Quoting from Microsoft PressPass
2006 has been another good year for Microsoft’s Windows Server Division — and not just because of resounding progress toward the targeted 2007 release of Windows Server “Longhorn” and considerable strides in virtualization and but also because of advances in high-performance computing.
The division also showed significant growth in the market. Research firm IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker showed that Windows Servers had double-digit revenue growth for the second quarter of 2006 as customers continue to deploy more Windows servers, and Microsoft has maintained the top spot in server sales since 2005.
At Tech•Ed: IT Forum 2006 today, Microsoft announced progress with two more Windows Server-related technologies – Microsoft Windows PowerShell and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 (SP2). They are the latest in a long list of deliverables that the Windows Server Division has turned out this year and that Microsoft will detail with a capacity crowd of nearly 4,800 IT professionals gathered in Barcelona Nov. 14 – 17 for the company’s foremost technology show in Europe.
For more details on how Microsoft is delivering on its commitment to customers for advancing server technologies, PressPass spoke with Bill Laing, the division’s general manager.
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PressPass: What’s next for Windows Server “Longhorn”?
Laing: I already mentioned that we put out Windows Server “Longhorn” Beta 2 this past May. Now our focus is on Beta 3 and we’re really excited about it. We’re on track to deliver this beta to a broader set of customers in the first half of 2007.
Windows Server “Longhorn” will bring IT professionals benefits including greater flexibility through server virtualization and better remote access to applications using Terminal Services Gateway. Other benefits include greater control via enhanced scripting, task automation and role-based server configuration and management using Server Manager, and greater protection through increased operating-system hardening and Network Access Protection.
Windows Server “Longhorn” will be a great help in meeting the increasing demands of today’s business. Organizations that deploy it will have increased productivity and a reliable Windows platform for powering and managing applications, controlling network access and delivering critical services to the infrastructure.
PressPass: We’ve heard a lot about virtualization from Microsoft lately. How does this all stack up?
Laing: Adopting virtualization technology is top of mind for IT professionals today for a variety of reasons. The benefits include reduced real estate needs, decreased power consumption and maximization of hardware investments, which in turn lead to significant cost and staff resource savings for businesses.
Our goal is to make the benefits of virtualization more broadly accessible and affordable so that customers can better manage complexity and achieve agility. We’ve made a number of strides in this area. For example, Windows Server virtualization will be an integrated component of Windows Server “Longhorn” and is part of our ongoing effort to make Windows the best platform for physical and virtual environments.
Windows Server virtualization and the Microsoft System Center management tools will deliver business agility and dynamic resource utilization with greater levels of efficiency in both physical and virtualized IT environments. Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager is in public beta today and will be released in the second half of 2007. System Center Virtual Machine Manager is an enterprise management tool for the virtualized data center. Customers will use it to increase physical server utilization, centralize management of virtual machine infrastructure and rapidly provision new virtual machines.
PressPass: Licensing, support and interoperability are three known industry challenges around virtualization. What is Microsoft doing to address them?
Laing: Our virtualization image format is call the Virtual Hard Disk (VHD), and is now available under the Open Specification Promise to drive greater opportunities for customers and partners to realize the value of standardizing on a common virtualization format. In the four weeks since we introduced VHD under the Open Specification Promise, we’ve seen 3,000 downloads of the spec document.
Earlier this month, Microsoft and Novell announced an agreement to enhance interoperability between Linux and Windows. Together, we’ll develop virtualization solutions to deliver the most compelling virtualization offering in the market for Linux and Windows. Our technical experts will run a joint lab, in which they’ll design and test new software solutions and work with customers and the community to build and support these technologies.
And last week we launched the VHD Test Drive Program, which enables Microsoft and its partners to distribute enterprise software and applications within a virtual machine so that customers can confidently and quickly evaluate Windows Server-based software. These virtual machines are pre-built and pre-configured so that they can be downloaded or distributed for easy setup and evaluation within Virtual Server 2005. We expect more than 20 partners to begin distributing their software via the VHD Test Drive Program later this quarter. Over the coming year, we anticipate our partners will use this program to get more than US$10 billion in software into the hands of IT professionals to evaluate. More information is available at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/try/vhd/default.mspx.
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Read the entire interview, here.