Microsoft and Partners Help Customers Get Virtual Now

Microsoft and Partners Help Customers 'Get Virtual Now'

Today more than 20 partners announce plans for Microsoft virtualization solutions; Microsoft Hyper-V Server, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 available within 30 days.

BELLEVUE, Wash., Sept. 8 -- Kicking off a global series of "Get Virtual Now" events that will reach more than 250,000 customers and partners, Microsoft Corp. today announced strong customer and partner adoption of Microsoft virtualization software, new tools and programs to drive partner success.

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Microsoft also announced the upcoming availability of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 and the new Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 as a no-cost download during today's keynote addresses streamed live at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/virtualization/default.mspx.

Microsoft executives will further outline virtualization solutions for customers and also demonstrate the live migration capabilities of the upcoming release of Windows Server 2008 R2.

"Now is the time for customers to get virtual," said Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing within Microsoft's Server and Tools Business. "With desktop and datacenter virtualization offerings available from Microsoft and its partners, customers are adopting Microsoft solutions because they have better value and will make IT operations more dynamic. At a lower cost than other datacenter virtualization solutions, Microsoft software meets customers' needs from the desktop to the datacenter in an integrated offering on the platform they know."

Microsoft Customers "Get Virtual Now"

Web-based human resource, payroll and employment verification services provider TALX is now in the process of developing a new, advanced datacenter to service its 9,000 clients. By using Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to enhance virtualization performance and host more virtual machines per physical server, TALX will be able to further consolidate its server environment, reduce hardware costs, save on power and cooling costs, and conserve datacenter space. TALX expects to save another $1,000 in software licensing costs per each physical server it can replace with a virtual machine. The company also expects to save approximately 50 percent in annual power and cooling costs by consolidating its server environment with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V. A case study is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002609.

"In the employer and verifier marketplace, a lot of our competitive advantage is related to time to market. If we can shave days or weeks off our cycle, that's a big plus," said Bryan Garcia, vice president of technology at TALX. "With Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager, we're going to make the infrastructure a lot more flexible and agile. We expect to save at least $5,000 per year per installed virtual host machine, directly out of infrastructure costs for energy, hardware acquisition and hardware maintenance."

Another business that is already reaping the rewards of Microsoft's virtualization solutions is WorleyParsons Ltd. With 31,000 employees working in 34 countries, WorleyParsons is the leading provider of professional services to the energy, resource and complex process industries. As a result, the company relies on an agile and flexible IT infrastructure to deliver the expanding business applications required for sustaining growth. WorleyParsons is deploying Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V to help reduce the growing costs associated with rapid global expansion. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 will help WorleyParsons simplify server management and the physical-to-virtual server conversion as the company converts 50 percent of its physical servers to virtual servers. This conversion is expected to reduce hardware costs and space requirements, improve server management, and facilitate faster deployment of applications. A case study is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/casestudy.aspx?casestudyid=4000002503.

"Virtualization with Windows Server 2008 is providing the ability to deliver applications quickly, which is what we need to do to differentiate ourselves from competition," said Michael Alberghini, manager, WorleyParsons Group ICT Infrastructure and Architecture. "In the past, this would require deploying a new physical server, which could take three weeks because of the time involved in purchasing and setting up the server. With Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center, we now have the existing in-house skills, templates and ability to provision in a much shorter timeframe. System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides an excellent viewpoint with a clear, enterprisewide view of servers."

Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg), the world's leading solution provider for commercial and industrial customers in the print media industry, was looking to reduce the cost of desktop application management. Heidelberg turned to the application virtualization capabilities that are part of Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) for Software Assurance to create application packages, which would reduce the cost and complexity of the complete life cycle of application package management.

"We have deployed 80 applications via Microsoft Application Virtualization to more than 14,000 users running Windows Vista, and plan to increase that to our entire worldwide standardized applications in the coming months," said Michael Neff, chief information officer at Heidelberg. "Application Virtualization has been a key tool for reducing the cost of application management. Not only is it is far less expensive to deploy applications with Application Virtualization, but we can get the job done and up to four times faster, too. So far, we've reduced the related effort and time by 60 percent."

