Microsoft Exchange in the Cloud: Four Migration Tips
Tired of managing those Exchange servers in your data center? So are many other companies, and even some of America's Fortune 50 companies are now starting to migrate e-mail and other productivity apps to the cloud -- disproving the notion that SaaS and cloud services are fit only for small or mid-sized businesses.
Dow Chemical is one such example. One of the leading providers of plastics, chemicals and agricultural products, the Midland, Mich.-based Dow has plans to move its Exchange servers to Microsoft's cloud service for business apps, called BPOS (business productivity online suite).
SIP Addresses Unified Communications Deployment Challenges: Download now
BPOS includes online versions of Exchange, SharePoint, Office Communication Server and Live Meeting, operated by and delivered through a Microsoft data center.
Dow is a company in transition regarding e-mail and productivity apps. With roughly 50,000 worldwide employees, the company is currently upgrading to Office 2007; it is beginning a full migration to Windows 7 that should be completed by the end of next year.
The move to BPOS will transition Exchange 2003, OCS and Live Meeting to a cloud environment running Exchange 2010.
Dow will begin a global pilot testing program for its e-mail migration in November, and plans to have it implemented for its entire 52,000-person workforce by the second quarter of 2011.
[ For complete coverage on Microsoft's new Windows 7 operating system -- including hands-on reviews, video tutorials and advice on enterprise rollouts -- see CIO.com's Windows 7 Bible. ]
"It can go that fast because the migration will be transparent for users," says David Day, Dow's Director of Global Information Systems.
The SharePoint aspect of BPOS will be new for Dow, as it has only been dabbling in SharePoint for document management and collaboration.
Find a Vendor You Trust
Why is Dow convinced the change will be so transparent to users? The company is a Microsoft shop and having the Microsoft ecosystem in place was admittedly a factor in choosing BPOS, says Day.
But Dow did go through an RFP (Request for Proposal) and looked at a few BPOS competitors. Day says he is not at liberty to say which competitors Dow considered, but added that a couple competitors were neck and neck with BPOS on cost and capabilities.
"Our previous relationship with Microsoft and its ability to deliver support were a big part of our decision," Day says.
Stay Private
Dow's transition to the cloud for e-mail will not be jarring for users because Dow has had what Day considers a "private cloud" for years now.
Since 2000, Dow has had a third-party provider manage its e-mail servers on-premise in Dow's data center.
"A private cloud hosted by Microsoft is not such a new thing for us," he says. "It feels like a logical extension of our current sourcing strategy."
One choice Dow never considered: a public cloud option. Why? Too many security and privacy risks, he says.
"The risk profile of a public cloud offering doesn't fit a corporation like Dow Chemical," Day says. "I can't imagine there are many Fortune 50 companies that think they're gonna 'Go Google' and save a million dollars."
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Microsoft pulls a Facebook by exposing Windows Live users names
Microsoft pulls a Facebook by exposing Windows Live users names
Users remain outraged that changes in the privacy settings for Windows Live made in June have exposed their names and other data, with no fix in sight. Microsoft MCTS Training also managed to anger users of its free online services by merging friend lists from previously separate online services and by deleting data that didn't comply with revised versions of the tools.
I have to point out, it's not the fact that a relatively small number of users are vocally complaining across more than a half-dozen help forum strings that caused me to write about this. It's the fact that Microsoft pulled a "Facebook" and exposed users names and other info that was previously not visible to anyone. To be honest, I can't explain the situation any better than "Menthix" who wrote this complaint on the Windows Live Solution help forum today about it:
When I visit http://profile.live.com/details/edit/name and try to save my name without entering a last name it will say: "Please enter your last name - don't worry, you choose who gets to see it".
http://rnd.menthix.net/mpl_screens/messenger-2010-beta-please-enter-your...
This is not true (anymore)! It used to be the case in the past when there was also a checkbox whether you wanted to display your last name to the public or not. But since the "simplified" privacy settings this isn't possible anymore. As soon as someone fills in their last name it will be visible to the entire world.
On the same page there is also a http://cid-b0b41d1b6d60f22e.profile.live.com/Privacy/Advanced "Change who can see your name" link which leads to http://profile.live.com/Privacy/Advanced. I have tried everything, but the only thing which gives some kind of control over my name is "Who can find me and see my profile" which can only be set to "Friends", "My friends and their friends" or "Everyone (public)". But this really doesn't give me the control over who can see my last name, it just hides or shows my entire profile completely. And even if I set my profile to only be visible to my friends, I still have no choice at all over which of my friends (or Messenger contacts) can see my last name (if I want any of them to see it in the first place).
* Claiming users have control over who gets to see their last name is misleading and incorrect.
* Why are you forcing users to enter their last name in the first place, why not just make this field optional and make everybody happy?
What's the solution? There really isn't one, if you want to continue to IM friends and co-workers with Microsoft's instant messenger. Microsoft has combined the "friends" list in your profile page with your list of users in your Messenger friends, much the way Facebook includes a chat tool. Facebook, however, after its privacy firestorm, changed its settings so that you can limit your IM visibility to specific people.
According to Microsoft:
"With the latest release of Windows Live, there is no longer a distinction between Messenger buddies and profile friends. If you remove them as Friends, it will also remove them from being a Messenger buddy and you will no longer be able to send instant messengers to them. You can still choose to hide all your friends from appearing on your profile, but there is not a way to do this on a per-friend basis."
But wait, there's more to upset users. The public beta of "Wave 4" of Windows Live Essentials was made available this week, prompting reader George Heindel, of
Custom Computers and Technology, to check them out and tip me off to this story. (Thanks, George! If other readers have tips, please e-mail me, jbort@nww.com).
Windows Live Essentials (WLE) is a collection of some really decent online tools that offer an alternative to some of the more popular versions by Google and other online services. Difference is, with WLE, there's a client version (requiring Vista or later) so you run local instances. Reviewers generally like the tools and applauded the added features in Wave 4. These include a photo gallery for editing/sharing photos, movie maker, Family Safety settings tool, as well as the Writer blogging platform, Messenger instant messenger, and Hotmail e-mail. (There are a variety of other freebie programs under the Windows Live umbrella -- an Outlook connector, etc.)
WLE is not to be confused with Windows Live. In addition to the WLE tools, Windows Live includes a bunch of other online-only services, such as SkyDrive, free cloud storage, synch tools for synching files between different devices and so on. One of the tools in Windows Live is Windows Live Space, a free Web page where you can post your blog (written with or without the WLE blog tool, Writer), your photos, your movies, etc. Live Space was created during the days MySpace was the rage. At the time, you could make it public or limit it to be visible only to friends.
When Microsoft pushed out its next version of Windows Live in June, it affected Live Space users. In addition to the bit about the profile telling the world your last name, Live Users discovered that some of the stuff on their Web pages (gadgets) were altered. This includes any HTML comments in the guest book because the guest book no longer supports HTML.
A user named "Live User 100" in June noted a list of infuriating changes, especially, "If you allow any level of access to your profile, then your profile will now be searchable in Windows Live." He later wrote,
"The fact is WL had the best security as far as user control. The problem was never the granularity of WL Wave3 security, it was how it was implemented. Yes it was complicated for many so the correct solution in Wave4 would have been to provide a simpler security method such as your sliders AND to allow advanced security that worked like Wave3 for those technically proficient. Instead you "fixed" the problem by dumbing down all security and breaking many of your customer's security design. The problem is you are so far behind your competitors that your security now works like Facebooks USED to work. They have been enabling more security like WL had in Wave3 and you have disable those same capabilities now in Wave4... so once again you are behind the pack."
To its credit, the Windows Live Solution Center team has tried to show that the new privacy settings are actually more granular than the old ones, but because the the issues I've described, users aren't buying it.
Heindel, a security consultant, added his two cents to the conversation. He wrote on the forum.
"Having been with Windows Live services since the beta days and seen all the shortcomings of the WLTeam in design, tie in to services, and security which has been mentioned above numerous times I have questions as well. ...
Is it not time to quit fiddling with the system every so many months so as to confuse users? Why has Microsoft MCITP Certification not learned from the failings of their partner (with an investment) Facebook concerning security?"
I might as well throw this bit of information in too: Wave 4 introduced some bugs in Hotmail. For some users, simply being logged into Messenger while trying to access their Hotmail accounts causes Hotmail to slow to a crawl. And those using something called "High Contrast display mode in Windows" may not be able to send mail at all (as if the average Hotmail user would know what that is). Microsoft is working on fixes.
Users remain outraged that changes in the privacy settings for Windows Live made in June have exposed their names and other data, with no fix in sight. Microsoft MCTS Training also managed to anger users of its free online services by merging friend lists from previously separate online services and by deleting data that didn't comply with revised versions of the tools.
I have to point out, it's not the fact that a relatively small number of users are vocally complaining across more than a half-dozen help forum strings that caused me to write about this. It's the fact that Microsoft pulled a "Facebook" and exposed users names and other info that was previously not visible to anyone. To be honest, I can't explain the situation any better than "Menthix" who wrote this complaint on the Windows Live Solution help forum today about it:
When I visit http://profile.live.com/details/edit/name and try to save my name without entering a last name it will say: "Please enter your last name - don't worry, you choose who gets to see it".
http://rnd.menthix.net/mpl_screens/messenger-2010-beta-please-enter-your...
This is not true (anymore)! It used to be the case in the past when there was also a checkbox whether you wanted to display your last name to the public or not. But since the "simplified" privacy settings this isn't possible anymore. As soon as someone fills in their last name it will be visible to the entire world.
On the same page there is also a http://cid-b0b41d1b6d60f22e.profile.live.com/Privacy/Advanced "Change who can see your name" link which leads to http://profile.live.com/Privacy/Advanced. I have tried everything, but the only thing which gives some kind of control over my name is "Who can find me and see my profile" which can only be set to "Friends", "My friends and their friends" or "Everyone (public)". But this really doesn't give me the control over who can see my last name, it just hides or shows my entire profile completely. And even if I set my profile to only be visible to my friends, I still have no choice at all over which of my friends (or Messenger contacts) can see my last name (if I want any of them to see it in the first place).
* Claiming users have control over who gets to see their last name is misleading and incorrect.
* Why are you forcing users to enter their last name in the first place, why not just make this field optional and make everybody happy?
What's the solution? There really isn't one, if you want to continue to IM friends and co-workers with Microsoft's instant messenger. Microsoft has combined the "friends" list in your profile page with your list of users in your Messenger friends, much the way Facebook includes a chat tool. Facebook, however, after its privacy firestorm, changed its settings so that you can limit your IM visibility to specific people.
According to Microsoft:
"With the latest release of Windows Live, there is no longer a distinction between Messenger buddies and profile friends. If you remove them as Friends, it will also remove them from being a Messenger buddy and you will no longer be able to send instant messengers to them. You can still choose to hide all your friends from appearing on your profile, but there is not a way to do this on a per-friend basis."
But wait, there's more to upset users. The public beta of "Wave 4" of Windows Live Essentials was made available this week, prompting reader George Heindel, of
Custom Computers and Technology, to check them out and tip me off to this story. (Thanks, George! If other readers have tips, please e-mail me, jbort@nww.com).
Windows Live Essentials (WLE) is a collection of some really decent online tools that offer an alternative to some of the more popular versions by Google and other online services. Difference is, with WLE, there's a client version (requiring Vista or later) so you run local instances. Reviewers generally like the tools and applauded the added features in Wave 4. These include a photo gallery for editing/sharing photos, movie maker, Family Safety settings tool, as well as the Writer blogging platform, Messenger instant messenger, and Hotmail e-mail. (There are a variety of other freebie programs under the Windows Live umbrella -- an Outlook connector, etc.)
WLE is not to be confused with Windows Live. In addition to the WLE tools, Windows Live includes a bunch of other online-only services, such as SkyDrive, free cloud storage, synch tools for synching files between different devices and so on. One of the tools in Windows Live is Windows Live Space, a free Web page where you can post your blog (written with or without the WLE blog tool, Writer), your photos, your movies, etc. Live Space was created during the days MySpace was the rage. At the time, you could make it public or limit it to be visible only to friends.
When Microsoft pushed out its next version of Windows Live in June, it affected Live Space users. In addition to the bit about the profile telling the world your last name, Live Users discovered that some of the stuff on their Web pages (gadgets) were altered. This includes any HTML comments in the guest book because the guest book no longer supports HTML.
A user named "Live User 100" in June noted a list of infuriating changes, especially, "If you allow any level of access to your profile, then your profile will now be searchable in Windows Live." He later wrote,
"The fact is WL had the best security as far as user control. The problem was never the granularity of WL Wave3 security, it was how it was implemented. Yes it was complicated for many so the correct solution in Wave4 would have been to provide a simpler security method such as your sliders AND to allow advanced security that worked like Wave3 for those technically proficient. Instead you "fixed" the problem by dumbing down all security and breaking many of your customer's security design. The problem is you are so far behind your competitors that your security now works like Facebooks USED to work. They have been enabling more security like WL had in Wave3 and you have disable those same capabilities now in Wave4... so once again you are behind the pack."
To its credit, the Windows Live Solution Center team has tried to show that the new privacy settings are actually more granular than the old ones, but because the the issues I've described, users aren't buying it.
Heindel, a security consultant, added his two cents to the conversation. He wrote on the forum.
"Having been with Windows Live services since the beta days and seen all the shortcomings of the WLTeam in design, tie in to services, and security which has been mentioned above numerous times I have questions as well. ...
Is it not time to quit fiddling with the system every so many months so as to confuse users? Why has Microsoft MCITP Certification not learned from the failings of their partner (with an investment) Facebook concerning security?"
