We have two exciting announcements about our Zimbra Connector for BlackBerry Enterprise Server (ZCB)!

First, we just released ZCB 6.0. This new release works with Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0 and includes some cool enhancements:

• Better calendar synchronization
• Removes runtime dependency on Microsoft Outlook processes
• Improved performance and stability

But we didn’t stop there: Today we are also announcing plans for ZCB 6.5 Beta and are looking for Beta testers. ZCB 6.5 will add support for BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0. This is a terrific step forward for the Zimbra products and supports our commitment to providing ubiquitous access to messaging and collaboration data regardless of channel or device.

To learn more about ZCB 6.0 and download, click on the link below:

http://www.zimbra.com/products/blackberry-enterprise-server.html

http://www.zimbra.com/downloads

To join the ZCB 6.5 Beta Program:

Please send an email to beta@zimbra.com if you are interested in gaining early access to ZCB 6.5 Beta and trying BES 5.0 integration.

Thank you for your continued support!

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #203 for the week July 18th - July 24th and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Last call for Maverick server papercuts
• Ubuntu Maverick open for translation
• Native readers: extending the Beta
• MOTU Interview: Maia Kozheva (sikon / LucidFox)
• An Interview With Silver Fox
• Ubuntu Developer Week Re-Cap
• Ubuntu Stats
• Approval and Re Approval Process
• LoCo Council July Meeting minutes
• Delivering the Ubuntu Colombia Contact
• Stepping Down from Ubuntu Bangladesh
• Dun Laoghaire July Geeknic
• Ubuntu-fr at Les Vieilles Charrues
• Launchpad News
• Ubuntu at Non-Technical Events
• More cleansweep.
• Discussion request: multilingual posts on Planet Ubuntu or not?
• The Official Ubuntu Book – 5th Edition
• This week in design – 23 July 2010
• Getting Started with Ubuntu 10.04 is now available in Greek!
• How to Ask Smart Questions by Martin Owens
• Ubuntu One iphone client, source code released
• Ubuntu Translation Teams Healthcheck
• An invitation to join Ubuntu’s Q&A group on Shapado.com
• Akademy 30 second interviews, Eben Moglen, Helsinki, Prague
• “Blog about what you’re doing”
• Bugs vs Blueprints
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• Windows or Ubuntu?
• Linux Box To Market Ubuntu
• Dell drops Ubuntu PCs from website… for now
• Is Linux Too Much for One Mere Mortal to Handle?
• Rackspace’s Risky Open Cloud Bet
• Featured Podcasts
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• J Scott Gwin
• Liraz Siri
• Nathan Handler
• Penelope Stowe
• Daniel Calab
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

In final installment of this series we recently had a chance to sit down with Frances Atkinson, the Director of Institutional & Academic Technologies, IT Services at Simon Fraser University, one of the over 500 educational organizations that have deployed the Zimbra Collaboration Suite Network Edition worldwide. Not too long ago, SFU decided to upgrade their collaboration system and investigated several options. No surprise, Zimbra won out! Now, two and a half years later, SFU is seeing how Zimbra is benefiting all of their campus systems.

Highlights from our discussion with Frances are below:

How are SFU’s staff, faculty, and students using Zimbra Collaboration Suite?

Zimbra has become more than just an email and calendaring solution at Simon Fraser – it has evolved into the campus communications “hub” used by all faculty, staff and students. With Zimbra, calendaring and document sharing are available to everyone for the first time, and fewer users are forwarding to external sites like Gmail. Additionally, SFU connected Zimbra to other campus systems increasing campus-wide organization and efficiency. Students and faculty also have the ability to access Zimbra via mobile devices, including BlackBerrys. This mobile access is even more important since we now have the ability to send out notifications to all users for emergencies, weather, downtime, etc.

 
How are you customizing Zimbra to meet the needs of the SFU student body?

SFU is taking advantage of Zimbra’s open source functionality by using several Zimlets – including Calendar Scheduler, Arcade, Google Translator and Yahoo Local – we are able to extend the product and bring features to people who may not have otherwise found these resources.

