Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog : cloud

PDC 2009: Microsoft Cloud Services Vision Becomes Reality with Launch of Windows Azure Platform

mdingle — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:00:00 GMT

Microsoft today announced the availability of the Windows Azure platform at the Professional Developers Conference. In his opening keynote, Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, described Windows Azure and SQL Azure as core elements of the company’s cloud services strategy. The company also announced a set of new Windows Azure features, Windows Server capabilities, and marketplace offerings that make it easier for developers to build profitable businesses from their Microsoft-based solutions.

Bob Muglia also announced today the company’s plan to offer Windows Server virtual machine support on Windows Azure, enabling customers to more easily support virtualized infrastructure across the continuum of on premises and cloud computing, and the release to manufacturing of Windows Identity Foundation, enabling developers to provide more secure, simplified user access to both cloud and on-premises applications with open, identity-based claims.

For more information about today’s announcements at PDC visit www.microsoftpdc.com and follow the latest on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pdc09 and www.twitter.com/ch9live.

MMS Day 2: Microsoft Showcases the Today and Tomorrow of Datacenter, Client and Cloud Management

grantkd — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:30:00 GMT

This week at the 10th annual Microsoft Management Summit 2009, Microsoft Corp. showcased solutions for managing the complexity of today’s diverse IT environments, which include highly virtualized systems, a mix of software and online services, cloud-based computing, and an explosion of mobile devices. As part of the conference keynote addresses, Microsoft executives announced and demonstrated currently shipping solutions, and future capabilities, that help dramatically reduce IT costs by making IT infrastructures more manageable, and help increase the productivity of IT staff.

“In today’s environment, IT is faced with a growing set of end-user demands and business-critical expectations around service availability,” said Brad Anderson, general manager of the Management and Services Division at Microsoft. “Customers want familiar tools that provide a complete view of service levels, applications, infrastructure and clients. Microsoft empowers customers and partners today with an integrated suite of products and technologies, and we’re investing today for future innovations so customers can accomplish great things.”

In yesterday’s keynote address Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of Infrastructure Server Marketing at Microsoft, announced expanded cloud computing initiatives, and invited customers and partners to create, deploy and manage the foundation for highly scalable, cloud-based solutions using Microsoft’s familiar tools, products and online services. Microsoft discussed the opportunities that private and public cloud computing environments provide organizations to streamline costs in the datacenter and accelerate business solutions. Those who want more information can read the article about Kelly and watch his keynote address.

To read the full press release, please click here.

Larry Orecklin, general manager of the System Center group, has more here: http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/04/29/enable-users-not-just-devices.aspx

For more on today's announcements and MMS, please visit the System Center team blog. http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/

News from Day 1 of the Microsoft Management Summit

grantkd — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:30:00 GMT

Today at Day 1 of the Microsoft Management Summit, Bob Kelly, corporate vice president, outlined in his keynote how Microsoft would enable customers to get real value from cloud environments through many technologies they already have and are familiar with today, while building the cloud enabled applications of tomorrow. This value will be delivered across both the private and public cloud environments.

For more on Bob Kelly's thoughts on the cloud, click here for his PressPass feature.

To watch the Day 1 keynote live at 8:30am PT, please visit the Infrastructure Software Spotlight on PressPass: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/infrastructure/Default.aspx

On-demand keynotes and highlight clips will be available here as well.

TechNet blogs:

Steven Martin on Microsoft's cloud offerings: http://blogs.msdn.com/stevemar/archive/2009/04/29/two-flavors-of-cloud-computing-public-and-private.aspx

Brad Anderson has more on the System Center team blog: http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/archive/2009/04/28/live-from-mms-day-1-in-las-vegas.aspx

Live from Las Vegas with the System Center team: http://blogs.technet.com/systemcenter/pages/mms-2009-live-in-las-vegas.aspx

Doug Leland on Cloud Security on the Forefront team blog: http://intranet2/learning/CourseDetail.aspx?course_id=2148

TechNet Edge videos:

Microsoft Management Summit 2009 Day 1 Keynote Recap with Brad Anderson

Operations Manager R2

Microsoft comments on VMware vSphere announcement

grantkd — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 21:34:00 GMT

Today, David Greschler, director of Microsoft virtualization and management, commented on the announcement by VMware of their new “Cloud OS,” called vSphere. Greschler outlined Microsoft’s streamlined approach to virtualization - in which virtualization is included as a component of the operating system, as opposed to an additional layer – and how it enables a dynamic datacenter. Greschler said, “you don’t need an extra ‘cloud operating system’ to build a cloud running Windows Server. Just use Windows Server.” To see how Microsoft customer Kroll Factual Data built their own private cloud, and what customer Lionbridge Technologies did with their Virtual Cloud Lab, please visit the virtualization customer case studies site. And Greschler reminded customers to compare costs, stating, “VMware vSphere’s extra layer is approximately three to five times the cost of Microsoft’s solution, while just yesterday Zane Adam announced in this blog that Microsoft Hyper-V Server R2, which includes live migration and high availability, will be free of charge.”

To read the full post from David Greschler, please click here.