I might as well throw this bit of information in too: Wave 4 introduced some bugs in Hotmail. For some users, simply being logged into Messenger while trying to access their Hotmail accounts causes Hotmail to slow to a crawl. And those using something called "High Contrast display mode in Windows" may not be able to send mail at all (as if the average Hotmail user would know what that is). Microsoft is working on fixes.
Microsoft pulls a Facebook by exposing Windows Live users names
Microsoft pulls a Facebook by exposing Windows Live users names
Users remain outraged that changes in the privacy settings for Windows Live made in June have exposed their names and other data, with no fix in sight. Microsoft MCTS Training also managed to anger users of its free online services by merging friend lists from previously separate online services and by deleting data that didn't comply with revised versions of the tools.
I have to point out, it's not the fact that a relatively small number of users are vocally complaining across more than a half-dozen help forum strings that caused me to write about this. It's the fact that Microsoft pulled a "Facebook" and exposed users names and other info that was previously not visible to anyone. To be honest, I can't explain the situation any better than "Menthix" who wrote this complaint on the Windows Live Solution help forum today about it:
When I visit http://profile.live.com/details/edit/name and try to save my name without entering a last name it will say: "Please enter your last name - don't worry, you choose who gets to see it".
http://rnd.menthix.net/mpl_screens/messenger-2010-beta-please-enter-your...
This is not true (anymore)! It used to be the case in the past when there was also a checkbox whether you wanted to display your last name to the public or not. But since the "simplified" privacy settings this isn't possible anymore. As soon as someone fills in their last name it will be visible to the entire world.
On the same page there is also a http://cid-b0b41d1b6d60f22e.profile.live.com/Privacy/Advanced "Change who can see your name" link which leads to http://profile.live.com/Privacy/Advanced. I have tried everything, but the only thing which gives some kind of control over my name is "Who can find me and see my profile" which can only be set to "Friends", "My friends and their friends" or "Everyone (public)". But this really doesn't give me the control over who can see my last name, it just hides or shows my entire profile completely. And even if I set my profile to only be visible to my friends, I still have no choice at all over which of my friends (or Messenger contacts) can see my last name (if I want any of them to see it in the first place).
* Claiming users have control over who gets to see their last name is misleading and incorrect.
* Why are you forcing users to enter their last name in the first place, why not just make this field optional and make everybody happy?
What's the solution? There really isn't one, if you want to continue to IM friends and co-workers with Microsoft's instant messenger. Microsoft has combined the "friends" list in your profile page with your list of users in your Messenger friends, much the way Facebook includes a chat tool. Facebook, however, after its privacy firestorm, changed its settings so that you can limit your IM visibility to specific people.
According to Microsoft:
"With the latest release of Windows Live, there is no longer a distinction between Messenger buddies and profile friends. If you remove them as Friends, it will also remove them from being a Messenger buddy and you will no longer be able to send instant messengers to them. You can still choose to hide all your friends from appearing on your profile, but there is not a way to do this on a per-friend basis."
But wait, there's more to upset users. The public beta of "Wave 4" of Windows Live Essentials was made available this week, prompting reader George Heindel, of
Custom Computers and Technology, to check them out and tip me off to this story. (Thanks, George! If other readers have tips, please e-mail me, jbort@nww.com).
Windows Live Essentials (WLE) is a collection of some really decent online tools that offer an alternative to some of the more popular versions by Google and other online services. Difference is, with WLE, there's a client version (requiring Vista or later) so you run local instances. Reviewers generally like the tools and applauded the added features in Wave 4. These include a photo gallery for editing/sharing photos, movie maker, Family Safety settings tool, as well as the Writer blogging platform, Messenger instant messenger, and Hotmail e-mail. (There are a variety of other freebie programs under the Windows Live umbrella -- an Outlook connector, etc.)
WLE is not to be confused with Windows Live. In addition to the WLE tools, Windows Live includes a bunch of other online-only services, such as SkyDrive, free cloud storage, synch tools for synching files between different devices and so on. One of the tools in Windows Live is Windows Live Space, a free Web page where you can post your blog (written with or without the WLE blog tool, Writer), your photos, your movies, etc. Live Space was created during the days MySpace was the rage. At the time, you could make it public or limit it to be visible only to friends.
When Microsoft pushed out its next version of Windows Live in June, it affected Live Space users. In addition to the bit about the profile telling the world your last name, Live Users discovered that some of the stuff on their Web pages (gadgets) were altered. This includes any HTML comments in the guest book because the guest book no longer supports HTML.
A user named "Live User 100" in June noted a list of infuriating changes, especially, "If you allow any level of access to your profile, then your profile will now be searchable in Windows Live." He later wrote,
"The fact is WL had the best security as far as user control. The problem was never the granularity of WL Wave3 security, it was how it was implemented. Yes it was complicated for many so the correct solution in Wave4 would have been to provide a simpler security method such as your sliders AND to allow advanced security that worked like Wave3 for those technically proficient. Instead you "fixed" the problem by dumbing down all security and breaking many of your customer's security design. The problem is you are so far behind your competitors that your security now works like Facebooks USED to work. They have been enabling more security like WL had in Wave3 and you have disable those same capabilities now in Wave4... so once again you are behind the pack."
To its credit, the Windows Live Solution Center team has tried to show that the new privacy settings are actually more granular than the old ones, but because the the issues I've described, users aren't buying it.
Heindel, a security consultant, added his two cents to the conversation. He wrote on the forum.
"Having been with Windows Live services since the beta days and seen all the shortcomings of the WLTeam in design, tie in to services, and security which has been mentioned above numerous times I have questions as well. ...
Is it not time to quit fiddling with the system every so many months so as to confuse users? Why has Microsoft MCITP Certification not learned from the failings of their partner (with an investment) Facebook concerning security?"
I might as well throw this bit of information in too: Wave 4 introduced some bugs in Hotmail. For some users, simply being logged into Messenger while trying to access their Hotmail accounts causes Hotmail to slow to a crawl. And those using something called "High Contrast display mode in Windows" may not be able to send mail at all (as if the average Hotmail user would know what that is). Microsoft is working on fixes.
Users remain outraged that changes in the privacy settings for Windows Live made in June have exposed their names and other data, with no fix in sight. Microsoft MCTS Training also managed to anger users of its free online services by merging friend lists from previously separate online services and by deleting data that didn't comply with revised versions of the tools.
I have to point out, it's not the fact that a relatively small number of users are vocally complaining across more than a half-dozen help forum strings that caused me to write about this. It's the fact that Microsoft pulled a "Facebook" and exposed users names and other info that was previously not visible to anyone. To be honest, I can't explain the situation any better than "Menthix" who wrote this complaint on the Windows Live Solution help forum today about it:
When I visit http://profile.live.com/details/edit/name and try to save my name without entering a last name it will say: "Please enter your last name - don't worry, you choose who gets to see it".
http://rnd.menthix.net/mpl_screens/messenger-2010-beta-please-enter-your...
This is not true (anymore)! It used to be the case in the past when there was also a checkbox whether you wanted to display your last name to the public or not. But since the "simplified" privacy settings this isn't possible anymore. As soon as someone fills in their last name it will be visible to the entire world.
On the same page there is also a http://cid-b0b41d1b6d60f22e.profile.live.com/Privacy/Advanced "Change who can see your name" link which leads to http://profile.live.com/Privacy/Advanced. I have tried everything, but the only thing which gives some kind of control over my name is "Who can find me and see my profile" which can only be set to "Friends", "My friends and their friends" or "Everyone (public)". But this really doesn't give me the control over who can see my last name, it just hides or shows my entire profile completely. And even if I set my profile to only be visible to my friends, I still have no choice at all over which of my friends (or Messenger contacts) can see my last name (if I want any of them to see it in the first place).
* Claiming users have control over who gets to see their last name is misleading and incorrect.
* Why are you forcing users to enter their last name in the first place, why not just make this field optional and make everybody happy?
What's the solution? There really isn't one, if you want to continue to IM friends and co-workers with Microsoft's instant messenger. Microsoft has combined the "friends" list in your profile page with your list of users in your Messenger friends, much the way Facebook includes a chat tool. Facebook, however, after its privacy firestorm, changed its settings so that you can limit your IM visibility to specific people.
According to Microsoft:
"With the latest release of Windows Live, there is no longer a distinction between Messenger buddies and profile friends. If you remove them as Friends, it will also remove them from being a Messenger buddy and you will no longer be able to send instant messengers to them. You can still choose to hide all your friends from appearing on your profile, but there is not a way to do this on a per-friend basis."
But wait, there's more to upset users. The public beta of "Wave 4" of Windows Live Essentials was made available this week, prompting reader George Heindel, of
Custom Computers and Technology, to check them out and tip me off to this story. (Thanks, George! If other readers have tips, please e-mail me, jbort@nww.com).
Windows Live Essentials (WLE) is a collection of some really decent online tools that offer an alternative to some of the more popular versions by Google and other online services. Difference is, with WLE, there's a client version (requiring Vista or later) so you run local instances. Reviewers generally like the tools and applauded the added features in Wave 4. These include a photo gallery for editing/sharing photos, movie maker, Family Safety settings tool, as well as the Writer blogging platform, Messenger instant messenger, and Hotmail e-mail. (There are a variety of other freebie programs under the Windows Live umbrella -- an Outlook connector, etc.)
WLE is not to be confused with Windows Live. In addition to the WLE tools, Windows Live includes a bunch of other online-only services, such as SkyDrive, free cloud storage, synch tools for synching files between different devices and so on. One of the tools in Windows Live is Windows Live Space, a free Web page where you can post your blog (written with or without the WLE blog tool, Writer), your photos, your movies, etc. Live Space was created during the days MySpace was the rage. At the time, you could make it public or limit it to be visible only to friends.
When Microsoft pushed out its next version of Windows Live in June, it affected Live Space users. In addition to the bit about the profile telling the world your last name, Live Users discovered that some of the stuff on their Web pages (gadgets) were altered. This includes any HTML comments in the guest book because the guest book no longer supports HTML.
A user named "Live User 100" in June noted a list of infuriating changes, especially, "If you allow any level of access to your profile, then your profile will now be searchable in Windows Live." He later wrote,
"The fact is WL had the best security as far as user control. The problem was never the granularity of WL Wave3 security, it was how it was implemented. Yes it was complicated for many so the correct solution in Wave4 would have been to provide a simpler security method such as your sliders AND to allow advanced security that worked like Wave3 for those technically proficient. Instead you "fixed" the problem by dumbing down all security and breaking many of your customer's security design. The problem is you are so far behind your competitors that your security now works like Facebooks USED to work. They have been enabling more security like WL had in Wave3 and you have disable those same capabilities now in Wave4... so once again you are behind the pack."
To its credit, the Windows Live Solution Center team has tried to show that the new privacy settings are actually more granular than the old ones, but because the the issues I've described, users aren't buying it.
Heindel, a security consultant, added his two cents to the conversation. He wrote on the forum.
"Having been with Windows Live services since the beta days and seen all the shortcomings of the WLTeam in design, tie in to services, and security which has been mentioned above numerous times I have questions as well. ...
Is it not time to quit fiddling with the system every so many months so as to confuse users? Why has Microsoft MCITP Certification not learned from the failings of their partner (with an investment) Facebook concerning security?"
I might as well throw this bit of information in too: Wave 4 introduced some bugs in Hotmail. For some users, simply being logged into Messenger while trying to access their Hotmail accounts causes Hotmail to slow to a crawl. And those using something called "High Contrast display mode in Windows" may not be able to send mail at all (as if the average Hotmail user would know what that is). Microsoft is working on fixes.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Bridging the gap between Windows Server and Azure
Bridging the gap between Windows Server and Azure
When Microsoft’s Ryan Dunn mingled with attendees at the TechEd conference in New Orleans in June, he got several questions about how developing software applications for the cloud and monitoring them in production will differ from developing them for on-premise deployment.
“They thought perhaps there was a new model,” said Dunn, Microsoft’s Windows Azure technical evangelist; a video of an interview he did during TechEd was posted today. “The reality is we still have the same things you want to do.”
Those things, he continued, include performance monitoring, crash dump analysis, following Trace messages and other testing and debugging methods.
However, Dunn acknowledged “a little bit of a gap” between the development tools and capabilities available in Windows Server and those available for Azure, but added that the gap is narrowing.
“These things are on a natural trajectory towards each other and I think you’re going to see a lot of the tooling that we have on premises become available at some point in Windows Azure,” he said.
Until then, Azure developers have to use additional tools to perform some tasks that they don’t need in Windows Server, Dunn explained. They include the Windows Azure Management Tool (MMC) to upload, deploy, upgrade and otherwise manage hosted services, as well as configure and run diagnostic tests on those apps. Another tool is the Windows PowerShell command list, a task-based scripting technology for managing system administration.
Microsoft released the Windows Azure software development kit (SDK) version 1.2 at TechEd, which includes, among other things, IntelliTrace, which Dunn described as “like a DVR for your code.”
IntelliTrace allows a developer to see what was going on in the code at the precise point at which an anomaly occurred, without having to repeatedly restart the application, thus saving loads of time. IntelliTrace loads code logs into Microsoft Visual Studio, the integrated development environment for Windows. However, IntelliTrace is only available to users of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
While one of the chief values of cloud computing is cost containment, Dunn acknowledged cost monitoring in Azure is still a work in progress. “We don’t have a billing API,” he said in the interview. Still, there’s a way to calculate costs based on the number of CPU cycles used and the hourly rate typically charged -- Dunn used 12 cents an hour as an example -- times the number of server cores running your application in the cloud.
Microsoft took other steps to further develop the Azure platform, announcing at TechEd the addition of .NET Framework 4 to the SDK to build Web-based applications that run in the cloud, Network World’s Jon Brodkin reported. It also moved the Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) from beta to production; a CDN service places copies of data at several places on a network to avoid a bottleneck of multiple users trying to access that data on just one server.
