Cloud computing and virtualisation way to go in tough economic times

Speaking at its TechEd EMEA 2008 technology show, Brad Anderson, general manager of the Management and Services Division at Microsoft, said: “We live in a hybrid world of software and services [and] customers need to choose a path that best aligns with their strengths. “Microsoft’s software-plus-services offerings allow businesses to choose, and benefit from both the convenience and security of on-premises software and the efficiency of web-based services.” He cited Microsoft’s virtualisation solutions, noting that they can help customers reduce costs through hardware consolidation, lower desktop deployment and management costs, as well as efficiency monitoring through centralised, policy-based management. And to accommodate the changing, dynamic computing needs across a data centre, Anderson makes the point that the live migration feature within Windows Server 2008 R2 enables customers to move virtual machines between servers with no downtime or loss of performance. Anderson also promoted the recently announced Azure Services Platform, which brings a software-plus-services to computing that spans from the cloud to the enterprise data centre, delivering interesting new capabilities across the PC, web and phone. “Developers have the flexibility of choice with Internet scalability to build the next generation of applications. Once written, these applications can then run both in the cloud or on-premises, enabling experiences across a broad range of business and consumer scenarios,” he explained.