Roundup: AMD, Citrix, Digital Realty

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

AMD names Rory P. Read as CEO. AMD announced that its Board of Directors has appointed Rory P. Read, 49, President and Chief Executive Officer of AMD, effective today. Read has also been appointed to the company’s board of directors. Coming from Lenovo Group as their President and COO, Read helped transform Lenovo into a major PC manufacturer and achieved its largest market share ever. Prior to Lenovo, Read spent 23 years at IBM. “I’m very pleased to be joining AMD at this important time in its history," said Read. "AMD is a true innovator and is uniquely positioned to lead the industry forward, delivering the next big thing both within the PC ecosystem and beyond. AMD has strong momentum and the opportunity to continue profitably gaining share based on its highly differentiated products, solid financial foundation, and passionate and committed employees. I’m excited to be joining AMD’s employees as we write the next chapter not just for the company, but for the industry and consumers around the world.”

Citrix releases XenDesktop 5.5. Citrix Systems (CTXS) announced a new version of XenDesktop Wednesday that adds enhancements in personalization, user experience and rich consumer device support. Version 5.5 also includes 'Personal vDisk' technology, which Citrix picked up from their recent acquisition of RingCube. New features include over 150 Citrix HDX user experience enhancements, unparalleled native user experience on tablets and smartphones, laptop support through XenClient 2, integrated XenApp 6.5, and enhanced support for Microsoft RemoteFX. “With this new release of XenDesktop, we are making virtual desktops simple and affordable for IT by incorporating technology from our recent RingCube acquisition. In addition, XenDesktop 5.5 brings unprecedented levels of technology innovation with HDX so users will have high-performance, personal desktops and applications on any device, whether they are working at home, at work or at a branch office. Bringing together on-demand apps with XenApp, support for billions of devices with Citrix Receiver, XenDesktop enables enterprises to transform their distributed desktop computing into an on-demand service delivered from their own private clouds.” Chief Cloud Architect for Citrix Christian Reilly recently blogged a response back to VMware about how Citrix is absolutely not (narrowly) focused on virtualization -- but that they are focused on the cloud.

Digital Realty adopts SOC2 reporting standards.  Digital Realty Trust (DLR) has launched an initiative to adopt the American Institute of Certified Accountants (AICPA) new SOC2 reporting standards. SOC2 (Service Organization Control 2) is a form of AICPA reporting that lets service organizations provide assurance to their customers in areas including security, and follows the retirement of the SAS70 standard.  "In the short time since the release of SOC2 in May, we have seen considerable momentum with planned adoption by cloud service providers and strong support from users of cloud, datacenter and other outsourced IT services," said Mark Lundin, KPMG's SOC2 and Cloud Assurance Lead Partner. "We believe that SOC2 will be a primary vehicle for providing third party assurance on security in 2011 and beyond."