While Dunn is evangelizing -- as his business card reads -- Windows Azure by promoting its ever improving features and capabilities, developers in the real world may have a different view. Let me know your experiences developing and running applications in the cloud on Azure and whether the experience matches that of doing the same on Windows Server.
When Microsoft’s Ryan Dunn mingled with attendees at the TechEd conference in New Orleans in June, he got several questions about how developing software applications for the cloud and monitoring them in production will differ from developing them for on-premise deployment.
“They thought perhaps there was a new model,” said Dunn, Microsoft’s Windows Azure technical evangelist; a video of an interview he did during TechEd was posted today. “The reality is we still have the same things you want to do.”
Those things, he continued, include performance monitoring, crash dump analysis, following Trace messages and other testing and debugging methods.
However, Dunn acknowledged “a little bit of a gap” between the development tools and capabilities available in Windows Server and those available for Azure, but added that the gap is narrowing.
“These things are on a natural trajectory towards each other and I think you’re going to see a lot of the tooling that we have on premises become available at some point in Windows Azure,” he said.
Until then, Azure developers have to use additional tools to perform some tasks that they don’t need in Windows Server, Dunn explained. They include the Windows Azure Management Tool (MMC) to upload, deploy, upgrade and otherwise manage hosted services, as well as configure and run diagnostic tests on those apps. Another tool is the Windows PowerShell command list, a task-based scripting technology for managing system administration.
Microsoft released the Windows Azure software development kit (SDK) version 1.2 at TechEd, which includes, among other things, IntelliTrace, which Dunn described as “like a DVR for your code.”
IntelliTrace allows a developer to see what was going on in the code at the precise point at which an anomaly occurred, without having to repeatedly restart the application, thus saving loads of time. IntelliTrace loads code logs into Microsoft Visual Studio, the integrated development environment for Windows. However, IntelliTrace is only available to users of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
While one of the chief values of cloud computing is cost containment, Dunn acknowledged cost monitoring in Azure is still a work in progress. “We don’t have a billing API,” he said in the interview. Still, there’s a way to calculate costs based on the number of CPU cycles used and the hourly rate typically charged -- Dunn used 12 cents an hour as an example -- times the number of server cores running your application in the cloud.
Microsoft took other steps to further develop the Azure platform, announcing at TechEd the addition of .NET Framework 4 to the SDK to build Web-based applications that run in the cloud, Network World’s Jon Brodkin reported. It also moved the Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) from beta to production; a CDN service places copies of data at several places on a network to avoid a bottleneck of multiple users trying to access that data on just one server.
While Dunn is evangelizing -- as his business card reads -- Windows Azure by promoting its ever improving features and capabilities, developers in the real world may have a different view. Let me know your experiences developing and running applications in the cloud on Azure and whether the experience matches that of doing the same on Windows Server.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Who has the better virtualization platform – VMware or Microsoft?
Who has the better virtualization platform – VMware or Microsoft?
VMware is the kingpin of virtualization, but the game is changing fast and Microsoft MCTS Training is baking the technology into the very core of many products. Which company has the best approach?
Moderator
[Jon Dix]
John Dix, Network World Editor in Chief, sets up the debates and recruits the experts. Contact him with thoughts and ideas, jdix@nww.com.
The experts
Bogomil Balkansky, Vice president of product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platform at VMware,
says vSphere wins because of the company's big head start, large installed base and track record of innovation.
David Greschler, Director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft,
says Microsoft wins because virtualized environments will ultimately span data center and cloud platforms and the company's management framework, identity service and development environment can best span this heterogeneous environment.
A big head start matters
By Bogomil Balkansky, Vice president of product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platform at VMware
IT is being served by a combination of vendors, some of whom are working to provide a clear path forward, and others that are struggling to hold on to the past. VMware vSphere represents the architecture, expertise and ecosystem driving a new approach for IT, enabled by virtualization and broadly recognized as cloud computing.
VSphere capabilities have expanded to optimize not only servers, but storage and network, improving quality of service, increasing IT agility and recasting the economic model of computing.
Since pioneering x86 virtualization more than a decade ago, VMware has established a steady track record of industry firsts, continually advancing the transformative capabilities of virtualization through our flagship platform, VMware vSphere: first live migration, first integrated network distributed switch, first VM fault tolerance capabilities – the list goes on.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Who's better at disaster recovery?
Over the years, this innovation has increased the role virtualization plays in delivering profound value for enterprises. VSphere capabilities have expanded to optimize not only servers, but storage and network, improving quality of service, increasing IT agility and recasting the economic model of computing.
But the transformation in the market is not just about product capabilities. In fact, the value of virtualization cannot be measured through any single, silver bullet feature. Rather, the central role virtualization now plays has elevated this debate well beyond the level of feature functionality. Customers are looking for a complete, proven platform that can meet the stringent needs of today while providing an evolutionary path to the future. There is only one solution that meets these criteria: vSphere.
VSphere is inarguably the most proven solution in the market. More than 190,000 customers trust VMware virtualization. A global ecosystem of service providers (currently more than 1,700) are building their public cloud services on vSphere. In the past two years alone, VMware has tripled the number of customers from the small and midsize business segment – a market that the competition is counting on, but is losing.
We also provide the most combined server, storage, networking, applications and operating systems support with more than 1,300 technology partners. Our innovation is matched by our commitment to quality – with our data center customers reporting 98% product satisfaction, and nine out of 10 deploying most or all new servers as VMware virtual machines by default.
This support has been echoed across the industry. The Wall Street Journal presented VMware vSphere the 2009 Technology Innovation Award among all software products. Even conference attendees at Microsoft's own TechEd 2010 voted VMware vSphere as the Best of TechEd "Attendees' Pick."
But the best platform also needs to be cost-effective, and customers know that upfront license costs do not tell the whole story. A more holistic view of total cost, or "cost-per-application," includes virtualization and management software, operating system, hardware, electricity and data center space costs across all virtualized applications.
VMware delivers up to 30% lower cost-per-application than so-called "free" products. VMware vSphere editions for SMBs start as low as $83 per processor, giving organizations of all sizes access to the same proven technology used by the world's largest enterprises. VMware also enables lower ongoing administrative costs by automating manually intensive tasks. Customers report an average 30% reduction in time spent on routine administration and a 25% or more reduction in overall operational costs.
While we're proud of the long, consistent track record of results, the future of vSphere is even more exciting. VSphere enables enterprise customers to utilize existing assets and take an evolutionary path to cloud computing and future end-user computing models by playing a pivotal role as the platform for private cloud computing within the data center as well as for public cloud offerings at global service providers.
VSphere also serves as the foundation for a new end-user computing architecture enabling customers to modernize decades-old desktop computing models to better meet the needs of IT and the changing state of user computing. And, as new application development increasingly takes advantage of cloud computing models, vSphere is once again the center of our customers' strategy.
This vision for the future is unique from alternative approaches that lack VMware's commitment to openness, application mobility and service provider choice.
VSphere is the industry's most proven, complete, cost-effective virtualization platform. This is true not only because it continues to set the bar as the most advanced solution technologically, but because it has been chosen by enterprises, service providers and a broad ecosystem of partners as the foundation upon which the next generation of IT will be built.
VMware, the global leader in cloud infrastructure, delivers customer-proven virtualization solutions that significantly reduce IT complexity, energizing business, while saving energy -- financial human and the Earth's.
Balkansky is vice president of product marketing, for VMware's Virtualization and Cloud Platforms.
View More
CommentVote
The destination has changed
By David Greschler, Director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft
If you think VMware is the winner of this conversation, I'd ask you to think again. IT leaders care about deploying a platform that is reliable, stable, cost-effective and easily adapts to changing business needs. A few years ago virtualization was seen as the final destination. Now it is clear this technology is a stepping stone to the more agile, responsive world of cloud computing.
I’m suggesting when you evaluate a virtualization platform, one of the most important characteristics you need to consider is how easy it will be to integrate the platform with the cloud.
The core benefits of virtualization – the ability to consolidate servers, quickly provision new applications, automatically backup system – pales in comparison to the speed and cost savings possible with cloud computing.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Who's better at disaster recovery?
Am I suggesting that you abandon virtualization and move to the cloud? No, make the transition on your terms. There are situations where you'll want to keep applications within your data center. However, I’m suggesting when you evaluate a virtualization platform, one of the most important characteristics you need to consider is how easy it will be to integrate the platform with the cloud.
Is there a common management framework so you can manage your on-premises and cloud applications? Is there a single identity service that spans both? Does your existing development environment and applications run in both locations?
VMware today offers a virtualization platform that only works within virtualized data centers. Microsoft has built a public cloud platform, Windows Azure, that runs on multiple data centers across the world. We have a worldwide network of service provider partners who can help you move to a cloud model. As a result, we uniquely offer common application development, management and identity across the virtualized data center, a private cloud environment and the public cloud.
For example, Lionbridge built a private cloud lab using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, System Center and our self-service portal toolkit to enable 4,200 employees and independent workers worldwide to collaborate. The private cloud, which on average runs 400 virtual machines and at peak times up to 700 VMs, lets the company centralize IT management, simplify user processes, improve customer service and improve resource tracking. Lionbridge has one model for applications, identity and management.
Today Microsoft MCITP Certification and its partners offer all the capabilities you need to deploy key virtualization scenarios, such as business continuity, desktop virtualization (VDI), server consolidation and private cloud. For example, Continental Airlines expects to save $1.5 million annually using our infrastructure and platform technologies for server consolidation and VDI. As of a year ago, it consolidated more than 125 servers and now runs more than 320 virtual machines.
And Continental isn't flying alone. Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center have everything a customer needs for enterprise-wide data center deployments. This year Fortune 500 companies CH2M Hill and Union Pacific swapped VMware for Microsoft. They aren't the first to switch, and they're joined by many more organizations that have opted to use Hyper-V alongside VMware. That's easy because Microsoft System Center allows you to manage multiple hypervisor environments and the applications running within the virtual machines.
There was a perception among early adopters of server virtualization that Microsoft didn't have a rich feature set. That's not the case. More than a year ago we further simplified and expanded clustering nodes, and added live migration for zero-downtime migrations of virtual machines between Hyper-V servers.
Hyper-V also provides high availability with transparent and automatic failover of virtual machines. With service pack 1 of Windows Server 2008 R2, we're adding Dynamic Memory and a new high-fidelity remote desktop protocol.
Lastly, you should read Enterprise Strategy Group's lab results that show Hyper-V performance versus physical devices, with 95% to 99% of the performance of physical disks, and 89% to 98% of performance of the tested workloads compared to what can be achieved on physical machines.
At Microsoft we believe virtualization is so critical we've made it part of our server OS, our management tools and our cloud strategy. As a result, VMware is missing critical features: the ability to manage both physical and virtual machines; the ability to get information about the application running within the virtual machine located on-premises or cloud; the ability to manage virtual machines from Microsoft, VMware and soon Citrix.
That's probably the most glaring difference between the two companies: VMware is a virtualization company, and Microsoft is a platform company.
As a platform company, one of our goals is for you to easily and cost-effectively evolve to new computing models as innovation moves the industry forward. By putting virtualization into our platform we have made it easier for you to adopt cloud computing without major disruption or change in infrastructure.
For example, we built Windows Azure so you can take existing or new applications -- be it .Net, Java, Ruby, PHP -- and port most of them to a large-scale cloud platform. We've also made it clear you'll be able to move virtualized workloads to Windows Azure.
That means Microsoft will let you run all your applications – new, ported and virtualized – across traditional datacenters, private and public clouds. This capability is part of our strategy that's focused on delivering one application model, one identity model, and one management model across all computing environments.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Greschler is director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business
View More
CommentVote
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Who has the better virtualization platform?
VMware
Microsoft
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[Extreme Networks]
Extreme Networks infrastructure solutions provide a seamless migration path for next-generation data centers allowing organizations to transition from physical networks, to virtual networks and onto the cloud. The Company’s Four Pillar Strategy emphasizes efficiency, scalability, automation and customization of the network to increase performance and lower costs.
* Scalable Virtualized Environments
* Efficient Virtualization Lifecycle Management
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Detractors say there are still too many questions about security, about data privacy, about performance and the stability of some of the players. Proponents say...
View more debates
The Novell of virtualization?
By Guy Chapman (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 11:53am.
I think VMware is currently well positioned to become the Novell of virtualization. Consider the similarities: technical superiority, "career-safe" choice, large vested corporate user base, complex pricing models, arbitrary prioce increases in a captive market, Microsoft buying market share with free and nearly-free product.
VMware has far and away the best management interface. Right now it also probably has the best hypervisor. But the future is in cloud, and increasingly IT departments will be agnostic about hypervisors and using web service driven integration tools to managed a technically and geographically diverse infrastructure.
VMware has ridden the wave of enterprise virtualisation, but I think that wave is crashing on the beach. Following it is a much bigger and more disruptive wave - a virtual tsunami - of service-driven cloud-like infrastructure. It's far from clear who will ride this wave best. You can never discount Microsoft but the open source community has some compelling products in this space right now.
The Novell of Virtulization? Not any time soon....
By David Owen (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 6:13pm.
If VMware do go the way of Novell I think you are looking at a good decade before you even start seeing the signs. They are several steps ahead all the time and seem to be able to maintain those steps.
It’s interesting you reference the pricing models. Perhaps Microsoft is significantly cheaper at the very very small SME however once you get to enterprise (where most of the money is to be made) you will not find a significant difference.
I think it is far too early in the day to imagine which companies will do best within the cloud services department but VMware (as well as Microsoft) are well aware of this and are positioning them selves with this firmly in mind. It would be naive to think VMware will simply shrink because everyone has adopted cloud.
I would love to know what evidence you have for VMware "crashing on the beach".... they are by far and away the market leader and that % doesn’t seem to be wavering much. You only have to look at this pole to see that (and VMwares recent profit margins).
