The amp was turned up to 11 at the Hyper-V Jam session held at last month's Hosting Summit in Bellevue, WS. Doug Keeley, CEO and Chief Storyteller of The Mark of a Leader hosted partners from HP, Juniper Networks, and Parallels in a session that drew a parallel between the challenges musicians face to create unique music and the challenges hosters face to differentiate themselves as unique service providers. As Keeley explained, all musician have at their disposal the same palate of 12 notes, yet they have to arrange those notes and add instruments to differentiate their sound. The same can be done with the Microsoft's Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 as hosting providers add layers of products and services, creating unique offerings to their customer audience.
Birger Steen from Parallels, a global leader in Cloud services automation and virtualization software, talked about their mission to enable service providers to profit from the cloud with several of their offerings. Steen talked about Parallels Automation, stating that Parallels Automation for Office 365 can help Office 365 syndication partners connect their billing system to the Office 365 back end billing and provisioning systems. He also stated that Hyper-V and System Center can help hosting providers make their offerings very elastic and granular.
Paul Gavin, Product Manager for HP discussed how the Microsoft and HP alliance benefits hosting providers by their development of the joint management stack, HP Cloud Foundation for Hyper-V, which enables hosters to go to market more quickly with HP providing the physical infrastructure, and Microsoft providing the virtual infrastructure. The technology provides deep engineering integration across infrastructure and applications with low TCO and rapid deployment.
Abner Germanow, Director of enterprise marketing for Juniper Networks rounded out the partner perspective with their solution to enable networks for a virtualized world. Combining the power of Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V virtualization technology, Juniper solutions unleash the potential of virtualizing resource-intensive workloads in the data center. Germanow expressed confidence in Juniper Networks ability to solve the network problem and provide hosters infrastructures as desired.
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 is leveraged easily by partners because it plugs into customers' existing IT environments seamlessly. As a stand-alone product it provides a reliable and optimized virtualization solution, improving server utilization and reducing costs. Some of the new features that are available in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 are live migration, cluster shared volume support and expanded processor and memory support for host systems. Since Hyper-V Server contains only the Windows Hypervisor, Windows Server driver model and virtualization components, it provides a small footprint and minimal overhead. To learn more about Microsoft Hyper-V technology, click here.
Warren Buffet once said, "In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield". With this quote, and reflecting on the strong partnership between Microsoft and its service provider partners, Talal Al Qinawy, Industry Director, SaaS Hosting Business, put the headlights on high to illuminate how service providers and Microsoft can partner to deliver productivity and business applications to the cloud at last month's Microsoft Hosting Summit in Bellevue, Washington,.
Al Qinawy talked about the consumerization of IT, the idea that the line is becoming blurred between workplace and consumer technology, as more and more businesses incorporate things like facebook and Twitter into their daily business activities, and how this trend is pushing IT departments to think about computing differently , by introducing its, workers to social computing tools at work, such as presence & IM, voice & video, social networking while maintaining IT policies, security, and enforcing compliance and how Microsoft solutions are best positioned to achieve that.. He stressed that Microsoft has big investments as an established leader in enterprise and consumer tools and technologies, and how service provider partners can leverage the great advancements in cloud computing in Office 365, and ways for hosting providers to partner & sell to their customers, or offer these productivity tools as a hosted service to end customers.
He also stated that it's not Microsoft's goal to have every partner hosting Microsoft servers or every partner to sell Office 365, however, it is Microsoft goal to offer the end customer a solution that meets the customer's IT and business requirements, sometimes that will be on a Microsoft Office 365 , on-premise , or a partner Cloud , or a mix-and-match...
For those who are going to host SaaS applications in their datacenters, he offered the following advice:
The commitment of Microsoft to the hosting business is to enable hosting companies to scale, differentiate and capitalize on the opportunity of the private cloud with a full productivity solution leveraging Microsoft technology. Polish up that rear view mirror. The cloud offerings from hosters will enable the industry to move so fast, the view in the mirror will be a blur.
Another Hosting Summit has come and gone, leaving us with the fond memories of slow motion magic tricks, jam sessions, cloud ninjas, and of course plenty of talk of servers, infrastructure and applications, and new business opportunities created by the broader business adoption of cloud. This was our biggest Summit yet with the event selling out twice as fast as last year and ‘hosting’ roughly 350 executives from more than 45 countries, with companies ranging from managed service providers, telcos, ISVs, VARs and SIs, to application service providers and more.
Our theme this year was “Think Big” and we hope the Summit provided an opportunity for the community to do just that. We kicked off the event with a keynote from Austen Mulinder, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Communications Sector, and Marco Limena, vice president Business Channels, Microsoft Communications Sector, and brought in senior leaders across Microsoft who all collaborate to develop and create the products, services, and opportunities to support your business. From Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Server and Cloud Platform Marketing, to Chris Capossela, senior vice president Information Worker Product Management Group, each stressed the evolution of the next generation of cloud services and the vast partner opportunities that lie ahead. Attendees chose from four separate tracks: infrastructure, applications, business and marketing, each of which offered unique perspective into a different element of the industry.
Overall, the Summit underscored the increasing interest in cloud services, the need to meet that growth and the opportunities that hosting service providers give if they are willing to Think Big. Limena touched on the recently released Microsoft global SMB Cloud Adoption Study, which unveiled that 39 percent of SMBs will buy an average of three cloud services over the next three years, and the Summit emphasized how the hosting industry needs to be ready with solid infrastructure, innovative services, a strong network of partners and ongoing outreach to potential customers. Together, the Summit’s four tracks created a complete picture of where to go to meet the challenges ahead: from the need for strong Microsoft SQL server offerings, to the transition of productivity applications to the cloud, to insight into the SMBs interested in hosting.
