Roundup: MapR, Dell, EMC

Here’s a roundup of some of this week’s headlines from the data center and hosting industry:

MapR and EMC license Hadoop Distribution.  MapR Technologies announced a software licensing agreement with EMC Corporation in which MapR Technologies will be part of the recently announced EMC Greenplum HD Enterprise Edition, a 100 percent interface-compatible implementation of the Apache Hadoop software stack.  “This is a major advancement for Hadoop users everywhere," said John Webster, Senior Analyst, Evaluator Group. "MapR’s innovations coupled with EMC’s big data analytics capabilities and service will allow more people to use the power of big data analytics and enable substantial market growth. "MapR has managed to innovate on performance, cost reduction, dependability and ease-of-use all at once. This marks a major shift for the Hadoop market."

Dell expands desktop virtualization solutions. Dell announced additions to its desktop virtualization solutions portfolio including an enhanced Dell Virtual Lab 2.0 solution and new Dell OptiPlex FX170 and FX130 thin client offerings.  Virtual Lab 2.0 takes desktop virtualization one step further by providing validation testing on six leading applications used on campuses such as Adobe Premiere Pr CS3, AutoCad 2DLT, Wolfram Mathmatica 7, Mathworks MatLab, SAS and IBM SPSS. The new thin clients offer mobile, contract, remote and task workers connectivity within a desktop virtualization infrastructure. The FX170 is designed for knowledge-based workers focused on multimedia and content creation, while the FX130 is ideal for application and task-based environments. "With Virtual Lab 2.0, we’re bringing a set of solutions that faculty and administrators have told us are particularly difficult to manage in a virtual environment and have now made them easy to implement," said John Mullen, vice president, Global Education, Dell. "Students increasingly need access to data and curriculum. Virtual Lab 2.0 enhances their tools and gives them access regardless of where they are and what device they use."

New EMC Solutions for Citrix XenDesktop.  EMC announced a new EMC Proven solution for Citrix XenDesktop to accelerate the adoption of virtual desktop infrastructure and realization of the associated benefits. Built on the EMC VNX unified storage systems it allows up to 1000 virtual desktops and is easily expandable.  The EMC FAST suite then cache enables 1000 virtual desktops to power on, achieve a stead state and register with the XenDesktop controllers within 8 minutes. "Today's announcement showcases the tangible benefits associated with implementing EMC's advanced unified storage systems and associated technologies in a virtual desktop implementation," said Eric Herzog, EMC's Vice President, Product Marketing and Management, Unified Storage Division. "Customers can now quickly, efficiently and cost-effectively implement and scale their virtual desktop environment while taking advantage of trademark EMC reliability, availability, multi-protocol support, disaster recovery features, replication and snapshot technology, and hardened security."