BMC Software, Eucalyptus, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat and SUSE Create Open Virtualization Alliance

SAN FRANCISCO, May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- BMC Software (Nasdaq: BMC), Eucalyptus Systems, HP (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT) and SUSE today announced the formation of the Open Virtualization Alliance, a consortium committed to fostering the adoption of open virtualization technologies including Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM). The consortium will promote examples of customer successes, encourage interoperability and accelerate the expansion of the ecosystem of third party solutions around KVM, providing businesses improved choice, performance and price for virtualization.

The Open Virtualization Alliance will provide education, best practices and technical advice to help businesses understand and evaluate their virtualization options. The consortium complements the existing open source communities managing the development of the KVM hypervisor and associated management capabilities, which are rapidly driving technology innovations for customers virtualizing both Linux and Windows® applications.

KVM virtualization provides compelling performance, scalability and security for today's applications, smoothing the path from single system deployments to large-scale cloud computing. As a core component in the Linux kernel, KVM leverages hardware virtualization support built into Intel and AMD processors, providing a robust, efficient environment for hosting Linux and Windows virtual machines.  KVM naturally leverages the rapid innovation of the Linux kernel (to virtualize both Linux and Windows guests), automatically benefiting from scheduler, memory management, power management, device driver and other features being produced by the thousands of developers in the Linux community.

Members of the Open Virtualization Alliance have a common interest in supporting open virtualization, and are involved in the development, distribution, support, use, or other business interest in KVM or offerings which use it. By providing an open virtualization alternative, they are offering their clients choice and enabling them to select the ideal virtualization products for their business needs.

"BMC has designed its cloud solutions to promote interoperability and openness which would enable a broad set of choices for IT organizations," said Kia Behnia, chief technology officer, BMC Software, "We are proud to support the goals of the Open Virtualization Alliance and extend its reach to the management of cloud environments that work for business."

"Eucalyptus Systems has a clear focus on enterprise cloud computing, so we are thrilled to be an early member of the Open Virtualization Alliance to advance enterprise-ready open virtualization solutions," said Rich Wolski, Eucalyptus Systems CTO. "With Eucalyptus, users can transform their hypervisor environments into a powerful private cloud, and there are already thousands of KVM-based Eucalyptus private cloud installations. We look forward to working with the other Open Virtualization Alliance members to support open standards and choice when evaluating virtualization technologies."

"Organizations are looking to quickly and easily manage change across the enterprise while maintaining control over IT resources," said Paul Miller, vice president, Solutions and Strategic Alliances, Enterprise Servers, Storage and Networking, HP. "Kernel-based Virtual Machines, supported by the Open Virtualization Alliance, offer organizations flexibility, choice and compatibility with HP Converged Infrastructure. They're a great open source option for clients."

"IBM has a rich history of innovation in the open source community and has been a leader in virtualization technology for more than 40 years," said Inna Kuznetsova, vice president, IBM Systems & Technology Group. "With the formation of this alliance, we are taking an important step forward with other industry leaders to ensure that businesses have an open virtualization alternative."

"No matter what virtualization solution is chosen by our customers, the Intel strategy remains the same -- to help ensure their choice runs best on Intel architecture," said Doug Fisher, vice president, Software and Services Group, and general manager, Systems Software Division at Intel. "KVM offers an open source alternative for virtualization that takes immediate advantage of the Linux device driver work Intel does, which helps KVM track the rapid improvements we make in our products."  

"When one company dominates an industry, innovation suffers, and customers pay the price," said Scott Crenshaw, vice president and general manager, Cloud Business at Red Hat. "Red Hat and the open source community are breaking the stranglehold of closed virtualization, enabling better performance, scalability, security -- and better economics.  We're pleased to see momentum continue to build, changing the virtualization market just as we did with closed operating systems and enterprise middleware."