The Summit may have come to a close, but we hope that our hosting partners will continue to Think Big and extend the conversation online. We now have a Facebook page and Twitter for anyone in the industry to collaborate, comment and connect with fellow hosting service providers about news, services, and ideas on innovation, infrastructure, and application advancements, and new business opportunities across the hosting industry.
Time is running out! April 15 is the deadline for the Microsoft Hosting Partner Award submissions, this is your last chance to gain the recognition you deserve for creating a successful hosting solution built on Microsoft technologies. Differentiate your company from the competition with a prestigious Microsoft Hosting Partner Award! Gain onsite acknowledgement at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, July 10-14, in Los Angeles. Submit your nomination today!
The Microsoft Hosting Summit kicked off in Bellevue, WA Wednesday morning with a keynote address from Austen Mulinder, corporate vice president of the Communications Sector at Microsoft. The theme for this year’s Summit is ‘Think Big’, and Mulinder made it clear that Microsoft is committed to working with partners to do just that. He also stated that for differentiated hosters, the opportunity is bigger than ever.
The 2011 Hosting Summit sold out twice as fast as last year, and it ‘host’ to roughly 360 executives from over 47 countries, with companies ranging from managed service providers, Telcos, ISVs, VARs, SIs, application service providers and more.
Mulinder talked about winning in the cloud, and stressed that partnerships are the best way for both Microsoft, and hosting partners, to succeed in cloud computing. He also spoke about some momentum on the productivity front, with the 2010 versions of Exchange and SharePoint being multi-tenant, and signaling that Microsoft is committed to the model. He also stated that Microsoft is working on making Lync multi-tenant as well.
Mulinder also talked about Office 365, Microsoft’s evolution from BPOS, saying that there are now 31 partners worldwide working on delivering Office 365. This includes several hosting partners like INTY, and Mulinder said that Microsoft is actively looking at other hosting partners with broad SMB or enterprise reach to syndicate Office 365 with a differentiated offering. While it is scalable to the enterprise, the main focus is on the SMB market.
On the infrastructure discussion, Mulinder had great momentum to announce around Hyper-V and System Center, noting that the Dynamic Data Center now has over 110 service provider partners, and saying that Microsoft hopes to grow that number by 100 percent again this coming year.
A well received portion of the keynote was when Mulinder took some time out to recognize a number of partners for their exceptional work with Hyper-V. Winners were CBeyond (Maximum ASP), Fasthosts, Hostway, and iKoula.
But the audience was most moved by a special Community Award given to IIJ in Japan for their humanitarian and charitable work in Japan in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. IIJ, whose data center in Osaka was not damaged by the natural disaster, offered up their data center and web hosting for free to local governments setting up emergency response sites.
By Monish Sood, Marketing Manager, Business Channels for Microsoft Communications Sector
Yesterday at the Microsoft Hosting Summit, Doug Leland, general manager of Business Platform Marketing at Microsoft presented a breakout session titled, “Why a Strong SQL Server Offering is Critical to your Cloud Business.” The session looked at what’s coming in the next version of Microsoft SQL Server and why Microsoft believes it is such an important component to your cloud and hosted services. He reviewed the key pillars in the next version of SQL Server, “Denali.” Additionally, it covered the opportunity SQL represents for service providers as more workloads move to the cloud.
Leland stated that the cloud component of the database market is relatively nascent today, but that licenses of databases in the cloud are expected to represent an increasing percentage of the overall database market in the coming years. That massive opportunity makes the need for a secure, scalable platform of the utmost importance due to the critical nature of applications. He also talked about the need for additional IT services and solutions in the form of business intelligence (BI), and the need for SaaS solutions, particularly for small business.
Leland also took a look at some of the dynamics that are shaping this market, citing IDC data that suggests there are currently 1.2 zettabytes of digitized information on the planet. For those who aren’t aware (which included everyone in the room), a zettabyte is ten with 21 zeros. In the next decade IDC expects that number to grow 44 times, while IT budgets are projected to grow only 1.4 times during the same timeframe. That adds up to a major need for better data management.
All of these factors were taken into account with Microsoft SQL Server.
Microsoft’s strategyLeland described Microsoft’s strategy with SQL Server in four parts.
Microsoft delivers these capabilities in three form factors. Traditional, out-of-the-box SQL Server; delivered through appliances (pre-packaged, pre-tuned software and hardware combinations); and through the cloud.
SQL Server “Denali”Leland also spent time talking about the next version of SQL Server, Denali. Denali empowers organizations to be more agile in today’s competitive market. Customers can efficiently deliver mission-critical solutions through a highly scalable and available platform. Industry-leading tools help developers quickly build innovative applications while data integration and management tools help deliver credible data reliably to the right users and new user experiences expand the reach of BI to enable meaningful insights. With SQL Server code-named “Denali” customers will benefit from the following added investments:Enhanced Mission-Critical Platform: an enhanced highly available and scalable platform.
The session ended with Leland talking about upcoming training for Denali, beginning at TechEd and going all the way through to launch, the date of which has not been announced. He also stated that as they move towards launch, there will be opportunities for partners to engage with Microsoft on this next version of SQL Server.