Today Microsoft announced findings from a couple surveys conducted by KRC Research, an independent research firm based in Washington, D.C.  The “Virtualization in Banking Survey” found that banking institutions in the U.S. and UK are using a number of virtualization technologies as a means to help centralize deployment and management of applications, simplify IT infrastructure and improve overall business continuity of IT systems. The survey also showed that the majority (58 percent) of large, tier-one banks are already implementing virtualization across multiple aspects of their IT infrastructures, including application (61 percent), networking (54 percent), machine operating systems (48 percent) and presentation (27 percent). Full survey results are available at http://www.microsoft.com/financialservices

Microsoft also noted key trends in the retail industry.  As reported in the “Virtualization in Retail Survey” close to three quarters (71 percent) of U.S. retailers are turning to a broad set of virtualization solutions as a means to save costs, maximize space and generally gain better control of their IT infrastructures. Specifically the survey found that nearly half of the participating retailers (49 percent) are employing one form of virtualization within their store locations based on cost savings, while 46 percent are seeking to better respond to issues and failures of applications and systems, and 43 percent chose virtualization solutions to help them save space. Full survey results are available at http://www.microsoft.com/retail.

Microsoft provides a broad set of solutions for small, midmarket and large customers to virtualize desktops, consolidate servers in the datacenter and establish more cost-effective business continuity plans via virtualization. Customers can optimize their desktop infrastructure with Microsoft software, allowing them to unbind different computing resources, virtualize desktops or applications, streamline deployments, centralize management and ease application compatibility issues. Microsoft offers infrastructure virtualization software as part of the Windows platform, such as Hyper-V and Terminal Services available within Windows Server 2008, along with a comprehensive management platform, Microsoft System Center, to manage both virtual and physical infrastructure and applications. To learn more, visit http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization