Microsoft Applauds Cost Savings Associated with Virtualization

In the context of the global economic downturn, Microsoft has been consistently emphasizing the need to cut costs, pointing to virtualization as one of the solutions to save a pretty penny. At the same time, the Redmond company has not been shy at all in applauding its success stories, and invariably also those of its partners and customers. Lionbridge Technologies is an illustrative example in this regard, as the company managed to save $200,000 in 2008 following the deployment of Microsoft virtualization and infrastructure solutions.

“Most of the Lionbridge core infrastructure has been migrated to Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology. Moving our local labs onto Hyper-V and the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager-based cloud platform has saved us time and money,” revealed Oyvind Kaldestad, vice president of Corporate IT for Lionbridge Technologies.

Lionbridge's savings come from cutting down the costs for hardware investments. Instead, Hyper-V, Microsoft's hypervisor technology, along with the management solutions from the Redmond company have helped Lionbridge do more with less. Microsoft's technology is at the basis of Lionbridge's Virtual Cloud Lab datacenter available worldwide in more than 100 countries.

“With Microsoft virtualization in both the server operating system and in the holistic management tools, we’re able to remove the barriers to enterprisewide virtualization,” added Zane Adam, senior director of virtualization strategy, Microsoft. “Customers like Lionbridge receive a cost-effective, easier to deploy, use and manage solution that gives them valuable business agility.”

For its Virtual Cloud Lab, Lionbridge uses Windows Server 2008 with Terminal Services Gateway with Terminal Services RemoteApp network software. The configuration permits workers to do their job not only from the company's offices worldwide, but also from remote locations, securely.

“We chose the Microsoft solution versus others in the market because it was the most affordable, met the existing skills of our employees and was enterprise ready. Moving to a virtualized environment enabled us to save hundreds of thousands of dollars in 2008 alone due to reductions in hardware costs, as well as associated power, cooling and manual labor costs,” Kaldestad said.