Tata Group Initiates Largest Virtualization Exercise
By Jamsheed Gandhi
In what could be termed as the largest Virtualization exercise deployed in the country, solution vendor Parallels has been signed up by the Tata Group to deliver the benefits of virtualization though its products. This activity to virtualize existing hardware has been initiated at the Pune factory of Tata Motors and soon will extend to other companies in the Tata Group, namely TCS and Tata Communications.
“We started seven months back through a tender process and now have successfully deployed almost 196 sockets or licenses into virtualizing the infrastructure at Tata Motors. They see a tremendous benefit in our solution and soon we will start working with other companies within the Tata Group to deploy our solutions,” said Erik Tetzlaff, Territory Sales Manager Enterprise, MEA & India, Parallels.
With the company touching a 1000 employees worldwide, Parallels has plans to open a subsidiary in the country by the end of 2008 or early 2009. While currently represented in the country through Teqdis, the company has plans to appoint close to 15 partners by the end of 2008.
Informed Teqdis’s Director for Operations in India, Ravi Pradhan, “We see a great potential to offer a value product in the virtualization segment. We plan to actively push the various products of Parallels in the country, and have initiated one such relationship with Trimax IT Infrastructure and Services who will be responsible for delivering training as well as deploy solutions.”
With almost 99 percent of the data hosting services market in Europe virtualized, the company is now looking at tapping large enterprises and data centers in the country.
Microsoft Gets Real Hyper About Virtualization
By Sanjay Gupta
For a change, Microsoft released the latest version of its virtualization technology, Hyper-V, well before the most recently “rescheduled” launch timeframe of early August.
Talking very excitedly about Hyper-V on the phone from the US in an exclusive interaction with Network Computing, Mike Schutz, Director of Windows Server and server tools business at Microsoft, said that the new launch looks at virtualization in “a very broad way” and that Hyper-V will be relevant and easy to use for the largest of corporations with hundreds of servers as well as the smallest of businesses with only a few.
Hyper-V can be downloaded currently from the Microsoft website in “about four-and-a-half hours” and will meld with Windows Server versions 2003 and 2008. The download will not cost anything for the existing users of these software. Also, beginning July 8, the Hyper-V update will become part of the company’s Live update roster – which means it will update automatically on machines without requiring users to manually download it.
For earlier versions of Windows, Microsoft has a different virtualization product, called the Virtual Server. The new technology of Hyper-V is different from the old in that Hyper-V uses a hypervisor “to provide hardware abstraction services to the OS environment and do resource allocation and partitioning,” as per a blog post by technology writer Mary Jo Foley.
Experts say that the advantage of a hypervisor – also called a virtual machine manager, a program that allows multiple OSes to be hosted on a single system and share the system’s computing resources – is that it is relatively faster and more scalable for the needs of large enterprises.
While Microsoft is a late entrant to the fast growing server virtualization segment dominated by EMC-owned VMWare, Schutz told Network Computing that, till date, only about 7% of servers in the world are virtualized. Which means the battlefield is still kind of virgin territory for anyone with the muscle to take it. And even though VMWare put on some brawn through its association with EMC, Microsoft’s “Windows familiarity and ease-of-use” pitch to CIOs and technology managers, buttressed with its marketing dollars, will make it quite an interesting fight ahead.
Hughes to Provide VSAT Hub to Indian Railways
NWC News Network
Hughes has recently announced that it has been awarded the mandate to set up a dedicated VSAT hub for Indian Railways allowing them to offer a host of mission critical applications. In addition to this, the Railways are also planning to offer internet access on running trains.
The commissioning of the hub will allow the Railways to connect 1000 locations across 19 states against the existing 200 locations. The new system will also allow them to have voice and data connectivity for their services at remotely located stations where fixed and mobile network of telecom operators had not reached even after the revolution in telecom industry in recent times.
“We have been working with the Indian Railways for the last two years by supporting them to run their FOIS applications on the hired hub. Their decision to partner with us as they embark to set up a dedicated VSAT hub validates their confidence in our services and the efficacy of satellite as a medium of choice to run mission critical and consumer facing applications across the length and breadth of the country. We look forward to helping them build greater efficiencies into their system that will affect a wide population of consumers,” said K. Krishna, AVP Marketing, Hughes India.
