e-Zest is Professional Level Partner of VMWare and has a dedicated VMWare competency center. VMWare is the market leader in infrastructure virtualization and accoding to one of the Gartner's researches, its at least 6 years ahead of its competitors in terms of technology innovations. e-Zest has gained extensive experience in implementing the infrastructure virtualization using VMWare vSphere.

vSphere is amazing innovation from VMWare. Its worth spending few minutes understanding its key features and benefits.

VMware vSphere, the industry’s first cloud operating system, leverages the power of virtualization to transform datacenters into dramatically simplified cloud computing infrastructures and enables IT organizations to deliver the next generation of flexible and reliable IT services, using internal and external resources, securely and with low risk.

VMware vSphere infrastructure services transform discrete hardware resources into a shared mainframe-like computing platform that is incredibly resilient and capable of running the most demanding applications with nearnative performance.

Few of the the Key Features of VMWare vSphere:

1. Bare-metal architecture: VMware ESX and ESXi insert a robust virtualization layer directly on the server hardware for near-native virtual machine performance, reliability and scalability.

2. Small footprint: VMware ESXi is a compact, 70 MB form factor of the production proven VMware ESX hypervisor. It is a fraction of the size of a general purpose operating system for unparalleled security and reliability.

3. Server integration: VMware ESXi is available integrated into servers from leading OEM vendors for a simplified boot and deployment experience.

4. CPU virtualization: Run many operating systems and applications encapsulated inside virtual machines on a single physical server for higher utilization, without risking critical processes being starved of compute or memory resources. VMware ESX/ESXi use intelligent process scheduling and load balancing across available processors to manage the execution of virtual machine processing

5. Network virtualization: Network virtual machines like physical machines. Build complex networks within a single VMware ESX/ESXi or across multiple installations of VMware ESX/ESXi for production deployments or development and testing purposes.

6. Flexible virtual switches: Create a virtual network within a VMware ESX/ESXi host with virtual switches that connect virtual machines within the same host as well as the outside physical network. Virtual switches can be created with up to 2040 ports, and every host can be configured with up to 248 switches.

7. Storage virtualization: Abstract the complexity of storage subsystems while centrally maintaining virtual machine file storage for greater flexibility and manageability.

8. VMotion: Live migrate running virtual machines from one server to another with no disruption or downtime.

9. Storage VMotion: Live migrate running virtual machines from one storage location to another with no disruption or downtime.

10. High Availability: Protect against physical machine failures through low cost, easy

to setup VMware HA. VMware HA automatically detects physical machine failure and restarts virtual machines on other physical machines in a shared storage environment.

11. Scalability and extensibility: Manage upto 300 hosts and 3000 virtual machines with vCenter Server 4.0 and Link many vCenter Servers in your environment with vCenter Server Linked Mode to manage upto 10,000 virtual machines from a single console.

These are few of the key features which VMWare vSphere 4.1 offers. Contact us for a free demo/discussion wherein we can explain you in details the advantages of infrastructure virtualization using VMWare vSphere 4.1.

Author: Satish Agrawal is VP-Cloud Computing Practice at e-Zest Solutions Ltd. (www.e-zest.net) and mentor for Cloud Computing Professionals in and around Pune. His mission is to build core competencies at e-Zest in the domain of Cloud Computing for enterprises and ISVs and deliver best values. e-Zest Cloud Computing Practice provides complete cloud computing solutions from assessment to design to deployment to operation and adaption to evolution.

Today, there is a high demand for Rich Internet Applications (RIA). RIAs combine the maturity, stability and scalability of service orientation with state of the art presentation layer technology to create the next wave of web based distributed applications. RIA applications are defined as the combination of beautiful aesthetics and the feel of desktop applications with the accessibility feature of the web applications. These applications include several features which counter the disadvantages of traditional websites. For an end user, RIA applications serves the best of client-server and web technology, making it imperative for all the small and mid-size businesses, large scale enterprises and even government entities to adopt.

RIAs are implemented into a working system to provide better results to all visitors. These applications are designed, executed and implemented with a view of increasing the overall productivity of the website. By adding RIAs, website developers append a number of flexible features to a website and make it more vivid and alive. With RIAs, websites become more appealing, interactive and responsive and hence have become cutting edge solutions to enhance the way a business operates.

Currently websites and desktops are rapidly moving in the RIA application development direction. Flex development along with many other platforms is used to add RIA applications to a website. In the present world many different types of platforms are available – Adobe Flex/Air, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), JavaFX and Microsoft Silverlight. Each have some of the best features making it difficult to judge which one is the best.

Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex applications are different from each other in many respects, even though they are developed in a way, look very much similar. Flex development is the process of using a collection of web tools, technologies and run time environments to create better RIA solutions. It includes Adobes Integrated Runtime (AIR), Flex SDK and Add-on Components, Adobe Flash Player Runtime, Flex Builder and Server Side Integration Service.