If anything I think the biggest threat is the opensource community. However you will need to ask yourself, Will big enterprise adopt opensource in a large enough manor to be able to mount a serious challenge?
There are no guarantees of course but if you are asking me, I think VMware will be the market leader for a very long time to come.
Re:
By Randy G (not verified) on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 6:51pm.
That's what I thought, but if you look at the cost calculator for VSphere + VMWare vs Hyper V plus System Center, for the same capability, VMWare costs 6-7 times as much for our use case of 609 servers (physical). I'd rather spend $500k and have a familiar management interface that works vice the est $6.5M for VMWare. see www.microsoft.com/virtualization and follow the link to compare and cost calculator. Microsoft is on the right track.
Microsoft HyperV For Me
By Alan Richards (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 2:30pm.
As a School IT manager that's just virualised our whole environment it has to be Microsoft. It fulfills everything we need from virtualisation at no cost to us.
As a School we already licence Windows under the Schools agreement and therefore we are licensed for HyperV. We did look at VMWare but it is so expensive for Schools and all it's extra features aren't worth the expense.
Hyper-V will turn a product into a feature
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 2:37pm.
with the commoditization of server virtualization, Hyper-V will eventually change the VMware ESX tool into a check box feature needed in the OS and loss of ability to charge for it.
Novell of Virtualization IF Microsoft can meet VMware Features
By Andy Kitzke (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:10pm.
I agree with Guy Chapman on VMware possibly walking down that path only if Microsoft can catch them on features. Right now VMware still keeps creating new features Hyper-V doesn't have and won't for a year or two until their engineers catch up.
Have you used Hyper-V?
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:26pm.
Anyone who has used both will know that VMWare is way ahead of Microsoft. Although I do believe that Microsoft is forcing the hypervisor into a commodity which benefits users of both products.
XenServer
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:47pm.
VMware is too expensive for us. Their three server package was a great idea until we needed to go to 5 servers.
So while we ran VMware for many moons, and loved the jump to ESXi 4, we moved on. Since we don't overcommit, and we don't buy any more MS than we have to, XenServer fits the bill perfectly (again, for us).
Been running 8 boxes for over a year now with no issues, easy to admin, and easily survived both a XenServer host failure (motherboard) and a NAS hardware failure.
We paid the $1k/server to license HA recently, and now life is even better. Price-wise, VMware couldn't touch our setup if they wanted to. 8 servers with 2x CPUs, and a common admin console.
VMware has a killer desktop product. But on the server end, we're not buying the Cadillac when we have the speedy and reliable Honda.
If we could AFFORD the Cadillac, we'd be in there. But VMware is still too pricetag greedy for a less than large-scale company.
Again, YMMV.
Agree with every word.
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 4:11pm.
Agree with every word. vSphere is good and reliable virtualization platform but that's it. HyperV have a lot more on the plate and it integrated into Windows Server that far less picky about hardware and cost is NOTHING....
VMware is indeed Novell of virtualization - once famous then forgotten
Why Only Two?
By Robin Jackson (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 4:14pm.
There are far more mature products than Hyper-V which give VMWare a better run for their money. VirtualBox and Xen both come to mind (Oracle/Sun and Citrix respectively).
The real winner will be the one that its VM and architecture agnostic.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that the VM format and where it is deployed is of no consequence.
IMHO actually Novell is way ahead of the pack with their vision of being able to provision between the "private cloud" (aka Virtual Hosts) and the "public cloud."
Novell has invested heavily in brains that understand the standards, how to crack the different formats apart, put them back together again and move them on the fly.
Is it any wonder that VMWare and Novell have partnered recently?
And why is everyone forgetting the fact that Novell and Microsoft have had an Interoperability agreement for years that enabled Novell (with its Orchestrator product) to to a hot move of a Hyper-V machine before Microsoft could.
You're asking the WRONG questions IMHO.
VMware is the kingpin of virtualization, but the game is changing fast and Microsoft MCTS Training is baking the technology into the very core of many products. Which company has the best approach?
Moderator
[Jon Dix]
John Dix, Network World Editor in Chief, sets up the debates and recruits the experts. Contact him with thoughts and ideas, jdix@nww.com.
The experts
Bogomil Balkansky, Vice president of product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platform at VMware,
says vSphere wins because of the company's big head start, large installed base and track record of innovation.
David Greschler, Director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft,
says Microsoft wins because virtualized environments will ultimately span data center and cloud platforms and the company's management framework, identity service and development environment can best span this heterogeneous environment.
A big head start matters
By Bogomil Balkansky, Vice president of product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platform at VMware
IT is being served by a combination of vendors, some of whom are working to provide a clear path forward, and others that are struggling to hold on to the past. VMware vSphere represents the architecture, expertise and ecosystem driving a new approach for IT, enabled by virtualization and broadly recognized as cloud computing.
VSphere capabilities have expanded to optimize not only servers, but storage and network, improving quality of service, increasing IT agility and recasting the economic model of computing.
Since pioneering x86 virtualization more than a decade ago, VMware has established a steady track record of industry firsts, continually advancing the transformative capabilities of virtualization through our flagship platform, VMware vSphere: first live migration, first integrated network distributed switch, first VM fault tolerance capabilities – the list goes on.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Who's better at disaster recovery?
Over the years, this innovation has increased the role virtualization plays in delivering profound value for enterprises. VSphere capabilities have expanded to optimize not only servers, but storage and network, improving quality of service, increasing IT agility and recasting the economic model of computing.
But the transformation in the market is not just about product capabilities. In fact, the value of virtualization cannot be measured through any single, silver bullet feature. Rather, the central role virtualization now plays has elevated this debate well beyond the level of feature functionality. Customers are looking for a complete, proven platform that can meet the stringent needs of today while providing an evolutionary path to the future. There is only one solution that meets these criteria: vSphere.
VSphere is inarguably the most proven solution in the market. More than 190,000 customers trust VMware virtualization. A global ecosystem of service providers (currently more than 1,700) are building their public cloud services on vSphere. In the past two years alone, VMware has tripled the number of customers from the small and midsize business segment – a market that the competition is counting on, but is losing.
We also provide the most combined server, storage, networking, applications and operating systems support with more than 1,300 technology partners. Our innovation is matched by our commitment to quality – with our data center customers reporting 98% product satisfaction, and nine out of 10 deploying most or all new servers as VMware virtual machines by default.
This support has been echoed across the industry. The Wall Street Journal presented VMware vSphere the 2009 Technology Innovation Award among all software products. Even conference attendees at Microsoft's own TechEd 2010 voted VMware vSphere as the Best of TechEd "Attendees' Pick."
But the best platform also needs to be cost-effective, and customers know that upfront license costs do not tell the whole story. A more holistic view of total cost, or "cost-per-application," includes virtualization and management software, operating system, hardware, electricity and data center space costs across all virtualized applications.
VMware delivers up to 30% lower cost-per-application than so-called "free" products. VMware vSphere editions for SMBs start as low as $83 per processor, giving organizations of all sizes access to the same proven technology used by the world's largest enterprises. VMware also enables lower ongoing administrative costs by automating manually intensive tasks. Customers report an average 30% reduction in time spent on routine administration and a 25% or more reduction in overall operational costs.
While we're proud of the long, consistent track record of results, the future of vSphere is even more exciting. VSphere enables enterprise customers to utilize existing assets and take an evolutionary path to cloud computing and future end-user computing models by playing a pivotal role as the platform for private cloud computing within the data center as well as for public cloud offerings at global service providers.
VSphere also serves as the foundation for a new end-user computing architecture enabling customers to modernize decades-old desktop computing models to better meet the needs of IT and the changing state of user computing. And, as new application development increasingly takes advantage of cloud computing models, vSphere is once again the center of our customers' strategy.
This vision for the future is unique from alternative approaches that lack VMware's commitment to openness, application mobility and service provider choice.
VSphere is the industry's most proven, complete, cost-effective virtualization platform. This is true not only because it continues to set the bar as the most advanced solution technologically, but because it has been chosen by enterprises, service providers and a broad ecosystem of partners as the foundation upon which the next generation of IT will be built.
VMware, the global leader in cloud infrastructure, delivers customer-proven virtualization solutions that significantly reduce IT complexity, energizing business, while saving energy -- financial human and the Earth's.
Balkansky is vice president of product marketing, for VMware's Virtualization and Cloud Platforms.
View More
CommentVote
The destination has changed
By David Greschler, Director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft
If you think VMware is the winner of this conversation, I'd ask you to think again. IT leaders care about deploying a platform that is reliable, stable, cost-effective and easily adapts to changing business needs. A few years ago virtualization was seen as the final destination. Now it is clear this technology is a stepping stone to the more agile, responsive world of cloud computing.
I’m suggesting when you evaluate a virtualization platform, one of the most important characteristics you need to consider is how easy it will be to integrate the platform with the cloud.
The core benefits of virtualization – the ability to consolidate servers, quickly provision new applications, automatically backup system – pales in comparison to the speed and cost savings possible with cloud computing.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Who's better at disaster recovery?
Am I suggesting that you abandon virtualization and move to the cloud? No, make the transition on your terms. There are situations where you'll want to keep applications within your data center. However, I’m suggesting when you evaluate a virtualization platform, one of the most important characteristics you need to consider is how easy it will be to integrate the platform with the cloud.
Is there a common management framework so you can manage your on-premises and cloud applications? Is there a single identity service that spans both? Does your existing development environment and applications run in both locations?
VMware today offers a virtualization platform that only works within virtualized data centers. Microsoft has built a public cloud platform, Windows Azure, that runs on multiple data centers across the world. We have a worldwide network of service provider partners who can help you move to a cloud model. As a result, we uniquely offer common application development, management and identity across the virtualized data center, a private cloud environment and the public cloud.
For example, Lionbridge built a private cloud lab using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, System Center and our self-service portal toolkit to enable 4,200 employees and independent workers worldwide to collaborate. The private cloud, which on average runs 400 virtual machines and at peak times up to 700 VMs, lets the company centralize IT management, simplify user processes, improve customer service and improve resource tracking. Lionbridge has one model for applications, identity and management.
Today Microsoft MCITP Certification and its partners offer all the capabilities you need to deploy key virtualization scenarios, such as business continuity, desktop virtualization (VDI), server consolidation and private cloud. For example, Continental Airlines expects to save $1.5 million annually using our infrastructure and platform technologies for server consolidation and VDI. As of a year ago, it consolidated more than 125 servers and now runs more than 320 virtual machines.
And Continental isn't flying alone. Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center have everything a customer needs for enterprise-wide data center deployments. This year Fortune 500 companies CH2M Hill and Union Pacific swapped VMware for Microsoft. They aren't the first to switch, and they're joined by many more organizations that have opted to use Hyper-V alongside VMware. That's easy because Microsoft System Center allows you to manage multiple hypervisor environments and the applications running within the virtual machines.
There was a perception among early adopters of server virtualization that Microsoft didn't have a rich feature set. That's not the case. More than a year ago we further simplified and expanded clustering nodes, and added live migration for zero-downtime migrations of virtual machines between Hyper-V servers.
Hyper-V also provides high availability with transparent and automatic failover of virtual machines. With service pack 1 of Windows Server 2008 R2, we're adding Dynamic Memory and a new high-fidelity remote desktop protocol.
Lastly, you should read Enterprise Strategy Group's lab results that show Hyper-V performance versus physical devices, with 95% to 99% of the performance of physical disks, and 89% to 98% of performance of the tested workloads compared to what can be achieved on physical machines.
At Microsoft we believe virtualization is so critical we've made it part of our server OS, our management tools and our cloud strategy. As a result, VMware is missing critical features: the ability to manage both physical and virtual machines; the ability to get information about the application running within the virtual machine located on-premises or cloud; the ability to manage virtual machines from Microsoft, VMware and soon Citrix.
That's probably the most glaring difference between the two companies: VMware is a virtualization company, and Microsoft is a platform company.
As a platform company, one of our goals is for you to easily and cost-effectively evolve to new computing models as innovation moves the industry forward. By putting virtualization into our platform we have made it easier for you to adopt cloud computing without major disruption or change in infrastructure.
For example, we built Windows Azure so you can take existing or new applications -- be it .Net, Java, Ruby, PHP -- and port most of them to a large-scale cloud platform. We've also made it clear you'll be able to move virtualized workloads to Windows Azure.
That means Microsoft will let you run all your applications – new, ported and virtualized – across traditional datacenters, private and public clouds. This capability is part of our strategy that's focused on delivering one application model, one identity model, and one management model across all computing environments.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Greschler is director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business
View More
CommentVote
Welcome, visitor. Register Log in
Click here to find out more!
Who has the better virtualization platform?
VMware
Microsoft
VoteView Results
Share ThisCreate A Poll
Quantcast
[Extreme Networks]
Extreme Networks infrastructure solutions provide a seamless migration path for next-generation data centers allowing organizations to transition from physical networks, to virtual networks and onto the cloud. The Company’s Four Pillar Strategy emphasizes efficiency, scalability, automation and customization of the network to increase performance and lower costs.
* Scalable Virtualized Environments
* Efficient Virtualization Lifecycle Management
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Tech Debate: Cloud: Public or private?
For those that see value in adopting cloud computing, the next question is private or public? A private cloud, built using your resources in your data center, leaves...
Outsourcing IT management. Is the time right?
Outsourcing some IT management functions can save money and free up resources to focus on more strategic initiatives, proponents say. But it is easy to get it wrong,...
Cloud: Ready or not?
Detractors say there are still too many questions about security, about data privacy, about performance and the stability of some of the players. Proponents say...
View more debates
The Novell of virtualization?
By Guy Chapman (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 11:53am.
I think VMware is currently well positioned to become the Novell of virtualization. Consider the similarities: technical superiority, "career-safe" choice, large vested corporate user base, complex pricing models, arbitrary prioce increases in a captive market, Microsoft buying market share with free and nearly-free product.
