Posted by Anandeep Pannu
Senior Program Manager – Open Source Technical Center

Today at BSDCan, NetApp and Microsoft presented their collaboration with Citrix to bring native support for FreeBSD on the Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisor.  This continues a commitment to extend support across platforms to the Windows Server Hyper-V solution, making it easier for more customers to realize the benefits of server virtualization and progress toward cloud computing.  We caught up with Joe CaraDonna, NetApp Technical Director of Core Operating Systems, for more on how this collaboration will support FreeBSD and Microsoft customers and partners, as well as his insights into what’s next. 

Posted by Anandeep Pannu
Senior Program Manager – Open Source Technical Center

Virtualization technology plays an increasingly critical role at all levels of IT, from the desktop to the datacenter. As more organizations use virtualization to manage mission-critical workloads, they are taking advantage of the cost-saving benefits of server consolidation and building foundations for private, public and hybrid cloud computing.  To help customers adopt virtualization and progress toward cloud computing, Microsoft is committed to supporting multiple platforms with its server virtualization solution.  Tomorrow at BSDCan 2012, Microsoft and its partners NetApp and Citrix will extend this cross-platform commitment, presenting FreeBSD support on Windows Server Hyper-V.

The FreeBSD drivers will allow FreeBSD to run as a first-class guest on the Windows Server Hyper-V hypervisor. The drivers will be fully released early this summer, including the source code for the drivers under the BSD license, and will initially work with FreeBSD 8.2 and 8.3 on Windows Server 2008 R2.

For Microsoft the project breaks new ground – it’s the first project supporting open source development alongside commercial partners like NetApp and Citrix.

Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

With consumers and businesses seeking ways to ensure greater and more streamlined productivity across a rapidly expanding sea of devices and platforms, many have turned to the cloud for answers.  Since launching, Microsoft’s SkyDrive has delivered personal cloud storage for Windows that’s available anywhere – via any HTML5 web browser, across operating systems, and across many mobile devices.  To expand on this commitment to anywhere access, Microsoft has released SkyDrive apps for your PC, Mac, along with key updates to Windows Phone and iOS apps, that improve file management and sharing across devices. SkyDrive also makes it easy for developers to bring cloud storage to any app on any platform, with tools like the Live SDK for Android.

This builds upon last week’s announcement that SkyDrive and Office Web Apps now support the Open Document Format, which is used by open source office suites like OpenOffice.  All this means even greater access for consumers, no matter the platform nor the device. 

For more on the new SkyDrive, including how SkyDrive stacks up to other services, see a recent post on the SkyDrive blog.  You can download the new SkyDrive here and share feedback on Twitter or the blog.

Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager, Worldwide Marketing and Operations

Last week, Microsoft released an open source Metro style theme for JQuery Mobile, the popular open source mobile framework. This release allows mobile HTML5 web sites and hybrid applications to naturally integrate into the Windows Phone Metro style experience, offering developers the choice to rapidly integrate the theme into existing applications, as well as contribute to the open source project through GitHub.  This news builds on Microsoft’s commitment to provide more choices for building apps on Windows Phone, making our mobile platform accessible to anyone who can create the next great app.  For more details, check out the Port25 blog and let us know what other features, tools and mobiles frameworks you’d like to see supported.

Posted by Sandy Gupta
General Manager, Open Solutions Group

Two weeks ago the OpenStack community announced the release of Essex. I want to congratulate the community on reaching this key milestone. Microsoft is working with the OpenStack community to restore and enhance the Windows Server Hyper-V support in OpenStack to benefit customers that are planning to use the two together. We have put together a dedicated team at Microsoft focused on working with the community to support this effort.