One of the reasons Adobe Flex has become so popular is because of its versatility. Adobe Flex is a software development kit (SDK) based on the Adobe Flash platform. Adobe Flex is used for the development and deployment of cross-platform RIA. The additional advantage of Adobe Flex is that it is an open source framework and by using flex compiler and adobe Flash builder RIAs can be easily developed. Flex development encourages better presentation of business information through rich graphical presentations, multimedia and animated displays. It is a program that can do extraordinary things. Adobe Flex can help build a website from the ground up or if you are trying to design intricate animations, design a highly interactive application or building interfaces for a variety of users, build on existing code or starting over from scratch.

Flex offers a number of remarkable benefits for both developers and end-users, including:

· Record development time due to powerful coding tools and extensive visual component library

· Innumerable good features make it ideal to develop enterprise level applications.

· Solution scalability and reliability due to a powerful and elegant Flex programming model.

· Flex-based solutions are easily re-designed or enhanced whenever it is necessary.

· Easy integration into a server application due to a high-performance data synchronization engine between the client and server sides.

· In-context interactivity due to video, audio, streaming, and messaging components.

· Flex components like Charts, DataGrid, RichTextEditor, ProgressBar, Accordion, Slider etc make Flex development very easy.

All this makes Adobe Flex one of the best RIA development platforms. RIAs have since been widely adopted and proven to deliver tangible ROI to the businesses that deploy them. Measurable benefits include higher customer conversion rates, increased user productivity and improved customer loyalty.

e-Zest’s (www.e-zest.net) dedicated team of (RIA) experts has extensive experience in building interactive & efficient Rich Internet Applications (RIA) development solutions to a global client base. e-Zest offers services that enable its clients to effectively communicate and share their ideas, products and services with their global customers. Our RIA services include Adobe Flex & AIR, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Microsoft Silverlight, CURL, OpenLaszlo and JavaFX. We offer custom solutions according to needs of the clients.

This week an open cloud manifesto has got published with intent of beginning a conversation in the direction of formulating principles for open cloud computing. The companies behind drafting this open cloud manifesto are of an opinion that innovations happening in cloud computing area in terms of standards, interoperability, integration and portability should be guided by the principles of openness.

The manifesto has covered topics like importance and need of cloud computing today and challenges and barriers for its adoption. The cloud computing manifesto has identified goals like availability of choices, flexibility in cloud computing usage, speed and agility to respond quickly to changes and open cloud computing skills. This all should help building a foundation for open standards and architecture for cloud computing.

The initiative is criticized by Microsoft calling it as a secret cloud manifesto. A blog attributed to Steven Martin, senior director of platform product management, has said in its post that the document was asked to sign 'as is' without modification or additional input. Though Microsoft admits that there should be standardization, it feels that it is too early to do that. Amazon supported the initiative and Google is yet to comment on it.

The responses from Microsoft, Amazon and Google will be helpful in guiding the future path for this open cloud manifesto.

IT services companies can relax a bit with news coming from Gartner managing vice president, Joanne Correia. US sub-prime crisis has haunted software services company higher authorities with a fear of diminishing IT spending. But prediction from Gartner that worldwide IT spending should top $3.4 trillion in 2008, up 8 percent from 2007, will give them a restful night’s sleep. Much of this growth is due to the decline in the U.S. dollar.

Software spending and IT services are expected to see the biggest gain, up 10 percent and 9.4 percent respectively in 2008. "Software as a service/cloud computing, service-oriented architecture/Web 2.0, and open-source software are causing huge changes to the software market," wrote Joanne Correia in a research note. "Many of these factors are impacting market growth as enterprises replace assets with per-use services."

With internet proliferation on-demand services are on high. Even desktop bully Microsoft is trying to taste waters in web world with software as a service offerings lined up. Coming few years will be most happening and we may witness desktop losing major chunk of pie to cloud computing. But whatever may be the scenario IT spending will grow up at least in 2008.

During recent Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2008, Microsoft released details about its SaaS initiative & its comments about SaaS adoption by ISVs.

Microsoft has established 'Microsoft Software + Services Incubation Center Program'  through which ISVs are guided through a structured series of business and architectural consulting sessions with the support of an established hosting provider to help ensure their business models and applications are ready to address the challenges of SaaS based delivery.  This program now includes 20 incubation centers worldwide with 10 in Europe, eight in North America, and two in Asia. More than 550 independent software vendors have enrolled since its launch in 2006.

John Zanni, general manager of worldwide hosting at Microsoft, said: "Microsoft realizes that the evolution of the software industry will reach far beyond just bringing software to the browser. Partnerships are critical for ISVs to be successful in the new world of software plus services. The program builds an integrated ecosystem to help ISVs deploy service-based applications. Now through the tremendous success of this program, there is no doubt that building an integrated ecosystem plays an integral role in helping ISVs deploy service-based applications"

Considering elevated initiatives from company like Microsoft, SaaS transition by ISVs looks more promising.