  New Server Virtualization and Management Products

  Product-related news at today's event included the following:

  *   Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008, a new hypervisor-based server
       virtualization product, will be released within 30 days and be
       available at no cost via the Web. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
       provides a simplified, reliable, and optimized virtualization
       solution that allows customers to consolidate Windows or Linux
       workloads onto a single physical server. Hyper-V Server 2008 allows
       customers to leverage their existing patching, provisioning,
       management and support tools, processes and skills.
  *   System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 will be released within
       30 days. System Center Virtual Machine Manager enables customers to
       configure and deploy new virtual machines and centrally manage their
       virtualized infrastructure, whether running on Windows Server 2008
       Hyper-V, Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server
       2008 or VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3. System Center Virtual
       Machine Manager is part of the System Center suite of products,
       which provides centralized, enterprise-class management of physical
       and virtual resources across desktops and datacenters.
  *   Microsoft demonstrated for the first time a live migration feature
       of Windows Server 2008 R2. Live migration utilizes the integrated
       hypervisor technology and high-availability features of the server
       operating system so that customers can move running applications
       between servers to accommodate changing, dynamic computing needs
       across a datacenter. In addition to other features, the next version
       of Microsoft Hyper-V Server will have live migration capabilities.
  *   Last week Microsoft released Microsoft Application Virtualization
       4.5, which gives desktop users a boost in fully harnessing the power
       of Windows Vista by streaming resource-heavy applications to the
       desktop. This helps eliminate potential software conflicts driving
       desktop stability and performance, while simultaneously enabling IT
       managers to centrally control key applications and their use.
       Application Virtualization 4.5 will be included as part of Microsoft
       Desktop Optimization Pack 2008 R2, which is due for general
       availability in the coming weeks.


  Partner Programs and Solutions

Thousands of partners around the world - including OEMs, software and storage vendors, system integrators, and resellers - are building solutions that complement or run on Microsoft's virtualization products. For example, Microsoft's global server OEM partners have been reporting greater demand for Windows Server 2008 Enterprise and Datacenter editions due in part to the expanded virtualization use rights of these editions, and they report that nearly 100 percent of their customers who order Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V included with their order.

Microsoft is providing partners with the resources, training, certification and tools they need to help customers virtualize. This includes the following:

  *   Dedicated virtualization lab established within the Microsoft
       Enterprise Engineering Center. This state-of-the-art facility is
       equipped with a wide range of server, storage and networking
       technologies so that partners can test and validate their
       virtualization solutions with Microsoft virtualization software.
  *   Windows Server 2008 Logo Certification Program with Hyper-V
       compatibility designation for independent software vendors assure
       mutual customers that they can take advantage of the powerful Web,
       virtualization, security, and management enhancements in Windows
       Server 2008.
  *   Virtualization programs, available through the Microsoft Partner
       Program, provide system integrators and resellers with special
       offers, certification and training opportunities.
  *   Virtualization Solutions Catalog
       (http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization/partners.mspx) launched to
       showcase the broad set of partner solutions developed to accelerate
       customer deployments of virtualization.

In separate news releases today (http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/virtualization/default.mspx) the following partners made announcements:

  *   AMD announced the availability of new virtualization solutions
       powered by a combination of technologies from AMD and Microsoft,
       using AMD Opteron(TM) processors with AMD Virtualization(TM)
       (AMD-V).
  *   Compellent Technologies Inc. announced its customer Munder Capital
       Management, a $28.5-billion financial investment firm, has amplified
       the benefits of data center virtualization by implementing the
       company's storage area network as the foundation for Windows Server
       2008 Hyper-V-based computing platforms.
  *   HP today announced that its recently updated portfolio of servers,
       storage, software and services is ready to drive business value into
       Microsoft virtualization environments.
  *   NetApp announced new storage solutions optimized for Windows Server
       2008 Hyper-V and enhanced integration with Microsoft's suite of
       management tools, to include System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
  *   Sun Microsystems Inc. announced new and significant developments in
       its cross-platform virtualization initiatives with Microsoft,
       including validation that Sun xVM Server software will work with
       Windows Server 2008 and previous versions, plans to offer customers
       the Solaris(TM) Operating System as a certified guest on Windows
       Server 2008 Hyper-V, and Sun's expanded support for Microsoft
       technologies by providing Sun Ray(TM) thin-client customers with the
       ability to access Windows as a guest operating system running on
       Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.


  "Get Virtual Now" Event Series

The "Get Virtual Now" event series is designed to educate more than 250,000 IT professionals on Microsoft virtualization products, deployment tools and partner solutions. The series of more than 125 events started Aug. 3 in South Africa, continued today with the U.S. kickoff event and by early 2009 will have covered more than 50 other countries.

More than 40 sponsoring partners were in attendance, including Platinum sponsors AMD, Citrix Systems Inc., Compellent Technologies, Dell Inc., Hitachi Data Systems Corp., HP, IBM Corp., Intel Corporation, Juniper Networks Inc., NetApp, Novell and Sun Microsystems. More information about the events and registration is available at https://www.getvirtualnow.com/.

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