VMware has far and away the best management interface. Right now it also probably has the best hypervisor. But the future is in cloud, and increasingly IT departments will be agnostic about hypervisors and using web service driven integration tools to managed a technically and geographically diverse infrastructure.
VMware has ridden the wave of enterprise virtualisation, but I think that wave is crashing on the beach. Following it is a much bigger and more disruptive wave - a virtual tsunami - of service-driven cloud-like infrastructure. It's far from clear who will ride this wave best. You can never discount Microsoft but the open source community has some compelling products in this space right now.
The Novell of Virtulization? Not any time soon....
By David Owen (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 6:13pm.
If VMware do go the way of Novell I think you are looking at a good decade before you even start seeing the signs. They are several steps ahead all the time and seem to be able to maintain those steps.
It’s interesting you reference the pricing models. Perhaps Microsoft is significantly cheaper at the very very small SME however once you get to enterprise (where most of the money is to be made) you will not find a significant difference.
I think it is far too early in the day to imagine which companies will do best within the cloud services department but VMware (as well as Microsoft) are well aware of this and are positioning them selves with this firmly in mind. It would be naive to think VMware will simply shrink because everyone has adopted cloud.
I would love to know what evidence you have for VMware "crashing on the beach".... they are by far and away the market leader and that % doesn’t seem to be wavering much. You only have to look at this pole to see that (and VMwares recent profit margins).
If anything I think the biggest threat is the opensource community. However you will need to ask yourself, Will big enterprise adopt opensource in a large enough manor to be able to mount a serious challenge?
There are no guarantees of course but if you are asking me, I think VMware will be the market leader for a very long time to come.
Re:
By Randy G (not verified) on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 6:51pm.
That's what I thought, but if you look at the cost calculator for VSphere + VMWare vs Hyper V plus System Center, for the same capability, VMWare costs 6-7 times as much for our use case of 609 servers (physical). I'd rather spend $500k and have a familiar management interface that works vice the est $6.5M for VMWare. see www.microsoft.com/virtualization and follow the link to compare and cost calculator. Microsoft is on the right track.
Microsoft HyperV For Me
By Alan Richards (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 2:30pm.
As a School IT manager that's just virualised our whole environment it has to be Microsoft. It fulfills everything we need from virtualisation at no cost to us.
As a School we already licence Windows under the Schools agreement and therefore we are licensed for HyperV. We did look at VMWare but it is so expensive for Schools and all it's extra features aren't worth the expense.
Hyper-V will turn a product into a feature
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 2:37pm.
with the commoditization of server virtualization, Hyper-V will eventually change the VMware ESX tool into a check box feature needed in the OS and loss of ability to charge for it.
Novell of Virtualization IF Microsoft can meet VMware Features
By Andy Kitzke (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:10pm.
I agree with Guy Chapman on VMware possibly walking down that path only if Microsoft can catch them on features. Right now VMware still keeps creating new features Hyper-V doesn't have and won't for a year or two until their engineers catch up.
Have you used Hyper-V?
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:26pm.
Anyone who has used both will know that VMWare is way ahead of Microsoft. Although I do believe that Microsoft is forcing the hypervisor into a commodity which benefits users of both products.
XenServer
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:47pm.
VMware is too expensive for us. Their three server package was a great idea until we needed to go to 5 servers.
So while we ran VMware for many moons, and loved the jump to ESXi 4, we moved on. Since we don't overcommit, and we don't buy any more MS than we have to, XenServer fits the bill perfectly (again, for us).
Been running 8 boxes for over a year now with no issues, easy to admin, and easily survived both a XenServer host failure (motherboard) and a NAS hardware failure.
We paid the $1k/server to license HA recently, and now life is even better. Price-wise, VMware couldn't touch our setup if they wanted to. 8 servers with 2x CPUs, and a common admin console.
VMware has a killer desktop product. But on the server end, we're not buying the Cadillac when we have the speedy and reliable Honda.
If we could AFFORD the Cadillac, we'd be in there. But VMware is still too pricetag greedy for a less than large-scale company.
Again, YMMV.
Agree with every word.
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 4:11pm.
Agree with every word. vSphere is good and reliable virtualization platform but that's it. HyperV have a lot more on the plate and it integrated into Windows Server that far less picky about hardware and cost is NOTHING....
VMware is indeed Novell of virtualization - once famous then forgotten
Why Only Two?
By Robin Jackson (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 4:14pm.
There are far more mature products than Hyper-V which give VMWare a better run for their money. VirtualBox and Xen both come to mind (Oracle/Sun and Citrix respectively).
The real winner will be the one that its VM and architecture agnostic.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that the VM format and where it is deployed is of no consequence.
IMHO actually Novell is way ahead of the pack with their vision of being able to provision between the "private cloud" (aka Virtual Hosts) and the "public cloud."
Novell has invested heavily in brains that understand the standards, how to crack the different formats apart, put them back together again and move them on the fly.
Is it any wonder that VMWare and Novell have partnered recently?
And why is everyone forgetting the fact that Novell and Microsoft have had an Interoperability agreement for years that enabled Novell (with its Orchestrator product) to to a hot move of a Hyper-V machine before Microsoft could.
You're asking the WRONG questions IMHO.
Who has the better virtualization platform – VMware or Microsoft?
Who has the better virtualization platform – VMware or Microsoft?
VMware is the kingpin of virtualization, but the game is changing fast and Microsoft MCTS Training is baking the technology into the very core of many products. Which company has the best approach?
Moderator
[Jon Dix]
John Dix, Network World Editor in Chief, sets up the debates and recruits the experts. Contact him with thoughts and ideas, jdix@nww.com.
The experts
Bogomil Balkansky, Vice president of product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platform at VMware,
says vSphere wins because of the company's big head start, large installed base and track record of innovation.
David Greschler, Director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft,
says Microsoft wins because virtualized environments will ultimately span data center and cloud platforms and the company's management framework, identity service and development environment can best span this heterogeneous environment.
A big head start matters
By Bogomil Balkansky, Vice president of product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platform at VMware
IT is being served by a combination of vendors, some of whom are working to provide a clear path forward, and others that are struggling to hold on to the past. VMware vSphere represents the architecture, expertise and ecosystem driving a new approach for IT, enabled by virtualization and broadly recognized as cloud computing.
VSphere capabilities have expanded to optimize not only servers, but storage and network, improving quality of service, increasing IT agility and recasting the economic model of computing.
Since pioneering x86 virtualization more than a decade ago, VMware has established a steady track record of industry firsts, continually advancing the transformative capabilities of virtualization through our flagship platform, VMware vSphere: first live migration, first integrated network distributed switch, first VM fault tolerance capabilities – the list goes on.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Who's better at disaster recovery?
Over the years, this innovation has increased the role virtualization plays in delivering profound value for enterprises. VSphere capabilities have expanded to optimize not only servers, but storage and network, improving quality of service, increasing IT agility and recasting the economic model of computing.
But the transformation in the market is not just about product capabilities. In fact, the value of virtualization cannot be measured through any single, silver bullet feature. Rather, the central role virtualization now plays has elevated this debate well beyond the level of feature functionality. Customers are looking for a complete, proven platform that can meet the stringent needs of today while providing an evolutionary path to the future. There is only one solution that meets these criteria: vSphere.
VSphere is inarguably the most proven solution in the market. More than 190,000 customers trust VMware virtualization. A global ecosystem of service providers (currently more than 1,700) are building their public cloud services on vSphere. In the past two years alone, VMware has tripled the number of customers from the small and midsize business segment – a market that the competition is counting on, but is losing.
We also provide the most combined server, storage, networking, applications and operating systems support with more than 1,300 technology partners. Our innovation is matched by our commitment to quality – with our data center customers reporting 98% product satisfaction, and nine out of 10 deploying most or all new servers as VMware virtual machines by default.
This support has been echoed across the industry. The Wall Street Journal presented VMware vSphere the 2009 Technology Innovation Award among all software products. Even conference attendees at Microsoft's own TechEd 2010 voted VMware vSphere as the Best of TechEd "Attendees' Pick."
But the best platform also needs to be cost-effective, and customers know that upfront license costs do not tell the whole story. A more holistic view of total cost, or "cost-per-application," includes virtualization and management software, operating system, hardware, electricity and data center space costs across all virtualized applications.
VMware delivers up to 30% lower cost-per-application than so-called "free" products. VMware vSphere editions for SMBs start as low as $83 per processor, giving organizations of all sizes access to the same proven technology used by the world's largest enterprises. VMware also enables lower ongoing administrative costs by automating manually intensive tasks. Customers report an average 30% reduction in time spent on routine administration and a 25% or more reduction in overall operational costs.
While we're proud of the long, consistent track record of results, the future of vSphere is even more exciting. VSphere enables enterprise customers to utilize existing assets and take an evolutionary path to cloud computing and future end-user computing models by playing a pivotal role as the platform for private cloud computing within the data center as well as for public cloud offerings at global service providers.
VSphere also serves as the foundation for a new end-user computing architecture enabling customers to modernize decades-old desktop computing models to better meet the needs of IT and the changing state of user computing. And, as new application development increasingly takes advantage of cloud computing models, vSphere is once again the center of our customers' strategy.
This vision for the future is unique from alternative approaches that lack VMware's commitment to openness, application mobility and service provider choice.
VSphere is the industry's most proven, complete, cost-effective virtualization platform. This is true not only because it continues to set the bar as the most advanced solution technologically, but because it has been chosen by enterprises, service providers and a broad ecosystem of partners as the foundation upon which the next generation of IT will be built.
VMware, the global leader in cloud infrastructure, delivers customer-proven virtualization solutions that significantly reduce IT complexity, energizing business, while saving energy -- financial human and the Earth's.
Balkansky is vice president of product marketing, for VMware's Virtualization and Cloud Platforms.
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CommentVote
The destination has changed
By David Greschler, Director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft
If you think VMware is the winner of this conversation, I'd ask you to think again. IT leaders care about deploying a platform that is reliable, stable, cost-effective and easily adapts to changing business needs. A few years ago virtualization was seen as the final destination. Now it is clear this technology is a stepping stone to the more agile, responsive world of cloud computing.
I’m suggesting when you evaluate a virtualization platform, one of the most important characteristics you need to consider is how easy it will be to integrate the platform with the cloud.
The core benefits of virtualization – the ability to consolidate servers, quickly provision new applications, automatically backup system – pales in comparison to the speed and cost savings possible with cloud computing.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Who's better at disaster recovery?
Am I suggesting that you abandon virtualization and move to the cloud? No, make the transition on your terms. There are situations where you'll want to keep applications within your data center. However, I’m suggesting when you evaluate a virtualization platform, one of the most important characteristics you need to consider is how easy it will be to integrate the platform with the cloud.
Is there a common management framework so you can manage your on-premises and cloud applications? Is there a single identity service that spans both? Does your existing development environment and applications run in both locations?
VMware today offers a virtualization platform that only works within virtualized data centers. Microsoft has built a public cloud platform, Windows Azure, that runs on multiple data centers across the world. We have a worldwide network of service provider partners who can help you move to a cloud model. As a result, we uniquely offer common application development, management and identity across the virtualized data center, a private cloud environment and the public cloud.
For example, Lionbridge built a private cloud lab using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, System Center and our self-service portal toolkit to enable 4,200 employees and independent workers worldwide to collaborate. The private cloud, which on average runs 400 virtual machines and at peak times up to 700 VMs, lets the company centralize IT management, simplify user processes, improve customer service and improve resource tracking. Lionbridge has one model for applications, identity and management.
Today Microsoft MCITP Certification and its partners offer all the capabilities you need to deploy key virtualization scenarios, such as business continuity, desktop virtualization (VDI), server consolidation and private cloud. For example, Continental Airlines expects to save $1.5 million annually using our infrastructure and platform technologies for server consolidation and VDI. As of a year ago, it consolidated more than 125 servers and now runs more than 320 virtual machines.
And Continental isn't flying alone. Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center have everything a customer needs for enterprise-wide data center deployments. This year Fortune 500 companies CH2M Hill and Union Pacific swapped VMware for Microsoft. They aren't the first to switch, and they're joined by many more organizations that have opted to use Hyper-V alongside VMware. That's easy because Microsoft System Center allows you to manage multiple hypervisor environments and the applications running within the virtual machines.
There was a perception among early adopters of server virtualization that Microsoft didn't have a rich feature set. That's not the case. More than a year ago we further simplified and expanded clustering nodes, and added live migration for zero-downtime migrations of virtual machines between Hyper-V servers.
Hyper-V also provides high availability with transparent and automatic failover of virtual machines. With service pack 1 of Windows Server 2008 R2, we're adding Dynamic Memory and a new high-fidelity remote desktop protocol.
Lastly, you should read Enterprise Strategy Group's lab results that show Hyper-V performance versus physical devices, with 95% to 99% of the performance of physical disks, and 89% to 98% of performance of the tested workloads compared to what can be achieved on physical machines.
At Microsoft we believe virtualization is so critical we've made it part of our server OS, our management tools and our cloud strategy. As a result, VMware is missing critical features: the ability to manage both physical and virtual machines; the ability to get information about the application running within the virtual machine located on-premises or cloud; the ability to manage virtual machines from Microsoft, VMware and soon Citrix.
That's probably the most glaring difference between the two companies: VMware is a virtualization company, and Microsoft is a platform company.
As a platform company, one of our goals is for you to easily and cost-effectively evolve to new computing models as innovation moves the industry forward. By putting virtualization into our platform we have made it easier for you to adopt cloud computing without major disruption or change in infrastructure.
For example, we built Windows Azure so you can take existing or new applications -- be it .Net, Java, Ruby, PHP -- and port most of them to a large-scale cloud platform. We've also made it clear you'll be able to move virtualized workloads to Windows Azure.