We have even generated Zimlets of our own. These SFU Zimlets offer students and faculty a simple way to access course information, alerts/tips & tricks and their mySFU profiles. The course resource Zimlet is definitely the most important Zimlet for the students. It allows them to pull up all their course information for the current, past and next term, including the course description, syllabus, video content and digitized lectures. It helps to keep students organized and on track to graduate. Faculty and staff also utilize Zimlets to reserve rooms and equipment.

Additionally, we have branded Zimbra as SFU Connect, and we got the community involved by holding a naming and logo contest. We’ve personalized SFU Connect by providing users with a tip/trick or message of the day upon startup to help them use the portal to its full capacity.

 
What are your students and/or faculty saying about Zimbra?

Zimbra satisfied the desire of the students and faculty to have access to a modern, feature-rich, communications environment. Not only is the email and calendaring solution functional and well-suited to serve the entire campus, but its open source nature is lauded by faculty and students alike. By choosing an open source product, SFU has the potential to integrate with other products as the University’s needs continue to evolve.

Telenet, one of the largest internet providers in Belgium, recently announced the rollout of a new webmail platform developed in collaboration with Zimbra. Since April 2010, Telenet has been providing access to the new system for over 1 million residential internet subscribers and will continue the migration through August 1st. The updated email suite – which is free to Telenet customers – provides 5 GB of storage, a built-in calendar and address book, many advanced tools like sharing, automated importing of external mail accounts, plus more features to come.

Previously, Telenet internet customers had a basic mail utility and minuscule quota space of 50 MB. The new interface, powered by Zimbra, is extremely user friendly and is supported by 100x more storage. Other improved features include the ability to set up rules for filtering incoming mail and access to a mobile browser version. Several factors, including lower disk costs and the broadening availability of both virtualization and cloud applications made it possible for Telenet to make this update available to its customers. (One such distributed object storage framework is from Bizanga/Scality, who developed a connector for Zimbra, and has a video on Telenet’s strategy here.)

According to Saskia Schatterman, Executive Vice President Residential Marketing, no less than 70% of their customers use Telenet email on a regular basis and just over half report that account is their primary address. Those customers can now send mail anywhere, from any device with Internet access; putting aside the need to also use alternatives like Hotmail or Gmail. With this cutting-edge webmail architecture, Telenet can provide all of their broadband customers with a sophisticated and full featured product, that’s still simple to use.
 
The rollout of the advanced Telenet email platform is phased, all existing internet customers will automatically be granted access to the new communication suite and will be notified once their mailbox has been transitioned. Brand-new users will receive access to the Zimbra webmail client by default.

With this integration Zimbra continues to deliver on its promise of providing hassle-free collaboration solutions to our partners around the world. We look forward to sharing news about additional international organizations in the coming months.

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #202 for the week July 11th - July 17th and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase calls all artists to contribute to next version of Ubuntu
• Operation Cleansweep: We Need You!
• Ubuntu Accessibility Team Personas Survey
• ISO testers for the Hall of Fame
• Ubuntu User Days Wrap-Up
• Ubuntu Stats
• Rocking The LoCo Council
• Ubuntu: a computer operating system built around community
• Ubuntu Chicago Bike Tour
• The Early-Summer LoCo BBQ at hutchnate’s house was a tasty success!
• Ubuntu Honduras LoCo Team Wakes up
• Launchpad News
• Launchpad EPIC 2010 photo
• Showing first/last 40 comments in Launchpad
• Three tips for faster launchpadlib api clients
• Ahmed Kamal Joins the Horsemen
• Reviewers Team and Operation Cleansweep
• Ubuntu Manual Project core philosophy
• Man Your Browser
• Android SDK on Ubuntu
• KDE SC 4.5 RC 2 Packages Available
• KOffice 2.2.1 is out
• Updating the Ubuntu Packaging Guide
• Building a Ubuntu website on Stackexchange
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• Mozilla Ramps Up Vulnerability Reward Program
• Firefox joins Microsoft in uncool kids class - Chrome hangs out, looks good
• Linux to eclipse Microsoft’s ‘all-in’ tablet enthusiasm
• TurnKey Appliance Development Contest: An Open Source Summer Bonanza!
• The GIMP 2.6.10 Ubuntu Karmic And Lucid PPA
• Google App Inventor: Make Your Own Android Apps
• Spotify music streaming service comes to Linux
• The End of Shot of JAQ
• Introducing HTML5: a book review
• Keeping things simple: the Linux kernel
• sudo apt-get install sl is Fun!
• Featured Podcasts
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings & Events
• Updates and Security
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Liraz Siri
• J Scott Gwin
• Penelope Stowe
• Nigel Babu
• Mike Holstein
• Daniel Calab
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Lot of times you need to make a quick note about something in an email or a little reminder for yourself like “I need to confirm those dates” or “add John’s phone number” or “attach the PPT” etc.  But there is no easy way to capture that thought instantly.  Sticky Notes Zimlet helps solve that problem by allowing you to attach a note to a particular email.