The system would allow the railways to provide critical services that include Disaster Communication System, Accident Relief Train (ART), Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS) and Freight Operating Information System (FOIS) in remote locations. They are also currently undertaking a proof of concept in one of the trains between Mumbai and Ahmedabad as a part of their plan to provide internet access on running trains.
Once successful, this system will help Railways in proliferating UTS terminals to remote areas and city centers as well as quick establishment of communication system at disaster management sites. For disaster management, the Railways have already planned VSAT terminals that will allow tracking and establishment of communication at accident sites in less than 15-20 minutes. These terminals will be installed in one Accident Relief Train (ART) for each of the 67 divisions in the Indian Railways. The wireless and auto line concentrators at such sites will further ensure that a number of Railways’ administrative phones and DOT phones can immediately be set up at accident sites, resulting in faster communication for stranded passengers and better accident site management.
Synlog Provides SWIFT Connectivity to SVC Bank
NWC News Network
Synlog has helped Shamrao Vithal Cooperative (SVC) Bank to connect to Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network for their international financial transactions. SVC Bank, with branches across 13 cities mainly in western India, was connected to the SWIFT network by Synlog using the TurboSWIFT suite from BankServ, USA.
TurboSwift is a full-featured and certified messaging interface (CBT) used at various banks around the world for secure messaging of international funds transfer (Forex), conforming to the SWIFT standard. SWIFT is the industry-owned co-operative, which provides secure, standardised messaging services and interface software to over 8,100 financial institutions in 208 countries and territories. Its members include banks, broker-dealers and investment managers.
Commenting on the bank's decision to opt for their own SWIFT connection and selection of Synlog as their payment solution provider, Shrinivas D. Joshi, CEO, SVC Bank said, "We have the privilege to be licenced by RBI as Authorised Dealer Category I to deal in foreign exchange. The bank has taken the decision to have its forex operations with contemporary infrastructure so as to render excellent and efficient customer service. The network’s direct connectivity is one such step in this direction which is a worldwide financial messaging system, well known for its effectiveness and confidentiality. The bank is proud to have its own BIC, thereby giving it an international identification. Now the network has made the Relationship Management Application (RMA) system mandatory in place of Bilateral Key Exchange (BKE) among the correspondents, financial institutions. SVC Bank is pleased to announce the RMA compatibility in its interface software. The bank has selected the software of Synlog for SWIFT interface with Straight Through Process (STP) for inward and outward messaging system."
"We are pleased to have worked with SVC Bank on this strategically important project. There is a clear requirement in the Indian market for effective and efficient SWIFT messaging solutions and BankServ's products are a perfect fit to solve this need," commented Bikram Dasgupta, Chairman, Synlog." Prior to this implementation, the bank had been routing its funds transfer transaction messages through a partnership with the Karnataka Bank.
Chitale Dairy Deploys VMware Infrastructure
NWC News Network
VMware has recently announced the deployment of its datacenter virtualization and management platform in Chitale Dairy one of the leading food and beverage companies in Maharashtra, India. The dairy has deployed the VMware Infrastructure to consolidate two of its existing datacenters into one to improve application availability and reliability.
“VMware not only enables a more flexible and robust IT environment but helps us save costs on physical infrastructure as well as power and valuable space,” said Vishvas Chitale, Director, Chitale Dairy. “Streamlining our IT has a direct impact on the agility of our business and the company’s solution has provided that much needed competitive edge. With VMware, we are now able to focus on driving 15-percent annual growth,” he added.
The dairy which produces about 400,000 liters of milk per day as well as cream, butter and yoghurt, faced operational challenges with 10 physical servers spread across two datacenters in a town 500 kilometers from the nearest city. In its remote location, the company found it expensive and challenging to source and retain qualified IT support staff while grappling with server sprawl.
By consolidating its two physical operations into one virtual datacenter the dairy has reduced server hardware acquisition costs by 50 percent, software acquisition costs by 75 percent, and power consumption in half. The platform has also helped in reducing server deployment times from three weeks to three hours and the time to restore a corrupted server from six or seven hours to 10 minutes.
Companies like Chitale are rapidly adopting virtualization because of the business benefits it provides around lowering the total cost of their IT infrastructure while enabling new levels of business agility.
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