That means Microsoft will let you run all your applications – new, ported and virtualized – across traditional datacenters, private and public clouds. This capability is part of our strategy that's focused on delivering one application model, one identity model, and one management model across all computing environments.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Greschler is director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business
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View more debates
The Novell of virtualization?
By Guy Chapman (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 11:53am.
I think VMware is currently well positioned to become the Novell of virtualization. Consider the similarities: technical superiority, "career-safe" choice, large vested corporate user base, complex pricing models, arbitrary prioce increases in a captive market, Microsoft buying market share with free and nearly-free product.
VMware has far and away the best management interface. Right now it also probably has the best hypervisor. But the future is in cloud, and increasingly IT departments will be agnostic about hypervisors and using web service driven integration tools to managed a technically and geographically diverse infrastructure.
VMware has ridden the wave of enterprise virtualisation, but I think that wave is crashing on the beach. Following it is a much bigger and more disruptive wave - a virtual tsunami - of service-driven cloud-like infrastructure. It's far from clear who will ride this wave best. You can never discount Microsoft but the open source community has some compelling products in this space right now.
The Novell of Virtulization? Not any time soon....
By David Owen (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 6:13pm.
If VMware do go the way of Novell I think you are looking at a good decade before you even start seeing the signs. They are several steps ahead all the time and seem to be able to maintain those steps.
It’s interesting you reference the pricing models. Perhaps Microsoft is significantly cheaper at the very very small SME however once you get to enterprise (where most of the money is to be made) you will not find a significant difference.
I think it is far too early in the day to imagine which companies will do best within the cloud services department but VMware (as well as Microsoft) are well aware of this and are positioning them selves with this firmly in mind. It would be naive to think VMware will simply shrink because everyone has adopted cloud.
I would love to know what evidence you have for VMware "crashing on the beach".... they are by far and away the market leader and that % doesn’t seem to be wavering much. You only have to look at this pole to see that (and VMwares recent profit margins).
If anything I think the biggest threat is the opensource community. However you will need to ask yourself, Will big enterprise adopt opensource in a large enough manor to be able to mount a serious challenge?
There are no guarantees of course but if you are asking me, I think VMware will be the market leader for a very long time to come.
Re:
By Randy G (not verified) on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 6:51pm.
That's what I thought, but if you look at the cost calculator for VSphere + VMWare vs Hyper V plus System Center, for the same capability, VMWare costs 6-7 times as much for our use case of 609 servers (physical). I'd rather spend $500k and have a familiar management interface that works vice the est $6.5M for VMWare. see www.microsoft.com/virtualization and follow the link to compare and cost calculator. Microsoft is on the right track.
Microsoft HyperV For Me
By Alan Richards (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 2:30pm.
As a School IT manager that's just virualised our whole environment it has to be Microsoft. It fulfills everything we need from virtualisation at no cost to us.
As a School we already licence Windows under the Schools agreement and therefore we are licensed for HyperV. We did look at VMWare but it is so expensive for Schools and all it's extra features aren't worth the expense.
Hyper-V will turn a product into a feature
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 2:37pm.
with the commoditization of server virtualization, Hyper-V will eventually change the VMware ESX tool into a check box feature needed in the OS and loss of ability to charge for it.
Novell of Virtualization IF Microsoft can meet VMware Features
By Andy Kitzke (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:10pm.
I agree with Guy Chapman on VMware possibly walking down that path only if Microsoft can catch them on features. Right now VMware still keeps creating new features Hyper-V doesn't have and won't for a year or two until their engineers catch up.
Have you used Hyper-V?
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:26pm.
Anyone who has used both will know that VMWare is way ahead of Microsoft. Although I do believe that Microsoft is forcing the hypervisor into a commodity which benefits users of both products.
XenServer
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:47pm.
VMware is too expensive for us. Their three server package was a great idea until we needed to go to 5 servers.
So while we ran VMware for many moons, and loved the jump to ESXi 4, we moved on. Since we don't overcommit, and we don't buy any more MS than we have to, XenServer fits the bill perfectly (again, for us).
Been running 8 boxes for over a year now with no issues, easy to admin, and easily survived both a XenServer host failure (motherboard) and a NAS hardware failure.
We paid the $1k/server to license HA recently, and now life is even better. Price-wise, VMware couldn't touch our setup if they wanted to. 8 servers with 2x CPUs, and a common admin console.
VMware has a killer desktop product. But on the server end, we're not buying the Cadillac when we have the speedy and reliable Honda.
If we could AFFORD the Cadillac, we'd be in there. But VMware is still too pricetag greedy for a less than large-scale company.
Again, YMMV.
Agree with every word.
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 4:11pm.
Agree with every word. vSphere is good and reliable virtualization platform but that's it. HyperV have a lot more on the plate and it integrated into Windows Server that far less picky about hardware and cost is NOTHING....
VMware is indeed Novell of virtualization - once famous then forgotten
Why Only Two?
By Robin Jackson (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 4:14pm.
There are far more mature products than Hyper-V which give VMWare a better run for their money. VirtualBox and Xen both come to mind (Oracle/Sun and Citrix respectively).
The real winner will be the one that its VM and architecture agnostic.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that the VM format and where it is deployed is of no consequence.
IMHO actually Novell is way ahead of the pack with their vision of being able to provision between the "private cloud" (aka Virtual Hosts) and the "public cloud."
Novell has invested heavily in brains that understand the standards, how to crack the different formats apart, put them back together again and move them on the fly.
Is it any wonder that VMWare and Novell have partnered recently?
And why is everyone forgetting the fact that Novell and Microsoft have had an Interoperability agreement for years that enabled Novell (with its Orchestrator product) to to a hot move of a Hyper-V machine before Microsoft could.
You're asking the WRONG questions IMHO.
VMware is the kingpin of virtualization, but the game is changing fast and Microsoft MCTS Training is baking the technology into the very core of many products. Which company has the best approach?
Moderator
[Jon Dix]
John Dix, Network World Editor in Chief, sets up the debates and recruits the experts. Contact him with thoughts and ideas, jdix@nww.com.
The experts
Bogomil Balkansky, Vice president of product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platform at VMware,
says vSphere wins because of the company's big head start, large installed base and track record of innovation.
David Greschler, Director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft,
says Microsoft wins because virtualized environments will ultimately span data center and cloud platforms and the company's management framework, identity service and development environment can best span this heterogeneous environment.
A big head start matters
By Bogomil Balkansky, Vice president of product marketing, Virtualization and Cloud Platform at VMware
IT is being served by a combination of vendors, some of whom are working to provide a clear path forward, and others that are struggling to hold on to the past. VMware vSphere represents the architecture, expertise and ecosystem driving a new approach for IT, enabled by virtualization and broadly recognized as cloud computing.
VSphere capabilities have expanded to optimize not only servers, but storage and network, improving quality of service, increasing IT agility and recasting the economic model of computing.
Since pioneering x86 virtualization more than a decade ago, VMware has established a steady track record of industry firsts, continually advancing the transformative capabilities of virtualization through our flagship platform, VMware vSphere: first live migration, first integrated network distributed switch, first VM fault tolerance capabilities – the list goes on.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Who's better at disaster recovery?
Over the years, this innovation has increased the role virtualization plays in delivering profound value for enterprises. VSphere capabilities have expanded to optimize not only servers, but storage and network, improving quality of service, increasing IT agility and recasting the economic model of computing.
But the transformation in the market is not just about product capabilities. In fact, the value of virtualization cannot be measured through any single, silver bullet feature. Rather, the central role virtualization now plays has elevated this debate well beyond the level of feature functionality. Customers are looking for a complete, proven platform that can meet the stringent needs of today while providing an evolutionary path to the future. There is only one solution that meets these criteria: vSphere.
VSphere is inarguably the most proven solution in the market. More than 190,000 customers trust VMware virtualization. A global ecosystem of service providers (currently more than 1,700) are building their public cloud services on vSphere. In the past two years alone, VMware has tripled the number of customers from the small and midsize business segment – a market that the competition is counting on, but is losing.
We also provide the most combined server, storage, networking, applications and operating systems support with more than 1,300 technology partners. Our innovation is matched by our commitment to quality – with our data center customers reporting 98% product satisfaction, and nine out of 10 deploying most or all new servers as VMware virtual machines by default.
This support has been echoed across the industry. The Wall Street Journal presented VMware vSphere the 2009 Technology Innovation Award among all software products. Even conference attendees at Microsoft's own TechEd 2010 voted VMware vSphere as the Best of TechEd "Attendees' Pick."
But the best platform also needs to be cost-effective, and customers know that upfront license costs do not tell the whole story. A more holistic view of total cost, or "cost-per-application," includes virtualization and management software, operating system, hardware, electricity and data center space costs across all virtualized applications.
VMware delivers up to 30% lower cost-per-application than so-called "free" products. VMware vSphere editions for SMBs start as low as $83 per processor, giving organizations of all sizes access to the same proven technology used by the world's largest enterprises. VMware also enables lower ongoing administrative costs by automating manually intensive tasks. Customers report an average 30% reduction in time spent on routine administration and a 25% or more reduction in overall operational costs.
While we're proud of the long, consistent track record of results, the future of vSphere is even more exciting. VSphere enables enterprise customers to utilize existing assets and take an evolutionary path to cloud computing and future end-user computing models by playing a pivotal role as the platform for private cloud computing within the data center as well as for public cloud offerings at global service providers.
VSphere also serves as the foundation for a new end-user computing architecture enabling customers to modernize decades-old desktop computing models to better meet the needs of IT and the changing state of user computing. And, as new application development increasingly takes advantage of cloud computing models, vSphere is once again the center of our customers' strategy.
This vision for the future is unique from alternative approaches that lack VMware's commitment to openness, application mobility and service provider choice.
VSphere is the industry's most proven, complete, cost-effective virtualization platform. This is true not only because it continues to set the bar as the most advanced solution technologically, but because it has been chosen by enterprises, service providers and a broad ecosystem of partners as the foundation upon which the next generation of IT will be built.
VMware, the global leader in cloud infrastructure, delivers customer-proven virtualization solutions that significantly reduce IT complexity, energizing business, while saving energy -- financial human and the Earth's.
Balkansky is vice president of product marketing, for VMware's Virtualization and Cloud Platforms.
View More
CommentVote
The destination has changed
By David Greschler, Director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business at Microsoft
If you think VMware is the winner of this conversation, I'd ask you to think again. IT leaders care about deploying a platform that is reliable, stable, cost-effective and easily adapts to changing business needs. A few years ago virtualization was seen as the final destination. Now it is clear this technology is a stepping stone to the more agile, responsive world of cloud computing.
I’m suggesting when you evaluate a virtualization platform, one of the most important characteristics you need to consider is how easy it will be to integrate the platform with the cloud.
The core benefits of virtualization – the ability to consolidate servers, quickly provision new applications, automatically backup system – pales in comparison to the speed and cost savings possible with cloud computing.
Microsoft vs. VMware: Who's better at disaster recovery?
Am I suggesting that you abandon virtualization and move to the cloud? No, make the transition on your terms. There are situations where you'll want to keep applications within your data center. However, I’m suggesting when you evaluate a virtualization platform, one of the most important characteristics you need to consider is how easy it will be to integrate the platform with the cloud.
Is there a common management framework so you can manage your on-premises and cloud applications? Is there a single identity service that spans both? Does your existing development environment and applications run in both locations?
VMware today offers a virtualization platform that only works within virtualized data centers. Microsoft has built a public cloud platform, Windows Azure, that runs on multiple data centers across the world. We have a worldwide network of service provider partners who can help you move to a cloud model. As a result, we uniquely offer common application development, management and identity across the virtualized data center, a private cloud environment and the public cloud.
For example, Lionbridge built a private cloud lab using Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, System Center and our self-service portal toolkit to enable 4,200 employees and independent workers worldwide to collaborate. The private cloud, which on average runs 400 virtual machines and at peak times up to 700 VMs, lets the company centralize IT management, simplify user processes, improve customer service and improve resource tracking. Lionbridge has one model for applications, identity and management.
Today Microsoft MCITP Certification and its partners offer all the capabilities you need to deploy key virtualization scenarios, such as business continuity, desktop virtualization (VDI), server consolidation and private cloud. For example, Continental Airlines expects to save $1.5 million annually using our infrastructure and platform technologies for server consolidation and VDI. As of a year ago, it consolidated more than 125 servers and now runs more than 320 virtual machines.
And Continental isn't flying alone. Microsoft Hyper-V and System Center have everything a customer needs for enterprise-wide data center deployments. This year Fortune 500 companies CH2M Hill and Union Pacific swapped VMware for Microsoft. They aren't the first to switch, and they're joined by many more organizations that have opted to use Hyper-V alongside VMware. That's easy because Microsoft System Center allows you to manage multiple hypervisor environments and the applications running within the virtual machines.
There was a perception among early adopters of server virtualization that Microsoft didn't have a rich feature set. That's not the case. More than a year ago we further simplified and expanded clustering nodes, and added live migration for zero-downtime migrations of virtual machines between Hyper-V servers.
Hyper-V also provides high availability with transparent and automatic failover of virtual machines. With service pack 1 of Windows Server 2008 R2, we're adding Dynamic Memory and a new high-fidelity remote desktop protocol.
Lastly, you should read Enterprise Strategy Group's lab results that show Hyper-V performance versus physical devices, with 95% to 99% of the performance of physical disks, and 89% to 98% of performance of the tested workloads compared to what can be achieved on physical machines.
At Microsoft we believe virtualization is so critical we've made it part of our server OS, our management tools and our cloud strategy. As a result, VMware is missing critical features: the ability to manage both physical and virtual machines; the ability to get information about the application running within the virtual machine located on-premises or cloud; the ability to manage virtual machines from Microsoft, VMware and soon Citrix.