The Sticky Notes Zimlet is really easy to use…all you do is make a quick note and attach it to your email. Once you attach your Sticky Note, it will automatically pop up the next time you re-open your email.

Simply select an email and click on the “StickyNotes” toolbar button or drag and drop your email onto the Zimlet to add your notes.

Similar to emails, you can attach notes to Contacts as well. Simply select a Contact and press “StickyNotes” button.

Similar to emails, you can attach notes to Appointments as well. Simply select a Contact and press “StickyNotes” button.

Click on “Sticky Notes” in the left overview pane and select the following:

a. Select “Add StickyNotes button to main toolbar” checkbox

b. Select “Enable Sticky Notes Zimlet” checkbox

After your enable the Sticky Notes Zimlet, a yellow-colored tag called “Emails with StickyNotes” is created. When you attach a StickyNote to your email message, your email or conversation will have a yellow tag. This yellow tag is removed when the Sticky Note is deleted.

You can search and keep track of all of your Sticky Note emails by clicking on the tag or by searching for them in the main search bar.

You can download the Zimlet here:  http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/sticky-notes

1. Version 1.6 now allows attaching StickyNotes for Contacts & Appoints as well

2. Version  1.5 adds scalability via CustomMetadata API. You can now add Sticky Notes to as many of your emails as you want.

2. Version 1.5+ is only compatible with ZCS 6.0.7+

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #201 for the week July 4th - July 10th and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Welcome New Ubuntu Members
• Kubuntu developer wins KDE Akademy 2010 Award
• The Ubuntu Font
• Ubuntu Developer Week
• Indicator Panel Menu Rocks the House
• Ubuntu Translations Interviews: Milo Casagrande (Italian Team)
• Ubuntu Closes Root Hole
• Ubuntu Stats
• LoCos, Leaders, and Lessons Learned: Massachusetts Team
• June LoCo Health Check Follow-up
• New Launchpad Bugs Status: Opinion
• Cleansweep Progress Report
• Accessing files made easy – Exploring vs Finding
• Dear Canonical
• We’ve packaged all of the free software…what now?
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• How to Install Ubuntu on Your Nexus One/Android!
• GNOME Amazon Referral Fees June 2010
• Ailurus - A Useful Ubuntu Tweak Alternative For Beginners
• Using Bazaar on Subversion Repositories
• GIMP Plugin Registry 3.5.1 Gets ~129 New Plugins
• Getting Amarok running in Ubuntu 10.04
• Featured Podcasts
• Weekly Ubuntu Development Team Meetings
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• UWN A Sneak Peek
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Liraz Siri
• Penelope Stowe
• Daniel Caleb
• Mike Holstein
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Every day, when you first login, this Zimlet scans your calendar and sends out a summary email about the current day’s events.

This Zimlet helps both frequent and lite calendaring users in different ways:

1. For power-users, this is like having a personal assistant; who summarizes appointments for the day, providing a concrete idea as to how many meetings you have.
2. For general-users, the Zimlet helps in reminding you that there is a meeting to prepare for (in case you’ve forgotten)

To make it easier to read, the appointments are sorted and divided along two simple categories:  Those that need your immediate attention (e.g confirmed or new events) and others that don’t (those you’ve marked tentative, free, out-of-office, or declined but not yet deleted).

Available in our Zimbra Gallery over here

After you have used the Appointment Summary Zimlet, please come-back to share what you thought of it at our Gallery.

PS: This is one of our favorite recent Zimlets within the Zimbra team, and we hope you enjoy it too!

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6 beta 2 is now available. The new beta reinforces Red Hat’s strategy to promote RHEL in conjunction with KVM-based virtualization. Here’s an update on the efforts.