"The new SUSE business has a strong focus on providing the easiest-to-use and most interoperable Linux solutions across physical, virtual and cloud environments. We're proud to be a founding member of the Open Virtualization Alliance that will help accelerate the adoption of virtualization solutions based on open source technologies. Customers want choice and simplicity without compromising performance. We're excited to be working with the Open Virtualization Alliance to encourage interoperability and help businesses understand and evaluate their virtualization options," said Alan Clark, executive director, open standards and initiatives, SUSE.

For more information about the Open Virtualization Alliance: www.openvirtualizationalliance.org

About BMC

Business runs on IT.  IT runs on BMC Software.

Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and stronger. That's why the most demanding IT organizations in the world rely on BMC Software across distributed, mainframe, virtual and cloud environments. Recognized as the leader in Business Service Management, BMC offers a comprehensive approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business profit. For the four fiscal quarters ended March 31, 2011, BMC revenue was approximately $2.1 billion. Visit www.bmc.com for more information.

About Eucalyptus

Eucalyptus Systems provides IT organizations in enterprises, government agencies, Web and mobile businesses, and industry partners the most widely deployed software platform for on-premise Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) clouds. To date, over 25,000 Eucalyptus clouds have been started all over the world, including more than 20 percent of Fortune 100 companies. Eucalyptus is specifically designed for enterprise use, and the software platform is uniquely suited for hybrid clouds. Built as an open source product, Eucalyptus supports the industry-standard cloud API, Amazon Web Services, as well as all major virtualization platforms. The company has an active and growing ecosystem of customers, partners, developers and researchers that benefit from Eucalyptus' open, fast and standards-compliant path to cloud computing. For more information about Eucalyptus, please visit http://www.eucalyptus.com.

About HP

HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. The world's largest technology company, HP brings together a portfolio that spans printing, personal computing, software, services and IT infrastructure at the convergence of the cloud and connectivity, creating seamless, secure, context-aware experiences for a connected world. More information about HP (NYSE: HPQ) is available at http://www.hp.com.

About IBM

IBM is a leading supporter of Open Standards and Open Source software. For information on IBM's position on open standards visit: http://www.ibm.com/opensource for more information on open virtualization visit: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/virtualization/infrastructure/open/index.html

About Red Hat, Inc.

Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions and an S&P 500 company, is headquartered in Raleigh, NC with over 65 offices spanning the globe. CIOs ranked Red Hat as one of the top vendors delivering value in Enterprise Software for seven consecutive years in the CIO Insight Magazine Vendor Value survey. Red Hat provides high-quality, affordable technology with its operating system platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, together with virtualization, applications, management and Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) solutions, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and JBoss Enterprise Middleware. Red Hat also offers support, training and consulting services to its customers worldwide. Learn more: http://www.redhat.com.

About SUSE

SUSE is a leading provider of enterprise Linux solutions that increase agility, reduce cost and manage complexity in dynamic environments. With a portfolio centered around SUSE Linux Enterprise, the most interoperable platform for mission-critical computing, SUSE enables organizations to confidently deliver computing services across physical, virtual and cloud environments. With our award-winning products and ecosystem of partnerships, SUSE solutions empower thousands of organizations around the world. For more information, visit us at www.novell.com/linux.

Media Contacts
BMC

Jennifer Brenner
BMC Software
w: 713-918-2421
[email protected]

Eucalyptus Systems
Lisa Sheeran
Sheeran/Jager Communication for Eucalyptus Systems
[email protected]
510-724-2267

HP
Terri Molini
HP
[email protected]
415-480-4355

IBM
Erica Topolski
IBM Media Relations
+1 617 693 2816
[email protected]

Intel
Suzy Ramirez
Intel Media Relations
+1 503-264-0996
[email protected]

Red Hat
Leigh Day
Red Hat Media Relations
[email protected]

SUSE
Ian Bruce
Novell
+1 781.464.8034
[email protected]

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SOURCE Open Virtualization Alliance