That's probably the most glaring difference between the two companies: VMware is a virtualization company, and Microsoft is a platform company.
As a platform company, one of our goals is for you to easily and cost-effectively evolve to new computing models as innovation moves the industry forward. By putting virtualization into our platform we have made it easier for you to adopt cloud computing without major disruption or change in infrastructure.
For example, we built Windows Azure so you can take existing or new applications -- be it .Net, Java, Ruby, PHP -- and port most of them to a large-scale cloud platform. We've also made it clear you'll be able to move virtualized workloads to Windows Azure.
That means Microsoft will let you run all your applications – new, ported and virtualized – across traditional datacenters, private and public clouds. This capability is part of our strategy that's focused on delivering one application model, one identity model, and one management model across all computing environments.
Founded in 1975, Microsoft is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Greschler is director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business
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The Novell of virtualization?
By Guy Chapman (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 11:53am.
I think VMware is currently well positioned to become the Novell of virtualization. Consider the similarities: technical superiority, "career-safe" choice, large vested corporate user base, complex pricing models, arbitrary prioce increases in a captive market, Microsoft buying market share with free and nearly-free product.
VMware has far and away the best management interface. Right now it also probably has the best hypervisor. But the future is in cloud, and increasingly IT departments will be agnostic about hypervisors and using web service driven integration tools to managed a technically and geographically diverse infrastructure.
VMware has ridden the wave of enterprise virtualisation, but I think that wave is crashing on the beach. Following it is a much bigger and more disruptive wave - a virtual tsunami - of service-driven cloud-like infrastructure. It's far from clear who will ride this wave best. You can never discount Microsoft but the open source community has some compelling products in this space right now.
The Novell of Virtulization? Not any time soon....
By David Owen (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 6:13pm.
If VMware do go the way of Novell I think you are looking at a good decade before you even start seeing the signs. They are several steps ahead all the time and seem to be able to maintain those steps.
It’s interesting you reference the pricing models. Perhaps Microsoft is significantly cheaper at the very very small SME however once you get to enterprise (where most of the money is to be made) you will not find a significant difference.
I think it is far too early in the day to imagine which companies will do best within the cloud services department but VMware (as well as Microsoft) are well aware of this and are positioning them selves with this firmly in mind. It would be naive to think VMware will simply shrink because everyone has adopted cloud.
I would love to know what evidence you have for VMware "crashing on the beach".... they are by far and away the market leader and that % doesn’t seem to be wavering much. You only have to look at this pole to see that (and VMwares recent profit margins).
If anything I think the biggest threat is the opensource community. However you will need to ask yourself, Will big enterprise adopt opensource in a large enough manor to be able to mount a serious challenge?
There are no guarantees of course but if you are asking me, I think VMware will be the market leader for a very long time to come.
Re:
By Randy G (not verified) on Thu, 08/12/2010 - 6:51pm.
That's what I thought, but if you look at the cost calculator for VSphere + VMWare vs Hyper V plus System Center, for the same capability, VMWare costs 6-7 times as much for our use case of 609 servers (physical). I'd rather spend $500k and have a familiar management interface that works vice the est $6.5M for VMWare. see www.microsoft.com/virtualization and follow the link to compare and cost calculator. Microsoft is on the right track.
Microsoft HyperV For Me
By Alan Richards (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 2:30pm.
As a School IT manager that's just virualised our whole environment it has to be Microsoft. It fulfills everything we need from virtualisation at no cost to us.
As a School we already licence Windows under the Schools agreement and therefore we are licensed for HyperV. We did look at VMWare but it is so expensive for Schools and all it's extra features aren't worth the expense.
Hyper-V will turn a product into a feature
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 2:37pm.
with the commoditization of server virtualization, Hyper-V will eventually change the VMware ESX tool into a check box feature needed in the OS and loss of ability to charge for it.
Novell of Virtualization IF Microsoft can meet VMware Features
By Andy Kitzke (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:10pm.
I agree with Guy Chapman on VMware possibly walking down that path only if Microsoft can catch them on features. Right now VMware still keeps creating new features Hyper-V doesn't have and won't for a year or two until their engineers catch up.
Have you used Hyper-V?
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:26pm.
Anyone who has used both will know that VMWare is way ahead of Microsoft. Although I do believe that Microsoft is forcing the hypervisor into a commodity which benefits users of both products.
XenServer
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 3:47pm.
VMware is too expensive for us. Their three server package was a great idea until we needed to go to 5 servers.
So while we ran VMware for many moons, and loved the jump to ESXi 4, we moved on. Since we don't overcommit, and we don't buy any more MS than we have to, XenServer fits the bill perfectly (again, for us).
Been running 8 boxes for over a year now with no issues, easy to admin, and easily survived both a XenServer host failure (motherboard) and a NAS hardware failure.
We paid the $1k/server to license HA recently, and now life is even better. Price-wise, VMware couldn't touch our setup if they wanted to. 8 servers with 2x CPUs, and a common admin console.
VMware has a killer desktop product. But on the server end, we're not buying the Cadillac when we have the speedy and reliable Honda.
If we could AFFORD the Cadillac, we'd be in there. But VMware is still too pricetag greedy for a less than large-scale company.
Again, YMMV.
Agree with every word.
By Anon (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 4:11pm.
Agree with every word. vSphere is good and reliable virtualization platform but that's it. HyperV have a lot more on the plate and it integrated into Windows Server that far less picky about hardware and cost is NOTHING....
VMware is indeed Novell of virtualization - once famous then forgotten
Why Only Two?
By Robin Jackson (not verified) on Mon, 08/09/2010 - 4:14pm.
There are far more mature products than Hyper-V which give VMWare a better run for their money. VirtualBox and Xen both come to mind (Oracle/Sun and Citrix respectively).
The real winner will be the one that its VM and architecture agnostic.
What do I mean by that?
I mean that the VM format and where it is deployed is of no consequence.
IMHO actually Novell is way ahead of the pack with their vision of being able to provision between the "private cloud" (aka Virtual Hosts) and the "public cloud."
Novell has invested heavily in brains that understand the standards, how to crack the different formats apart, put them back together again and move them on the fly.
Is it any wonder that VMWare and Novell have partnered recently?
And why is everyone forgetting the fact that Novell and Microsoft have had an Interoperability agreement for years that enabled Novell (with its Orchestrator product) to to a hot move of a Hyper-V machine before Microsoft could.
You're asking the WRONG questions IMHO.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Mcse Certification Exam
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer Mcse Certification Exam
MCSE Messaging on Windows 2000 Server (8 papers) *
MCSE Messaging on Windows 2003 Server (8 papers)
MCSE Security on Windows 2000 Server (8 papers) *
MCSE Security on Windows 2003 Server (8 papers)
* In reality, however, many of the examinations for the MCSE Windows 2000 tracks have been removed (including all the ‘required’ tests) that makes it impossible for anyone just starting to complete any of the Windows 2000 MCSE track (main or specialist). This means that candidates who are just starting out on their journey should opt for MCSE Windows 2003 track. However, any person who has already completed all the ‘required’ for reviews of any of the tracks in Windows 2000 can still complete your MCSE on Windows 2000 credentials to complete the required number of Windows 2000 exams optional.
To be MCSE qualified, a candidate must pass either seven or eight tests, depending on the track pursued. It is a mixture of ‘required’ (compulsory) examinations, and tests of choice. In some cases, candidates may use the credentials of a third party, such as CompTIA, MCDST or Microsoft MCTS Training own credits for an elective exam. Tests can be taken in any order, but only once the seven (or eight) have passed examinations to the candidates obtain the MCSE title. An MCP credential is earned, however, for every test passed.
To pass MCSE candidates must achieve a minimum score on a scale of 700 in each of the exams. The scale of Microsoft MCITP Certification and the degree
MCSE Messaging on Windows 2000 Server (8 papers) *
MCSE Messaging on Windows 2003 Server (8 papers)
MCSE Security on Windows 2000 Server (8 papers) *
MCSE Security on Windows 2003 Server (8 papers)
* In reality, however, many of the examinations for the MCSE Windows 2000 tracks have been removed (including all the ‘required’ tests) that makes it impossible for anyone just starting to complete any of the Windows 2000 MCSE track (main or specialist). This means that candidates who are just starting out on their journey should opt for MCSE Windows 2003 track. However, any person who has already completed all the ‘required’ for reviews of any of the tracks in Windows 2000 can still complete your MCSE on Windows 2000 credentials to complete the required number of Windows 2000 exams optional.
To be MCSE qualified, a candidate must pass either seven or eight tests, depending on the track pursued. It is a mixture of ‘required’ (compulsory) examinations, and tests of choice. In some cases, candidates may use the credentials of a third party, such as CompTIA, MCDST or Microsoft MCTS Training own credits for an elective exam. Tests can be taken in any order, but only once the seven (or eight) have passed examinations to the candidates obtain the MCSE title. An MCP credential is earned, however, for every test passed.
To pass MCSE candidates must achieve a minimum score on a scale of 700 in each of the exams. The scale of Microsoft MCITP Certification and the degree
Monday, August 9, 2010
Microsoft New Tagline Hey It Could Be Worse
Microsoft New Tagline Hey It Could Be Worse
Grab your churros and get ready to party like it's Windows 7 launch day: Microsoft is taking on a new identity.
The Windows wizards announced a new corporate tagline during a meeting with employees this week, a Microsoft MCTS Training spokesperson has confirmed. So, are you ready for the million-dollar phrase?
Geolocation and Application Delivery: Download now
"Be what's next."
Yep -- that's it. I'm assuming they aren't talking about the Microsoft Kin.
The tagline, as first reported by tech blog Engadget, was revealed at the company's annual Microsoft Global Experience conference in Atlanta. If it leaves you scratching your head, don't feel bad: Microsoft has a bit of a history with less-than-stellar slogans. In fact, some of the company's past catchphrases make "Be what's next" look downright brilliant.
Behold:
Microsoft Tagline #1: "It just works."
The tagline for Microsoft's Windows Millennium Edition would have been bad enough on its own. The worst part, though, was the fact that two years earlier, Microsoft used an eerily similar slogan for Windows 98: "It just works better."
Apparently, even the folks inside Redmond realized Win Me was a step backward.
Microsoft Tagline #2: "The 'Wow' starts now."
From Vista. The "wow," suffice it to say, did not begin.
Microsoft Tagline #3: "People-ready."
Is it just me, or does this sound more like the motto for some sort of mass transit system?
Microsoft Tagline #4: "Your potential. Our passion."
Also the name of a new soap opera starring Ricky Martin.
Microsoft Tagline #5: "It's better with the butterfly."
This one came from a 2002 campaign for Microsoft's MSN 8 subscription service. Insects worldwide are still trying to live it down.
Microsoft Tagline #6: "Start something."
Anything, really. Especially if it's a campaign to create a meaningful tagline.
Microsoft Tagline #7: "Welcome to the social."
Watch it bring you to your sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na knees, knees.
Microsoft MCITP Certification Tagline #8: "What's a microprocessor without it?"
Microsoft's first-ever catchphrase. Also part of a cartoon called "The Legend of Micro-Kid" -- yes, seriously.
As PC Today explains it:
"The cartoon depicted a small microchip character as a boxer who possessed speed and power but quickly tired out because he had no real training. The other character, a trainer complete with a derby on his head and big stogie hanging out of his mouth, related the story of how the Micro-Kid had a great future but needed a manager, such as himself, in order to succeed."
So that's how Microsoft's marketing journey began. Suddenly, it all makes sense.
JR Raphael is a PCWorld contributing editor and the co-founder of eSarcasm. He's on both Twitter and Facebook; come say hello.
Grab your churros and get ready to party like it's Windows 7 launch day: Microsoft is taking on a new identity.
The Windows wizards announced a new corporate tagline during a meeting with employees this week, a Microsoft MCTS Training spokesperson has confirmed. So, are you ready for the million-dollar phrase?
Geolocation and Application Delivery: Download now
"Be what's next."
Yep -- that's it. I'm assuming they aren't talking about the Microsoft Kin.
The tagline, as first reported by tech blog Engadget, was revealed at the company's annual Microsoft Global Experience conference in Atlanta. If it leaves you scratching your head, don't feel bad: Microsoft has a bit of a history with less-than-stellar slogans. In fact, some of the company's past catchphrases make "Be what's next" look downright brilliant.
Behold:
Microsoft Tagline #1: "It just works."
The tagline for Microsoft's Windows Millennium Edition would have been bad enough on its own. The worst part, though, was the fact that two years earlier, Microsoft used an eerily similar slogan for Windows 98: "It just works better."
Apparently, even the folks inside Redmond realized Win Me was a step backward.
Microsoft Tagline #2: "The 'Wow' starts now."
From Vista. The "wow," suffice it to say, did not begin.
Microsoft Tagline #3: "People-ready."
Is it just me, or does this sound more like the motto for some sort of mass transit system?
Microsoft Tagline #4: "Your potential. Our passion."
Also the name of a new soap opera starring Ricky Martin.
Microsoft Tagline #5: "It's better with the butterfly."
This one came from a 2002 campaign for Microsoft's MSN 8 subscription service. Insects worldwide are still trying to live it down.
Microsoft Tagline #6: "Start something."
Anything, really. Especially if it's a campaign to create a meaningful tagline.
Microsoft Tagline #7: "Welcome to the social."
Watch it bring you to your sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na knees, knees.
Microsoft MCITP Certification Tagline #8: "What's a microprocessor without it?"
Microsoft's first-ever catchphrase. Also part of a cartoon called "The Legend of Micro-Kid" -- yes, seriously.
