Server and Tools Business News Bytes blog : cost savings

Microsoft announces latest Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 customer value findings; features to come in MDOP 2009 R2 late October

grantkd — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:49:00 GMT

As part of its efforts to help customers evaluate their existing IT infrastructures and begin readying themselves for deployment of Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, Microsoft announced today that it will be releasing the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack (MDOP) 2009 R2 in late October, as well as detailed the features that will be in that version.

Some customers—like Baker Tilly, Getronics, Convergent Computing and Continental Airlines—have already come forward to share the business TCO value they’ve experienced when using Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

To learn more about today’s news, please visit the Windows 7 team blog or the Windows Server team blog. Additionally, you can follow us on Twitter via the #Windows tag.

Spotlight on Cost

mdingle — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 19:09:00 GMT

Microsoft re-launched their Spotlight on Cost site which touts a free downloadable whitepaper titled, Server Infrastructure Optimization: Best Practices to Reduce IT Operational Costs. The whitepaper shows that businesses can often realize immediate savings just by operating their existing datacenters more efficiently.

Here are a few of the cost savings tips, showcased on the site:

1. Adopt core infrastructure best practices for mission-critical server workloads. In the email and collaboration workloads, organizations that adopted core infrastructure best practices reported IT labor costs of more than $10,000 per server per year less than those that did not. Companies are increasingly aware of these benefits and are rapidly adopting these best practices for their mission-critical messaging and collaboration workloads.

2. Think Outside the Box. Just because a particular server workload isn’t top of mind, doesn’t mean that it can’t be managed more efficiently. The print server workload is one where significant savings can be made by best practice adoption. However, participants in our survey tended to focus less here and best practice adoption was surprisingly lower than in other workloads.

3. Utilize virtualization. Virtualization has been seen to deliver physical cost savings around power, cooling and facilities. However, the Spotlight on Cost study shows there is an operational cost benefit to virtualizing servers, i.e. more servers per administrator.

For two more cost savings tips, check out the STB News Bytes Twitter account. http://twitter.com/STBNewsBytes

For more information about Microsoft’s Spotlight on Cost initiative check out the System Center Team Blog.

Reducing Cost and Enhancing Security with Microsoft Virtualization

mdingle — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:35:00 GMT

Microsoft Corp. announced today that Lionbridge Technologies Inc., a $461 million (U.S.) translation, development and testing services company, was able to save more than $200,000 last year, enhance security and accelerate the use of customer services by deploying Microsoft virtualization and infrastructure software

Lionbridge uses Microsoft’s server and presentation virtualization software, and systems management tools for centralized control of both physical and virtual assets, and directory and remote desktop computing services for more secure access to internal data and resources. Lionbridge created and deployed Virtual Cloud Lab, a globally accessible datacenter that is shared by engineers in any of the company’s sites, as well as by the company’s independent network of 25,000 partners who are located in more than 100 countries. The virtualized infrastructure and centralized management enables all workers to access vital internal resources, and the 100 percent virtual footprint has completely removed all physical hardware requirements from branch office sites.

More information can be found on PressPass.