IDC recently released a analysis of the x86 server market “Business-Critical Workloads: Supporting Business-Critical: Computing with an Integrated Server Platform.”  If you don’t have time to read the whitepaper, check out the ComputerWorld webcast covering this material here.

What does the white paper show?  Clearly, IT managers have realized that large, proprietary UNIX systems cost their businesses more all up (support, staff, hardware, other).  That realization shows itself in IDC’s numbers - shipment growth rates for these big RISC dinsours is flat or declining while the rest of the technology world continues to expand.  In many data centers UNIX systems are already gone.  Archeologial expeditions below the raised floor can yield remiders of their existenct - strange LVD SCSI cables and nutty looking power connectors.

How does this relate to Windows Server and business critical applications?  The move away from these monotlithic hosts to x86 is real and I believe it is accellerating with new technology introductions like Intel’s Xeon 7500 processor line.  The question for IT managers isn’t if it makes sense to move (the whitepaper and other industry analysis shows that!), but to what operating system to migrate critical business processes. 

Microsoft and server OEMs have invested heavily in improving software and hardware to support business critical workloads.  In the last decade there have been huge increases in the percentage of business workloads trusted to Windows Server - from Windows 2000 through Windows Server 2008 R2. 

The IDC whitepaper includes real world customer “snap shots”  that are worth reading through.  I’m sure organizations that have already moved key business process from UNIX to Windows may find it hards to remember what it was like working the RISCy stone age! 
-John
John Kelbley, Senior Technical Program Manager, Windows Server

Next week on Tuesday and Wednesday be sure to visit the Microsoft News Center to view the Microsoft Management Summit executive keynotes live on the web!  Don’t miss this opportunity to see our top executives discuss the latest IT Management news, strategies, and solutions from Microsoft, and how to apply them in your organization.

·         Tuesday, April 20, 8:30 – 9:45 AM PST:  Managing Systems from the Datacenter to the Cloud,  Bob Muglia, president, Microsoft Server and Tools

·         Wednesday, April 21, 8:30 – 9:45 AM PST:  User Centric Client Management, Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Management and Services Division

Scientists, engineers and analysts tackling complex, data-intensive problems need more computational power to be successful.  My team is focused on helping them harness supercomputing to speed discovery and create competitive advantage from the lab bench to the trading floor.

Back in November, we released Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Beta 1.  Our focus for R2 (our third major HPC server release) is on world class performance, the ease of use you’d expect from Windows and tight integration with existing technology investments and skills.  We’ve been listening to extremely valuable customer feedback on Beta 1 and making improvements over the past few months.  Today I’m proud to announce Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Beta 2 is available for download.  I’d like to highlight a few new features and some recent developments:

·         Scalability and performance. We’ve continued to improve scalability, regularly testing on the 1,000 node cluster in Microsoft Research—we plan to pursue Top500 runs that prove much greater scalability.  We also know customers want to make use of spare processing cycles as part of their overall HPC infrastructures. Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 Beta 2 now integrates with workstations running Windows 7, enabling organizations to use them as cluster compute nodes.

·         Simplified parallelism. HPC starts with parallel code, so my team is particularly excited about next week’s Visual Studio 2010 launch.  Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 empowers parallel development, providing a platform for traditional (batch-based) and service-oriented (interactive) HPC applications.  And, Visual Studio 2010 helps developers create, debug, and trace HPC applications using already-familiar tools.      

·         Excel integration and ease of use. Whenever we speak with scientists, engineers, and analysts about their HPC needs we hear how they rely on Microsoft Excel for computations and how they’d love to scale those computations to run in parallel on a cluster.  We’ve responded with HPC Services for Excel 2010.  Top systems integrators and consultants like Wipro, Infusion and Grid Dynamics are now ready to help customers deploy and take advantage of HPC Services for Excel 2010.

·         Interoperability options. We’ve heard from customers that “rip and replace” isn’t often a viable option for building out their clusters.  So, we have started collaborating with industry-leading HPC management companies like Adaptive Computing, Clustercorp and Platform Computing to enable hybrid options where Windows HPC Server and Linux work together.  Whether it’s a dual boot or dynamic cluster, hybrid options help organizations get more out of HPC investments and provide broader access to HPC resources.

Let us know what you think about Beta 2. We’ll ship the final product later this year based on customer and partner feedback. It’s an exciting time for High Performance Computing at Microsoft as we work to put supercomputing power in the hands of those who need it most.

Ryan Waite

Product Unit Manager, Microsoft High Performance Computing Group

Intel’s announcement yesterday of its new Xeon 7500 server CPU platform (previously known as the Nehalem EX) is generating a good deal of optimism, especially when its contrasted with new features in Windows Server 2008 R2 that take advantage of all that these new silicon marvels have to offer. The new platform’s potential in the realms of performance and mission-critical reliability are truly awesome as this video details (Silverlight required).

We had a few of our own server experts at the Intel launch event and both were happy with what they saw. Scott Rosenbloom, Group Product Manager for Windows Server, had this to say (Silverlight required)…

…and Eric Jewett, Director at Windows Server Marketing, had kind words as well (Silverlight).

And our guys aren’t the only pundits preening ‘bout the new processors (just the handsomest). Check out happy thoughts from analysts at PC Magazine, InfoWorld and ServerWatch as well. (And if you’re grousing over all the Silverlight requirements, do yourself a favor and check out this brand new, freely available, Silverlight desktop player.)

Oliver Rist

Product Manager

Windows Server Marketing