As PC Today explains it:
"The cartoon depicted a small microchip character as a boxer who possessed speed and power but quickly tired out because he had no real training. The other character, a trainer complete with a derby on his head and big stogie hanging out of his mouth, related the story of how the Micro-Kid had a great future but needed a manager, such as himself, in order to succeed."
So that's how Microsoft's marketing journey began. Suddenly, it all makes sense.
JR Raphael is a PCWorld contributing editor and the co-founder of eSarcasm. He's on both Twitter and Facebook; come say hello.
Microsoft New Tagline Hey It Could Be Worse
Microsoft New Tagline Hey It Could Be Worse
Grab your churros and get ready to party like it's Windows 7 launch day: Microsoft is taking on a new identity.
The Windows wizards announced a new corporate tagline during a meeting with employees this week, a Microsoft MCTS Training spokesperson has confirmed. So, are you ready for the million-dollar phrase?
Geolocation and Application Delivery: Download now
"Be what's next."
Yep -- that's it. I'm assuming they aren't talking about the Microsoft Kin.
The tagline, as first reported by tech blog Engadget, was revealed at the company's annual Microsoft Global Experience conference in Atlanta. If it leaves you scratching your head, don't feel bad: Microsoft has a bit of a history with less-than-stellar slogans. In fact, some of the company's past catchphrases make "Be what's next" look downright brilliant.
Behold:
Microsoft Tagline #1: "It just works."
The tagline for Microsoft's Windows Millennium Edition would have been bad enough on its own. The worst part, though, was the fact that two years earlier, Microsoft used an eerily similar slogan for Windows 98: "It just works better."
Apparently, even the folks inside Redmond realized Win Me was a step backward.
Microsoft Tagline #2: "The 'Wow' starts now."
From Vista. The "wow," suffice it to say, did not begin.
Microsoft Tagline #3: "People-ready."
Is it just me, or does this sound more like the motto for some sort of mass transit system?
Microsoft Tagline #4: "Your potential. Our passion."
Also the name of a new soap opera starring Ricky Martin.
Microsoft Tagline #5: "It's better with the butterfly."
This one came from a 2002 campaign for Microsoft's MSN 8 subscription service. Insects worldwide are still trying to live it down.
Microsoft Tagline #6: "Start something."
Anything, really. Especially if it's a campaign to create a meaningful tagline.
Microsoft Tagline #7: "Welcome to the social."
Watch it bring you to your sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na knees, knees.
Microsoft MCITP Certification Tagline #8: "What's a microprocessor without it?"
Microsoft's first-ever catchphrase. Also part of a cartoon called "The Legend of Micro-Kid" -- yes, seriously.
As PC Today explains it:
"The cartoon depicted a small microchip character as a boxer who possessed speed and power but quickly tired out because he had no real training. The other character, a trainer complete with a derby on his head and big stogie hanging out of his mouth, related the story of how the Micro-Kid had a great future but needed a manager, such as himself, in order to succeed."
So that's how Microsoft's marketing journey began. Suddenly, it all makes sense.
JR Raphael is a PCWorld contributing editor and the co-founder of eSarcasm. He's on both Twitter and Facebook; come say hello.
Grab your churros and get ready to party like it's Windows 7 launch day: Microsoft is taking on a new identity.
The Windows wizards announced a new corporate tagline during a meeting with employees this week, a Microsoft MCTS Training spokesperson has confirmed. So, are you ready for the million-dollar phrase?
Geolocation and Application Delivery: Download now
"Be what's next."
Yep -- that's it. I'm assuming they aren't talking about the Microsoft Kin.
The tagline, as first reported by tech blog Engadget, was revealed at the company's annual Microsoft Global Experience conference in Atlanta. If it leaves you scratching your head, don't feel bad: Microsoft has a bit of a history with less-than-stellar slogans. In fact, some of the company's past catchphrases make "Be what's next" look downright brilliant.
Behold:
Microsoft Tagline #1: "It just works."
The tagline for Microsoft's Windows Millennium Edition would have been bad enough on its own. The worst part, though, was the fact that two years earlier, Microsoft used an eerily similar slogan for Windows 98: "It just works better."
Apparently, even the folks inside Redmond realized Win Me was a step backward.
Microsoft Tagline #2: "The 'Wow' starts now."
From Vista. The "wow," suffice it to say, did not begin.
Microsoft Tagline #3: "People-ready."
Is it just me, or does this sound more like the motto for some sort of mass transit system?
Microsoft Tagline #4: "Your potential. Our passion."
Also the name of a new soap opera starring Ricky Martin.
Microsoft Tagline #5: "It's better with the butterfly."
This one came from a 2002 campaign for Microsoft's MSN 8 subscription service. Insects worldwide are still trying to live it down.
Microsoft Tagline #6: "Start something."
Anything, really. Especially if it's a campaign to create a meaningful tagline.
Microsoft Tagline #7: "Welcome to the social."
Watch it bring you to your sha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na knees, knees.
Microsoft MCITP Certification Tagline #8: "What's a microprocessor without it?"
Microsoft's first-ever catchphrase. Also part of a cartoon called "The Legend of Micro-Kid" -- yes, seriously.
As PC Today explains it:
"The cartoon depicted a small microchip character as a boxer who possessed speed and power but quickly tired out because he had no real training. The other character, a trainer complete with a derby on his head and big stogie hanging out of his mouth, related the story of how the Micro-Kid had a great future but needed a manager, such as himself, in order to succeed."
So that's how Microsoft's marketing journey began. Suddenly, it all makes sense.
JR Raphael is a PCWorld contributing editor and the co-founder of eSarcasm. He's on both Twitter and Facebook; come say hello.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Microsoft sells 10 Windows 7 licenses per second
Microsoft sells 10 Windows 7 licenses per second
Microsoft sold nearly 10 copies of Windows 7 every second over the last month, according to numbers the company released Thursday.
Yesterday, Peter Klein, Microsoft's chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts of the latest Windows 7 milestone. "With 175 million licenses sold to date, it is the fastest selling operating system ever, and now runs on over 15% of all PCs worldwide," Klein said during an afternoon earnings call.
NetScaler vs. F5 View the Comparison : Download now
A month ago, Microsoft MCTS Training announced that it had sold 150 million Windows 7 licenses.
By Microsoft's numbers, the company sold 25 million licenses during the 29 days between June 23 and July 21, a pace that represents sales of 9.97 copies of Windows 7 per second.
On Tuesday, Microsoft credited strong sales of Windows 7 , as well as the introduction of Office 2010, for pushing its second quarter revenues to a record $16 billion -- a 22% jump over the same quarter in 2009. Windows revenue grew by more than $1 billion, to $4.55 billion, according to the company.
As it has several times in the past, yesterday Microsoft called Windows 7 "the fastest-selling operating system ever."
The OS has certainly outperformed its predecessor , Windows Vista.
According to data from Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Net Applications, which tracks operating system usage share by monitoring 40,000 sites that use its Web metrics service, Windows 7 held a 14.4% share as of July 21, nine months after its release. Vista took 22 months to reach the same mark.
Klein's statement that Windows 7 now accounts for 15% of the in-use operating systems worldwide not only differed from Net Applications' numbers, but also from those of Irish analytics firm StatCounter, which pegs Windows 7's current global share at 17.6%. It was also muddied by a competing claim by Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc, who said that the new OS now powers 16% of all PCs .
On Friday, Microsoft MCITP Certification said that Klein had misspoke, and that 16% was the accurate number. A company spokeswoman said that Windows 7's usage share was derived from internal data.
Microsoft sold nearly 10 copies of Windows 7 every second over the last month, according to numbers the company released Thursday.
Yesterday, Peter Klein, Microsoft's chief financial officer, told Wall Street analysts of the latest Windows 7 milestone. "With 175 million licenses sold to date, it is the fastest selling operating system ever, and now runs on over 15% of all PCs worldwide," Klein said during an afternoon earnings call.
NetScaler vs. F5 View the Comparison : Download now
A month ago, Microsoft MCTS Training announced that it had sold 150 million Windows 7 licenses.
By Microsoft's numbers, the company sold 25 million licenses during the 29 days between June 23 and July 21, a pace that represents sales of 9.97 copies of Windows 7 per second.
On Tuesday, Microsoft credited strong sales of Windows 7 , as well as the introduction of Office 2010, for pushing its second quarter revenues to a record $16 billion -- a 22% jump over the same quarter in 2009. Windows revenue grew by more than $1 billion, to $4.55 billion, according to the company.
As it has several times in the past, yesterday Microsoft called Windows 7 "the fastest-selling operating system ever."
The OS has certainly outperformed its predecessor , Windows Vista.
According to data from Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based Net Applications, which tracks operating system usage share by monitoring 40,000 sites that use its Web metrics service, Windows 7 held a 14.4% share as of July 21, nine months after its release. Vista took 22 months to reach the same mark.
Klein's statement that Windows 7 now accounts for 15% of the in-use operating systems worldwide not only differed from Net Applications' numbers, but also from those of Irish analytics firm StatCounter, which pegs Windows 7's current global share at 17.6%. It was also muddied by a competing claim by Microsoft spokesman Brandon LeBlanc, who said that the new OS now powers 16% of all PCs .
On Friday, Microsoft MCITP Certification said that Klein had misspoke, and that 16% was the accurate number. A company spokeswoman said that Windows 7's usage share was derived from internal data.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Microsoft sets pricing, October release for Office 2011
Microsoft sets pricing, October release for Office 2011
When it arrives on retail shelves later this year, the next version of Microsoft MCTS Training Office for the Mac will cost between 20 percent to 50 percent less than Office 2008, according to pricing announced by Microsoft Monday.
Microsoft Office 2011 will come in two editions--a Mac Home and Student version and a Mac Home and Business offering--when it ships at the end of October.
EMA Research Report "Customer Satisfaction with Application Delivery Controller Vendors": Download now
Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 includes the Word word-processing, PowerPoint presentation, Excel spreadsheet, and Messenger IM applications. It will cost $119 for a single license and $149 for a family pack that allows for installs on three Macs.
Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Messenger, along with Outlook for the Mac. Outlook replaces Entourage as Office's mail client and is one of the centerpiece changes of the 2011 edition of the productivity suite. The Home and Office edition will cost $199 for a single license and $279 for a multi-pack that allows two installs on two machines.
The prices for the 2011 editions of Office compare to $149 for the Home and Student Edition of Office 2008 and $399 for Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition. Microsoft says the new prices for the Mac version of Office create more consistent pricing across platforms.
In addition to the two versions of Office for the Mac, Microsoft will offer an academic edition for $99. Featuring Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Messenger, Microsoft Office for Mac Academic 2011 will be available only to higher-education students, staff, and faculty, Microsoft says.
While announcing the pricing for the 2011 version of Office, Microsoft also set an October release date for its productivity suite. Previously, the software giant had only said that the new version would be out before the 2010 holiday season.
Users who buy Office 2008 starting on Monday will be able to upgrade to the 2011 version for free. The offer runs through November 30, 2010, and users can register for the free upgrade at Microsoft's Website. Microsoft didn't provide any other upgrade pricing details for existing Office users.
When it ships, Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac will be available in more than 100 countries. Microsoft will add two new languages--Polish and Russian--to the 11 languages it already supports. Office 2011 will also be available in English as well as Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Microsoft MCITP Certification said the new version of Office will ship in several regions in October, with continued availability throughout the rest of 2010. The company will provide a list of country-specific availability in late October.
First announced in February, Office 2011 promises better compatibility across platforms, improved collaboration tools, and a modified interface. Besides the addition of Outlook, the new suite will include a more elaborate template gallery and a Ribbon feature that replaces the Elements Gallery and provides quick access to commonly used tools.
When it arrives on retail shelves later this year, the next version of Microsoft MCTS Training Office for the Mac will cost between 20 percent to 50 percent less than Office 2008, according to pricing announced by Microsoft Monday.
Microsoft Office 2011 will come in two editions--a Mac Home and Student version and a Mac Home and Business offering--when it ships at the end of October.
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Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Student 2011 includes the Word word-processing, PowerPoint presentation, Excel spreadsheet, and Messenger IM applications. It will cost $119 for a single license and $149 for a family pack that allows for installs on three Macs.
Microsoft Office for Mac Home and Business 2011 includes Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Messenger, along with Outlook for the Mac. Outlook replaces Entourage as Office's mail client and is one of the centerpiece changes of the 2011 edition of the productivity suite. The Home and Office edition will cost $199 for a single license and $279 for a multi-pack that allows two installs on two machines.
The prices for the 2011 editions of Office compare to $149 for the Home and Student Edition of Office 2008 and $399 for Office 2008 for Mac Business Edition. Microsoft says the new prices for the Mac version of Office create more consistent pricing across platforms.
In addition to the two versions of Office for the Mac, Microsoft will offer an academic edition for $99. Featuring Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Messenger, Microsoft Office for Mac Academic 2011 will be available only to higher-education students, staff, and faculty, Microsoft says.
While announcing the pricing for the 2011 version of Office, Microsoft also set an October release date for its productivity suite. Previously, the software giant had only said that the new version would be out before the 2010 holiday season.
Users who buy Office 2008 starting on Monday will be able to upgrade to the 2011 version for free. The offer runs through November 30, 2010, and users can register for the free upgrade at Microsoft's Website. Microsoft didn't provide any other upgrade pricing details for existing Office users.
When it ships, Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac will be available in more than 100 countries. Microsoft will add two new languages--Polish and Russian--to the 11 languages it already supports. Office 2011 will also be available in English as well as Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish.
Microsoft MCITP Certification said the new version of Office will ship in several regions in October, with continued availability throughout the rest of 2010. The company will provide a list of country-specific availability in late October.
First announced in February, Office 2011 promises better compatibility across platforms, improved collaboration tools, and a modified interface. Besides the addition of Outlook, the new suite will include a more elaborate template gallery and a Ribbon feature that replaces the Elements Gallery and provides quick access to commonly used tools.
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