The Red Hat News Blog indicates that partner and customer testing of RHEL 6 Beta 2 is “in full swing.” The new beta sports an updated installer and bug fixes from the first beta. Red Hat has hinted that the final production release could surface before the end of 2010.

RHEL 6 will be closely paired with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV), which is based on the KVM hypervisor. During Red Hat Summit in June 2010, CEO Jim Whitehurst predicted RHEV would eventually leapfrog VMware — similar to how RHEL overtook the Sun Solaris installed base.

For the latest on RHEL 6, along with the installation and download packs, you can visit Red Hat’s Beta Portal here.

Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center; and via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter and VARtweet.

• Red Hat’s Partner Progress: A Reality Check
• Red Hat CEO Predicts VMware Will Suffer Sun’s Fate
• Six Channel Blogs The VAR Guy Didn’t Write: June 25
• Mac Server Virtualization: Hot or Not?
• Red Hat Hires Novell Veteran for Virtualization Push

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #200 for the week June 27th - July 3rd and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Welcome to the 200th Issue of UWN
• History
• Retrospect
• Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter Editors and Staff - Past and Present
• 200th Issue Interviews
• Joining the UWN staff
• Maverick Alpha 2 released
• Ubuntu Developer Week is back!
• Ubuntu User Days - Scheduled for July 10-11, 2010
• Welcome Alessandro Ghersi (lex79) to kubuntu-dev
• Translations Advocacy
• Help wanted: Testing programs that use the notification area
• ubuntu-jobs@lists.ubuntu.com mailing list
• Ubuntu Stats
• loco.ubuntu.com meeting
• UPDATED: Launchpad read-only 23.00 UTC 6th July
• Cleansweep Updates
• Drupal usage within the Ubuntu Community
• GRUB 2: With luck…
• Application Menu status update for 2 July
• Local School Board and Ubuntu
• Review of Kubuntu Netbook – Maverick Alpha 2
• Dropping the “L” Word
• Creating Ubuntu Server Disk Images using vmbuilder
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• QBzr 0.19 Beta 2 Released
• Take 60 Seconds With Stuart Langridge
• 2010 ARRL Field Day Running Ubuntu
• TurnKey Linux Beta Launches Byobu by Default at Login
• Ohio LinuxFest Call For Presentations Extended
• Free software training, free software training, or just GNOME Training!
• Featured Podcasts
• Ubuntu Development Team Weekly Meeting Minutes Links
• Monthly Team Reports: June 2010
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Liraz Siri
• Nathan Handler
• J. Scott Gwin
• Daniel Caleb
• Penelope Stowe
• Jonathan Carter
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Email templates are extremely useful for Sales, Support and SE or any one who constantly sends out the same email on a regular basis. This Zimlet allows users to quickly insert any earlier emails as templates to New, Reply, Forwarded emails & also to Calendar-invites.

Step 1: Create Templates:
This Zimlet uses existing emails(nothing special) as templates.  Also, it brings the power of html editor for you to use & design. So, to create templates, simply send few emails yourself.

You can use generic names technique to replace common words. And just before inserting the template Zimlet will alert you to replace them.
For example: You could have hi ${firstName} in the body or in the subject

An example Template email:

Step 2: Setup a folder to keep all your Templates
1. After you have created few template emails, move all these emails to some central folder, say “Sales Templates”.
2. Set this folder as your templates repository by going to Preferences > “Set Templates Folder” button
3. Refresh browser

Step 1: Select a template from the menu:
With two clicks you can insert a Template of your choice. You can insert in three formats. 1. Just the body of the template, 2. both body & subject and 3. Body, Subject & Participants.

Step2: Replace Generic texts(if need be):

If you have any general texts in your templates, replace them with valid ones.

You can see that ${user}, ${firstName} & also attachments are inserted.

1. Templates in Calendar:
You can use any of these templates in Calendar as well.  For example, you can create a template with Conference-call details. You don’t have to search for those details anymore, Isn’t that cool?

2. Sharing Templates with others in the team:
Simply share your templates folder and ask your team members to point the Zimlets to this shared folder.

