The presentation virtualization firm 2X a couple of weeks ago released a new minimal Linux distribution called CloudClient OS (CCOS) which basically embeds the company’s ThinClientOS. The free (and still in beta) operating system can be installed in a 512MB USB stick. It comes with pre-configured connection to popular cloud services like Google Apps and Microsoft Live, but most of all it comes with several VDI and presentation virtualization clients: Microsoft RDP, Citrix XenApp, VNC, of course the 2X VirtualDesktopServer Client, and even VMware View. CCOS seems very much what Chrome OS may become if Google decides to target corporate users rather than just the consumer market. Maybe, since Chrome OS is fully open source, 2X will be able to leverage that platform rather than developing its own. Here’s an introductory video: Thanks to NTPRO.NL for the news.

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Last week virtualization.info covered the departure of Andrew Lee , the VMware’s former Director of Corporate Business Development, in charge for a number of acquisitions, including the SpringSource one . But apparently there’s much more going on in Palo Alto: virtualization.info got a hint that Jocelyn Goldfein , Vice President and General Manager of the Desktop Business Unit, is gone too. The news is not official, and there’s no trace of changes on her LinkedIn profile or in the VMware’s Leadership page , but we are able to confirm that she’s no more at VMware. Goldfein is officially on sabbatical and the BU reports to Raghu Raghuram , Senior Vice President and General Manager of Virtualization and Cloud Platforms. On top of that, there are other, unconfirmed at this point, movements around the desktop division: Patrick Harr , the Vice President of Desktop Virtualization Sales and Marketing, is apparently now focused just on sales, while Vittorio Viarengo , Vice President of Desktop Products stepped in to lead the desktop marketing effort.

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Over the last few weeks Citrix published a growing number of hints about the public appearance of its free client hypervisor XenClient ( formerly Project Independence ) next week at its Synergy Conference in San Francisco. Despite the availability of breakout sessions and hands-on-lab about XenClient anyway, it wasn’t clear if the client hypervisor would be available to the general public. The final confirmation about this comes from Simon Crosby , CTO of Datacenter & Cloud division, who just wrote on his corporate blog : …Now that XenClient “Stewie” is getting ready for exposure to a larger set of users, the power management is excellent – there is some secret sauce at work that I can’t disclose yet – and the only limitation for multi-VM use is the boot time. There are still quite a few user experience quirks such as limited multi-monitor support and knowing how to get printing to work, but the system is very usable. My initial user experience issues, such as scheduler interaction that messed up Microsoft OCS and Skype performance, and having to figure out how to get my 3G USB device supported and manually insert the driver, have mostly been addressed. Support for sleep states, power management, and feedback on useability have helped enormously. Along the way, we have learned painfully just how hard a job it is to build a client-side type 1 hypervisor, and reminded that we still have a way to go. It’s not clear anyway if Citrix will release the GA of XenClient or just a public beta. A restricted number of partners so far accessed the private beta, while the company confirmed delayed about product availability earlier this year. virtualisation.info received a hint that this first release of XenClient may support Apple MacBook Pro laptops.

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The Israeli startup InstallFree releases today the second generation of its application virtualisation Bridge. Bridge 2.0 comes exactly two years after the company public launch and first product release . Bridge is able to create autonomous virtual applications (they don’t require an agent on the target OS to run) which can be updated or incrementally patched without the need to repackage them. Like other application virtualisation products, this one can’t virtualize those applications that depends on components running at kernel-mode, like device drivers, but it can virtualize a critical component of the Windows OS: Internet Explorer. Any customization of the virtualized app is saved inside dedicated encrypted files, which can be centrally stored and redistributed, and which are not involved in any future application update. Bridge also includes a centralized management console which leverages Microsoft Active Directory to distribute the virtual apps to corporate users. From there the administrators can pack applications and patches, apply them to users and groups for delivery, and even manage the available technology licenses accordingly. First of all, Bridge 2.0 introduces the support for Windows 7. This means that the products provides application portability from XP to 7 and that it supports virtualized versions of Internet Explorer 6.0 and 7.0 side by side with Internet Explorer 8.0. Unfortunately InstallFree doesn’t support yet 64bit versions of the Microsoft operating system, but plans to introduce it by Q3 2010. Bridge 2.0 also introduces support for multi-domain environments and a smart connection manager that automatically select the nearest repository where to get application updates. This last option may be especially useful for branch offices deployments. With this release InstallFree is trying to attract the many companies that waited so far to abandon XP because of the (many) Windows Vista faults but that are now facing technical issues in moving key technology packages. To do so, the company is offering an interesting promotion: customers can purchase a special license that allows them to virtualize just five applications of choice (no limitations here, customers are invited to pick up the most problematic ones). InstallFree offers to pre-package those five apps on behalf of the customer, giving away five incident support tickets to solve any issue after migration. If the customer likes the technology he can extend the limited license to the full one (no way to have an additional five-apps-package). And for those customers that want to try the product before buying, InstallFree now offers an online facility that can be accessed through a standard Microsoft RDP connection. The lab environment is activated on demand: unfortunately, it still lacks the capability to see how application packaging works, but it’s a good opportunity to see how the administrative console works for distribution and execution of virtualized apps.

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Neocleus is a US startup that entered the virtualisation market in May 2008 without much fanfare

Neocleus today unveiled the next phase of its corporate strategy focused on enabling existing PC Lifecycle Management (PCLM), Security and Help Desk solutions to transform personal computers (PCs) into highly manageable, multi-purpose desktop environments, and dramatically improve security and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). Neocleus’ first phase focused on delivering a bare metal,… This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]

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Just before the beginning of VMworld 2009, VMware announced the upcoming availability of Go , a free web console to manage ESXi 4.0 (ESX hosts are not supported). Yesterday the company finally released it . Go allows to initialize and patch ESXi hosts, create and operate virtual machines, check the VMs patching level connecting to the Shavlik Technologies service (VMware OEMs the Shavlik software for its Update Manager – VUM). Go is a hosted application that resides on VMware servers.

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Microsoft is definitively preparing to launch Azure as an alternative to Amazon EC2, the RackSpace Cloud, both based on Xen, and other Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud offerings based on VMware vSphere. virtualisation.info spotted some early signs at the end of September, and the company’s Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie briefly confirmed the plan a couple of weeks ago. NetApp seems to be involved too at some level. Another hint about what the IaaS cloud strategy will be arrives as an official announcement released a couple of days ago: the Windows Azure group and the Windows Server & Solutions group are now merged into a new Server & Cloud Division (SCD), which is part of the Server & Tools Business organization led by Bob Muglia.

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