IDG News Service - Microsoft Corp. gave further details on Monday of a group of server and virtualization products due next year that will set the tone for how well the company will compete in the enterprise software market.
It announced pricing and licensing details for Windows Server 2008, its long-awaited server product due for release in February, and revealed that the commercial name for its virtualization product will be Hyper-V, formerly known as Viridian. The announcements came on the first day of IT Forum, Microsoft's largest customer conference in Europe.
On its Web site, Microsoft is billing the official launch of Windows Server 2008, which will take place in Los Angeles on Feb. 27, as "the most important enterprise launch in company history." That launch will also showcase Visual Studio 2008, the company's application development tools, and SQL Server 2008, its database.
Windows Server 2008, formerly known as Longhorn, has been delayed several times, but since September, some customers have been testing the release candidate, the term for when software is in its final stage of refinement before release.
The company is vowing no more delays. Microsoft is "absolutely on schedule" for the launch of Windows Server 2008 in February, said Andrew Lees, corporate vice president for server tools and marketing, on Friday.
Lees said that Microsoft will release five versions of Windows Server in February: Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, Web Server and a version for Itanium-based systems.
Within six months of the Windows Server 2008 launch, it will also release Standard, Enterprise and Datacenter versions incorporating its Hyper-V virtualization software.
Virtualization enables one physical server to host several operating systems, which can be assigned to run certain applications. As a result, one physical server can be worked harder, often reducing the need for more server hardware, which in turn brings benefits such as lower power bills for data centers.
It's complicated technology, however, both for management and security, and at most only about 5% of enterprises are now actively using virtualization. However, the market for virtualization products is expected to grow rapidly over the next few years, according to market research firm IDC.
Virtualization also means that enterprises can opt to run more copies of free operating systems such as Linux. "Virtualization poses a substantial risk to Microsoft, since the benefits of free alternatives, such as Linux OSes, Apache for Web serving and MySQL for database are enhanced when customers begin running multiple instances of them on each devices," according to a May report by analysis firm Directions on Microsoft.
Microsoft is trying to build excitement around its virtualization product to catch up to VMware Inc., a subsidiary of EMC Corp., which leads the market by a wide margin. Microsoft will try to best VMware by providing management tools that allow, for example, an administrator to quickly deploy another virtual server if one is backlogged with tasks, Lees said. Microsoft's virtualization tools will also allow a view into how the operating systems and applications are performing and allow modifications, he said.
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