Please download the Zimlet from here:  http://gallery.zimbra.com/type/zimlet/email-templates

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #199 for the week June 20th - June 26th and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Welcome New Ubuntu Members
• Kubuntu Tutorials Day
• Ubuntu Translations Interviews: Milo Casagrande (Italian Team)
• Meet Steve Kowalik
• Debian Import Freeze in effect
• 100 Ubuntu Users Project announcement
• Ubuntu Stats
• LoCo Health Check
• LoCo Teams Microblog Tag
• Encouraging LoCo Teams to talk more
• Country info in the LoCo Directory
• You want to know why I am still amazed by the Ubuntu community? and how to improve your loco?
• Ubuntu Hour in Lake Forest #3
• Geeknic and SF Ubuntu Hour
• openSUSE conference looking for Ubuntu participation
• Launchpad News
• Unity Love
• Fix paper cuts, improve Ubuntu’s usability
• Weekly Update from Operation Cleansweep
• Debian Derivatives Front Desk
• Application Menu Status for 25 June
• Adopt an Upstream: Victor Vargas
• Free Culture Showcase Gallery
• FOSScon 2010 followup
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• Open Invention Network Announces Associate Member Program and Recruits Canonical As Its First Associate Member
• Canonical Sponsoring Akademy
• Ubuntu One on mobile for Maverick
• N900 vs Nexus One: a comparison
• Full Circle Magazine Issue 38
• Featured Podcasts
• Ubuntu Development Team Weekly Meeting Minutes Links
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• and much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Liraz Siri
• Nigel Babu
• Penelope Stowe
• Daniel Caleb
• Mike Holstein
• Jonathan Carter
• Mackenzie Morgan
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License

Red Hat has launched a comprehensive package, called Red Hat Cloud Foundations, that will allow organizations to run applications in both public clouds and their own private clouds.

With this release, Red Hat is one of only two companies that offer a complete package for running a hybrid cloud, said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager of Red Hat's cloud business unit. The other company is Microsoft, with its Azure platform.

At its Boston developer summit Red Hat is pushing the theme that every company can have its own cloud with the first in a line of Cloud Foundation tools.

The offering includes new JBOSS and KVM hypervisor and VMWare support software, a white paper, and a closer relationship with Microsoft.

All this is meant to assure “c-level” executive types that building clouds on Red Hat won’t be a technological cul de sac, and that other big vendors have its back, as it works to make the Internet one cloudy sky.

Red Hat also made some Wall Street friendly news, with solid growth in revenues and earnings as well as more share buybacks.

What’s going on is a strategic move to lead boardrooms toward virtualizing their entire infrastructure, the kind of “big iron” evolution you normally associate with a Microsoft or an IBM. As big rivals move more into high-revenue services, Red Hat aims to be a friendly, neutral “Switzerland” for the software needed to make it work.

This is possible because open source makes the code transparent. Proprietary code would be hidden from view, leading to FUD back-and-forth and interminable delays in making a “bet the company” move. This way everyone’s revenues are maximized, and top management is given the assurances needed to move.

This doesn’t mean proprietary technology has no place. Red Hat is merely placing itself at the center of the new ecosystem, making the software “glue” that keeps everything together.

The hope is this becomes a commodity business, a profitable revenue generator for years to come, with open source at the bottom of the stack and Red Hat as a key support vendor for that software.

This is the second major technology transition in the open source era — the move to Web-based services was the first — and the role of open source seems more central this time, even as the task ahead appears more difficult.

As Red Hat launches a cloud strategy and inks a deeper virtualization partnership with Cisco Systems, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has a cautionary message for VMware partners. Indeed, Whitehurst claims VMware over the next few years will suffer the same fate as Sun Microsystems. Admittedly, he didn’t use those “exact” words — but draw your own conclusions based on this report…

During an interview with The VAR Guy this week, Whitehurst said Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) already beats VMware vSphere on scalability and performance. However, Whitehurst concedes RHEV needs enhancements to match VMware’s management tools.

Still, Whitehurst says RHEV will leapfrog VMware the same way Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) eventually gained management features and leapfrogged Sun Microsystems’ installed base for Solaris on SPARC.

