is handled and what is added to the news that VMware isn't going to make its full-year 2008 guidance of 50% growth over 2007. Parent company EMC said last week that VMware would come in 'modestly below' its revenue goals because of a more challenging spending environment but left Q2 guidance of 55% growth in place.

VirtualLogix announced Carrier Grade Virtualization, a solution that meets the performance, security, serviceability and availability needs of next generation, multicore-based carrier grade systems. VirtualLogix Carrier Grade Virtualization reduces the cost and complexity of maintaining carrier grade properties in edge and core network elements such as IP Multimedia System (IMS) nodes. As a result, networking and telecommunication original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can now reuse existing investments in their carrier grade systems while gaining the benefits of using VirtualLogix VLX real-time virtualization software. These benefits include faster adoption of multicore architectures and consolidation of hardware, reduced bill of materials, increased availability, improved time to market, and more efficient designs as a result.

BakBone is providing comprehensive, easy-to-manage VMware and heterogeneous data protection solutions for The Latin School of Chicago, helping the school keep its focus on students, rather than data protection. An independent, coeducational day school located on the Near North Side of Chicago, The Latin School of Chicago ranks among the nation's best schools in the informed use of technology in the classroom and for school administration. They utilize technology to support efficient, reliable operation of the school and provide tools that enhance both internal and external communications.