I spoke with Stonesoft on Wednesday regarding the company's new security solutions for VMware. Intrahost protection, anyone?

If you're running a Windows-based infrastructure with Active Directory, you might want to take a look at just-released Specops Suite 3.0. It can help with software deployment, inventory, license management, and scripting. You can focus on developing your policies and let the software take it from there. Specops seems to be moving in the right direction, consolidating many of the functions that individual software vendors provide today. By placing the capabilities in one neat package, administrators can focus more of their time on the critical policy definition and enforcement issues.

Riverbed jumps much deeper into application-aware networking today with the RiOS Service Platform, a way to run servers on its Steelhead branch-office boxes using virtualization.  As with similar initiatives from Cisco and 3Com, Riverbed's long-term aim is to replace servers with networking appliances: Virtualization decouples software from hardware, so why bother with physical servers?

An Indy-based independent consultant I know turned me on to Stoneware, makers of a webOS, not the heavy stuff your mother-in-law collects. Will they break into the desktop virt market?

I had a very informal chat with a buddy of mine about service management. And virtualization. Many TLAs were used.

This week, Steve Hanna sent the TCG/TNC specifications to the NEA working group for consideration as working group documents. These are basically submissions of existing TCG/TNC specifications along with an explanation of how the specifications meet requirements already agreed to by the NEA working group. Apparently, these are the only specifications submitted to the working group.

I was weighing topic posts tonight, and Xen won out over VMware. Will this be a trend in the market? Demo v4.1 and see for yourself.

Just how much CO₂ is offset by virtualizing your servers? Oriel, an Aussie VMware partner, offers a calculator that explicitly shows the benefit to the planet for P-to-V conversions.

Steve Hultquist at InfoWorld recently posted a review of ConSentry Network's LANShield Switch. The review is largely positive, as was my review of ConSentry's LANShield Controller, its in-band NAC product which sports many similar features. I think ConSentry, along with Nevis Networks, which has a competing product line, are on to something.

This week, Digital Fairway released Provergent Circuit Manager software as a service (SaaS) to manage telecommunication assets. If you're like most organizations, you use Excel to manage Wide Area Network (WAN), Voice, and Internet circuits. Often, different groups use different spreadsheets, so presenting an overall picture is impossible.

I missed the chance to comment on last week's Google/Postini announcement, but hot on its heels comes a somewhat related announcement from Webroot, and a chance for a two-for-one blog entry.

Last fall CA hit up IT management at shops earning $250M+ revenue to check the pulse of virtualization. 300 professionals from the United States, U.K., Germany, Australia, and Korea replied. They're sharing the goods.

VMware and Citrix have been stepping on each other's toes. A bunch. Will they meet somewhere in the middle, or are they shooting for winner takes all?

Europe has been taking the lead in several areas of technology lately. The European Space Agency (ESA) will be the first to send an unmanned cargo ship to the international space station. London will be Europe's first city to get A380 Airbus service. Now Europe claims another "accolade" -- Symantec says it's responsible for most of the spam sent worldwide. I guess two outta three ain't bad.

SaaS provider Workday has bought Cape Clear, one of the last remaining independent ESB (enterprise service bus) vendors. It isn't surprising that Cape Clear would disappear. Even as ESBs grow more popular, the market for standalone products is shrinking thanks to consolidation and commoditization. But Workday is an unusual acquirer: Rather than another player in the SOA space, Workday is a Cape Clear customer, using the Cape Clear ESB within its hosted ERP application.

After an aggressive push into the application performance management market, Symantec has decided to sell its APM business to Vector Capital, a San Francisco-based private equity firm. After the deal closes in March, the APM business will operate as a standalone company called Precise Software Solutions.

Automation in Windows can be difficult to achieve. You can write batch files. Use Windows Scripting Host. Use WMI. But all of these methods have their drawbacks. While trying to figure out how to disable a NIC from the command line for my NAC test bed, I found AutoIT, freeware scripting utility.

VMware’s stock price might have tumbled, but that isn’t stopping VC investment in the virtualization space. Two startups raked in millions this week.

So Shimel has beaten me to the punch on Tim Greene's article on Juniper's NAC product. There's nothing in Juniper's announcement concerning NAC and NAC enforcement. Tim brought up two other points, one about Cisco's TrustSec and the other about ConSentry and Nevis, that I wanted to comment on.

If I have ever tossed out the idea that 802.1X is simple, usable, and simple, then I misspoke. Setting up 802.1X for testing is pretty straightforward, but where the road to 802.1X gets bumpy is trying to integrate port-based authentication with other LAN processes.

What started as a basic VM test has taken on a life of its own; it looks like we'll be walking the virtualization talk, pushing a VM host out near the edge of my production network. Wish me luck ...