But will RHEV vs. VMware really repeat the RHEL vs. Solaris outcome? Hmmm… In this FastChat video, Whitehurst says channel partners are helping Red Hat to line up more than 500 RHEV customers in North America this year:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Within the video Whitehurst covers:

• 0:00 – Red Hat’s push to transform from a Linux, middleware and virtualization company into an infrastructure software provider for cloud services.
• 1:08 – Red Hat’s progress in the middleware and virtualization markets.
• 2:25 – Open source’s role in the cloud.

Still, competing against VMware won’t be easy. VMware has a huge following, a massive channel program, and plenty of customers who know vSphere can help to cut server hardware acquisition requirements while improving utilization rates.

The old Sun Solaris business model didn’t have that type of channel following — though Oracle (Sun’s current owner) is working to certify more Sun server and storage partners. Update, June 25, 2010: And Oracle says it has restored Sun to profitability.

But back to the story at hand. Eager to bolster its position, Red Hat has:

• inked an expanded virtualization partnership with Cisco Systems;
• unveiled Red Hat enterprise Virtualization 2.2; and
• announced a new strategy for cloud computing and partner programs.

Red Hat and Cisco have broadened their relationship by integrating Cisco VN-Link and Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization.

Cisco and Red Hat want to simplify datacenter deployments, and integration of the Cisco Unified Computing System Virtual Interface Card with the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor included in RHEV helps visibility, control and consistency in a networked filled with virtualization, all without sacrificing performance, Red Hat and Cisco claim.

The entire  solution is expected to ready from both Red Hat and Cisco later in 2010 with the coming availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 related virtualization updates.

The VAR Guy thinks Cisco could give RHEV a lift, but it’s important to note Cisco also has a close working relationship with VMware.

On the virtualization front, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2 has arrived, designed to overcome ’scalability barriers’ and comes complete with migration tools and enhanced security, including the arrival of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops, Red Hat says.

RHEV 2.2 can handle hosting and managing Windows and Linux, and provides a single infrastructure to manage both desktops and server virtual machines. RHEV 2.2 also allows for Hosted Virtual Desktop (HVD) configurations or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), plus open source SPICE remote rendering technology, for multimedia experiences when virtualization, allowing for multiple monitors, HD-quality video and bi-directional audio/video for video conferences. There’s also a V2V tool for converting VMware or Xen VM’s along with the support for the Open Virtualization Format (OVF) image, Red Hat says.

Meanwhile, Red Hat Cloud Foundations is a new service offering for building and managing Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) private and public clouds. Every offering includes cookbooks, expert services, training and easy implementation. The idea is to expand cloud technology and make it easier and more appealing to deploy one.

Cloud Foundations: Edition One is ready now and will provide information on implementing a private cloud, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Network Satellite, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, JBoss Enterprise Middleware and Red Hat Enterprise MRG Grid.

The Red Hat Certified Cloud Provider Program will certify vendors in cloud capabilities. Once certified, Certified Cloud Providers can run all supported virtualization solutions from Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, VMware and Microsoft.

There’s a lot of strategic chatter in this blog post. But ultimately, the story boils down to this: Red Hat’s Whitehurst thinks RHEV will leapfrog VMware in the coming years.

That’s a lofty goal. The VAR Guy will be watching to see if Whitehurst can fulfill that prediction. And certainly, The VAR Guy needs to check in with VMware for their side of the story.

Additional reporting by David Courbanou. Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Newsletter, Webcasts and Resource Center. And follow him via RSS; Facebook, Identi.ca and Twitter.

• Six Channel Blogs The VAR Guy Didn’t Write: June 25
• Mac Server Virtualization: Hot or Not?
• Red Hat Hires Novell Veteran for Virtualization Push
• Red Hat CEO: Cloud Can’t Exist Without Open Source
• Red Hat Virtualization: Cheaper Than VMware, Microsoft?

Red Hat is not as precisely coupled to the economy as many other IT players. Throughout the Great Recession, Red Hat got its brim a little wet, but it never blew off Wall Street's head and got trampled in the mud like so many other companies. And as the economy recovers, the commercial Linux operating system and JBoss middleware distributor is growing at more or less the same rate – like nothing ever happened.…

Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff

Red Hat has hired a Novell veteran to lead the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) push into the IT channel, The VAR Guy has learned. Kevin Pereau, Novell’s former director of ISV ecosystems, joined Red Hat about six weeks ago. Here’s the update, plus a closer look at how Red Hat plans to position RHEV against VMware vSphere and and Microsoft Hyper-V.

