LG, Microsoft partner in cloud

South Korea's LG Electronics said on 30 September it had signed a partnership deal with Microsoft on cloud computing and virtualisation, IT technologies aimed at helping business cut costs, states Business Recorder.

Under the pact, LG will introduce monitors integrated with Microsoft software. The monitors will function as virtual computers, allowing multiple users to run programs off a single standard PC, LG says.

LG and Microsoft will also team up to introduce monitors for cloud computing, a technology that allows users to access data and software over the Internet.

Dell has released a suite of products for managing virtualised infrastructures within the data centre, writes IT Pro.

The move has introduced the company into a new arena where it will compete with data centre big hitters like Cisco, with its Unified Computing System, the HP Blade System Matrix, and EMC's Ionix ControlCenter.

Dell's Virtual Integrated System is designed to run at a level above the virtualisation platforms from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware to allow mangers to treat their servers, networking and storage as a single cohesive entity. Workloads can be moved around to accommodate spikes in demand or to harness underused resources.

More than 80% of enterprises now have a virtualisation programme or project, but only 25% of all server workloads will be in a virtual machine by year-end 2010, according to Gartner, says eChannel

Many IT leaders believe they have virtualised their x86 servers, but Gartner said they have to plan for two to three times the growth of virtualisation in the portfolio.

"'Virtualisation will continue as the highest-impact issue challenging infrastructure and operations through 2015, changing how you manage, how and what you buy, how you deploy, how you plan and how you charge,"' says Philip Dawson, research vice-president at Gartner.