Daily Archives: October 13, 2010

Zend Takes PHP Development to the Cloud

 

by developer.com

The cloud offers enterprises a new approach to deliver applications and it also presents new challenges for developers aiming to build applications for the cloud. Zend, one of the lead commercial vendors behind the open source PHP language, is now accelerating its cloud development efforts with a number of new initiatives.

Zend has a new partnership with cloud computing vendor RightScale for testing and development of PHP applications. A new Zend Studio IDE and improvements to the Zend Framework for PHP application deployment also are in the works. The new efforts from Zend come as the company aims to grow PHP’s share of application development in the cloud.

"Why is cloud interesting? I think beyond economics there are problems that enterprises have been trying to solve that have been around for a long time and there have been ways to solve the problems, but cloud gives them a new opportunity to solve them in a more coherent way," Andi Gutmans, Zend CEO told InternetNews.com. "I think it’s mainly around driving a professional application development lifecycle — having the best practices around development, testing and deployment."

With RightScale, Zend is partnering around a testing and development offering for PHP in the cloud. The Zend Server PHP application server technology is a key part of the solution enabling developers to deploy PHP applications for the cloud.

"When we think about cloud at Zend, we’re seeing more of an evolution, where customers are looking at cloud both inside and outside of their firewall, as a way to more easily engineer their development processes," Gutmans said.

Gutmans noted that Zend’s own Internet development infrastructure runs on VMware and they also test on Amazon. The goal at Zend with the RightScale partnership is to deliver an easy way for customers to scale their testing and development and make it easy for developers to provision PHP servers.

Beyond the new partnership, Zend developers are busy at work on the next version of their PHP IDE, Zend Studio 8.0. Currently Zend Studio 8 is at its Beta 2 release milestone.

"A big part of what we’ve worked on with Zend Studio Beta 2 is the remote filesystem support, which we’ve completely revamped," Gutmans said. "We’re making it much easier for developers to connect to remote images."

Gutmans added that Zend is evolving Zend Studio for more cloud development with some significant investments in how the IDE works, in terms of the performance of the workflow.

"Another piece is that we’ve added VMware workstation support into Zend Studio 8," Gutmans said. "So what you get is local desktop virtualization and then remote cloud based support."

Work is also under way on Zend’s Simple Cloud API effort for cloud portability and interoperability. Gutmans sees Simple Cloud as being a complementary effort to the Deltacloud API being developed by Linux vendor Red Hat for interoperable cloud management.

"Deltacloud is abstracting the management of cloud images," Gutmans said. "What Simple Cloud does is it enables developers to build portable cloud native applications."

While Simple Cloud is initially targeting PHP developers, it could have broader applicability.

"The way we’ve set Simple Cloud up is that it’s not just for PHP, the concept and designs could also be used for other languages," Gutmans said. "So I’d be happy to see a Java implementation of Simple Cloud and maybe other languages."

As far as what’s next for Zend in terms of product releases and cloud tools, Gutmans noted that at the upcoming Zendcon development conference in November, he will be providing additional information about Zend’s overall cloud strategy.

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Microsoft: New Virtualization Software Will Boost Windows 7 Upgrades

 

By Jon Brodkin

Microsoft’s updated desktop virtualization package will help enterprises migrate to Windows 7 by allowing compatibility with legacy applications that would not otherwise work on the new operating system.

The beta is for version 2.0 of Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization (MED-V), which improves upon the existing version 1.0 by simplifying password entry, USB device sharing, and legacy app integration with folders and printers. Version 2.0 also creates more options for running old Web apps that require Internet Explorer 6. 

MED-V is a bridge to help you create a longer-term plan for your more complex applications that may not be compatible with Windows 7 and are too costly to migrate at this exact moment," Microsoft Director of Product Management Karri Alexion-Tiernan writes in the beta announcement. "MED-V can accelerate your migration to Windows 7 by removing legacy application barriers. It delivers a seamless user experience, consolidates legacy desktop hardware and allows users to access the legacy applications from a single desktop experience."

Version 2.0 has been tested with Microsoft’s desktop virtualization technology, App-V, allowing virtualized applications to be "deployed and managed within the MED-V 2.0 Beta workspaces," Microsoft said. Microsoft also focused on improving integration with System Center Configuration Manager.

"MED-V 2.0 workspaces are deployed and managed using existing electronic software distribution (ESD) systems, including System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) 2007 R2 or higher," Microsoft said.

With the 2.0 beta, users can now cache their password so they don’t have to sign in twice. There are several new options allowing IT administrators to redirect legacy Web applications (those that run on IE6 or IE7) to different domains or ports. There is also USB device sharing allowing thumb drives and Smartcard readers to be shared between the host and applications; and integration of legacy applications with the Desktop and My Documents folders, and printers.

MED-V is sold as part of MDOP, the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack. To acquire MDOP, customers must first purchase a Software Assurance subscription, which typically costs about as much as one full Windows license, essentially doubling the cost of Windows 7. In addition to that, Software Assurance customers must pay another $10 per seat per year to obtain MDOP. However, Software Assurance comes with benefits such as upgrades to new software versions, and MDOP itself also includes App-V and several other software tools in addition to the new virtual desktop package.

To demonstrate the capabilities of MED-V, Microsoft released a case study of customer Harbor Wholesale Grocery, a distributor in Washington state, which used the software "to run a critical payroll application that requires Windows XP on computers with Windows 7."

MED-V isn’t the only option for customers looking to solve compatibility problems created by the Windows 7 upgrade. Windows 7 itself includes "Windows XP Mode," allowing a virtual instance of XP to run on top of the new OS, and virtualization tools from the likes of Citrix and VMware have been designed to smooth the process of OS upgrades.

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