At Red Hat Partner Summit in Boston, Pereau and Navin R. Thadani (senior director of Red Hat’s virtualization business) sat down with The VAR Guy about an hour ago. Pereau said he joined Red Hat to help drive RHEV product marketing, and he’ll work closely with Red Hat North American Channel Chief Roger Egan and Global Channel Chief Mark Enzweiler.

The RHEV push stretches all the way up the CEO position, where Jim Whitehurst says RHEV is a lower-cost, higher-performing alternative to VMware, though Whitehurst concedes RHEV needs to match VMware’s overall management tools.

Meanwhile, Thadani claims RHEV offers channel partners four key advantages over rival virtualization options:

1. Unmatched performance and scalability.
2. A proven security infrastructure, based on Red Hat’s experience with  Linux security.
3. An ecosystem of hardware and software partners.
4. Cost savings that deliver more profits to partners. In one scenario, Thadani claimed RHEV delivers (US)$1.70 in partner profits for every $1.00 of RHEV sold, compared to $0.40 in profits for every $1.00 of VMware sold.

Of course, it’s difficult for The VAR Guy to confirm or dismiss those profitability claims.

Even if RHEV offers cost benefits over VMware, some channel partners tell The VAR Guy they’re sticking with VMware because of that platform’s proven management tools and VMware’s proven ability to save hardware dollars while improving server utilization rates.

Still, you can bet Pereau will be working closely with Thadani and the Red Hat channel team to recruit and certify RHEV partners. Red Hat announced a channel specialization for RHEV partners in mid-2009. The VAR Guy will be checking Red Hat’s latest financial results (scheduled to be announced this evening) to see if Red Hat discloses how RHEV is performing so far.

Follow The VAR Guy via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter; and via his Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center.

• Red Hat CEO Predicts VMware Will Suffer Sun’s Fate
• Red Hat Virtualization: Cheaper Than VMware, Microsoft?
• Red Hat Summit: Even Microsoft Will Lend a Virtualization Hand
• Red Hat Preps Virtualization Acceleration Strategy
• Red Hat vs. VMware: Is the Data Center War Real?

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst (pictured) says open source can exist without cloud computing, but cloud computing can’t exist without open source. Whitehurst shared that nugget — and about a dozen other thoughts — during an interview with The VAR Guy at Red Hat Partner Summit in Boston. Here’s a recap of the conversation and a look at where Red Hat is heading next.

For the sake of fast blogging, all of the nuggets below are paraphrased. But the bullet points and FastChat video capture the essence of Whitehurst’s thoughts. Here we go…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Among the thoughts Whitehurst shared…

1. Old IT models don’t scale: Twenty years ago, your best IT experience was at work. Now, the best IT experience occurs in the home and it’s often absolutely free, thanks to services like Google, FaceBook and Twitter, Whitehurst says. As a result, CIOs and partners need to adjust their mindsets. Which brings us to point two…

2. Don’t sell functionality: CIOs don’t want features and functions. They’ve got enough of those. Instead, they want employees to “use what they want, when they want to” with subscription type payment models, Whitehurst says.

3. More Thank Linux: Red Hat has the benefit of being the Kleenex brand of Linux, Whitehurst asserts. But Whitehurst wants partners and customers to remember that Red Hat has a broader product portfolio that features JBoss middleware and virtualization. He views Red Hat as an open architecture company, allowing customers and partners to mix and match Red Hat components with third-party software.

4. Red Hat vs. VMware: Some critics allege that Red Hat’s virtualization strategy is purely based on price benefits vs. VMware. But Whitehurst sees the strategy differently. On a performance front, Whitehurst says Red hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) beats VMware. But when it comes to management tools, Whitehurst concedes Red Hat is in catch-up mode.

Still, Whitehurst compares today’s Red Hat vs. VMware to the old Red Hat vs. Sun Solaris war. Initially, Red Hat beat Solaris on price. But over time, Red Hat’s Linux story gradually gained more and more management capabilities. The same trend will repeat itself with RHEV vs. VMware, Whitehurst assets.

