Lionbridge have been working with Microsoft virtualisation technologies for a good long while now, and have just released a case study explaining it all.
Lionbridge have created a Virtual Cloud Lab using Hyper-V and System Centre and give secure, global access to it using Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services. Lionbridge reduced hardware costs by 80 percent for its virtual LAB environment, standardized its testing environments, accelerated machine provisioning, and enhanced security and business continuity.
The lab itself is in Boston and is currently 9 servers running around 300 virtual machines – this will reduce down to 6 physical servers in the not too distant future. They use the Self Service Portal feature of System Centre Virtual Machine Manager to dynamically deploy new environments without any input from the local IT staff.
It really is a great case study, I encourage you to read it.
Dave
Digital Media Forum and Microsoft Ireland are delighted to bring you the Microsoft BizSpark Innovation Accelerator Event – an event designed to help accelerate the Start-up community in Ireland and Northern Ireland. This day-long conference will run on Tuesday, February 24th in the Radisson SAS Royal Hotel in Dublin’s city centre. Entrance is free of charge.
The aim of the event is to provide business guidance for Start-ups and anyone in Ireland or Northern Ireland who thinks they might like to start-up a tech company. The plan is to get together some of Ireland’s most experienced entrepreneurs and business people to share their stories about what makes businesses succeed and what are the pitfalls to avoid.
The Innovation Accelerator Event will feature practical sessions on business areas key to success of any Start-up such as Sales, Marketing, Finance and Legal. Participating speakers are coming from every area of the Irish tech community to help with this initiative. Seminar style-sessions will run alongside some panel discussions where our more experienced entrepreneurs can relate stories from the trenches.
The agenda is available at http://digitalmediaisland.com/on-tour/bizspark-innovation-accelerator-feb-24th/schedule/
You can find more details and register at http://digitalmediaisland.com/on-tour/bizspark-innovation-accelerator-feb-24th/
I was given the task of introducing Windows 7 to a crowd of IT Professionals last week – easy enough, but not so in just 20 minutes. Searching around inside Microsoft for the elevator pitch PowerPoint deck proved to be impossible (there’s decks for each audience type, and they all had way too many slides). So I ended up creating my own (well, stealing a few from here & there, making the odd modification), and then just demonstrating everything I could within the time allowed.
This is what I ended up with:
Slide1: Lets me talk to the good points of Windows Vista. Also a bit of a history lesson. Vista = the most secure OS.
Slide 2: This lets me talk to the fact that we’re all Consumers (as well as IT Pros). Feedback = Goals for Windows 7.
Slide 3: A bit more detail on the goals.
Slide 4: Now I’m talking to the IT Professionals (the work related stuff). Obviously most of the consumer stuff I’ve just spoken about relates to the being more productive (at their desk). The “In a branch” is Branch Cache. “On the road” is DirectAccess.
The main security bits are UAC (which you can now control) and BitLocker To Go (the ability to encrypt USB sticks and have them be used in XP & Vista as read only devices).
Then there’s all the management components. Virtualisation is MEDV and App-V.
Dave.
I got to talk at the IPv6 Summit last week in Dublin Castle – Agenda, Slides and Videos of all the sessions are here.
My talk was on Finding the Business Case for IPv6.
The video of my session is now online and can be viewed here. And my slides are here.
I’m still working on finding the questions that I promised to find answers to (I’ve a conference call next week that will hopefully get me the answers).
Enjoy