5. On Acquisition Rumors: Two sources tell The VAR Guy that Red Hat may be looking to acquire Groundwork Open Source. Whitehurst says Red Hat doesn’t comment on rumors. But he says Red Hat has ongoing business relationships with Groundwork and other systems management companies.

6. On A Rumored Business Intelligence Strategy: Reports in 2009 suggested that Red Hat was going to make deeper moves into the BI market. Whitehurst confirmed that Red Hat still has an investment in Jaspersoft, though Whitehurst says Red Hat also maintains close relationships with Pentaho and SAP, among other BI specialists.

7. On Red Hat in Small Businesses: Cloud computing represents Red Hat’s doorway into small businesses, Whitehurst says. He added that 90 percent of today’s clouds leverage Red Hat’s software.

8. On the Cloud Potentially Stealing Open Source’s Thunder: Whitehurst said that wasn’t the case. Pointing to Amazon Web Services and Google, Whitehurst asserted that the cloud can’t exist without open source. Of the major cloud strategies, only Windows Azure seems to be closed source, Whitehurst added.

9. On the database market: Red Hat will continue to work closely with a range of database partners rather than betting on one database, Whitehurst said. The reason: Databases are not commodities. No single database, he added, does everything great. In terms of raw numbers, Red Hat’s biggest database partner is Oracle. But Red Hat will continue to work closely with IBM DB2, Enterprise DB, Ingres, MySQL (now owned by Oracle) and other options, he added.

10. On emerging market opportunities: In recent quarters, oil and gas customers have increasingly landed on Red Hat’s top customer lists.

11. On Red Hat and the desktop Linux market: Red Hat will make “some” but “not a lot” of effort in the desktop market. Whitehurst says he wishes “Ubuntu all the luck in the world but I don’t know why anyone would pay for desktop Linux. The demand is there but how do you monetize it?”

Red Hat will continue to develop and promote its desktop Linux offering, but the far greater priority for Red Hat is a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) push, Whitehurst said.

Red Hat is set to announce quarterly results tonight (June 23). The VAR Guy will be listening for more clues about the company’s business performance and strategy.

Sign up for The VAR Guy’s Newsletter; Webcasts and Resource Center; and via RSS; Facebook; Identi.ca; Twitter and VARtweet.

• Red Hat’s Message for European Partners
• Red Hat Summit: Even Microsoft Will Lend a Virtualization Hand
• Open Source Business Conference: 5 Trends Worth Watching
• Business Objects VARs Applaud SAP Partner Program Moves
• Another Small Victory for Ubuntu Server Edition

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. This is Issue #198 for the week June 13th - June 19th and is available here.

In this issue we cover:

• Welcome New Ubuntu Members
• Field experiment: fix an Ubuntu bug
• Call For Testing: Karmic Firefox Users (or willing to install Karmic in a VM)
• Community Leadership Summit 2010
• Ubuntu Stats
• LoCos, Leaders, and Lessons Learned: Pennsylvania Team
• Upcoming M Cycle Re Approvals
• LoCo Team Reapproval Change
• The Official Ubuntu Book, fifth edition released today
• TestDrive GTK Frontend Underway
• 2010 Eclipse survey released: Linux and Ubuntu still growing
• Open Cloud track at the Open World Forum
• Operation Cleansweep making progress… (updated)
• Cloud in your Pocket — UEC LiveISO!
• In The Press
• In The Blogosphere
• Ubuntu Server BoF at Velocity 2010
• Canonical’s (Possibly) Excellent Adventure
• Linaro announcement at Computex
• Perfectly good waste of “social”
• GoogleCL Brings Google Services to the Command Line
• 5 Things New Linux Converts Should Know
• Featured Podcasts
• Ubuntu Development Teams Weekly Meeting Minutes Links
• Upcoming Meetings and Events
• Updates and Security
• and Much much more!

This issue of The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

• Amber Graner
• Chris Johnston
• Liraz Siri
• J. Scott Gwin
• Penelope Stowe
• Daniel Caleb
• Jonathan Carter
• Alan Pope
• And many others

If you have a story idea for the Weekly Newsletter, join the Ubuntu News Team mailing list and submit it. Ideas can also be added to the wiki!

Except where otherwise noted, content in this issue is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License BY SA Creative Commons License