Microsoft Offers Innovative Ways to Cut Costs, and Boost Availability and Efficiency

Microsoft is little shy of applauding every technological success, no matter how small, especially when it could potentially end up in additional customers embracing its software products. The latest example in this regard is A & A Contract Customs Brokers, which adopted solutions from both Microsoft and NetApp. With the integrated solutions from the two companies, A & A has managed to fend off the necessity to buy and add more storage and servers to its IT infrastructure, with absolutely no impact on the company's growth. According to Microsoft, the investment NetApp made in Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and System Center, on top of the NetApp storage products, will keep the freight broker from pouring any additional financial resources into storage for the next couple of years.

“NetApp and Microsoft are delivering end-to-end virtualization solutions for IT consolidation, site recovery, and remote offices,” explained Zane Adam, senior director of Virtualization Strategy and Management at Microsoft. “NetApp provides one of the best storage platforms to deliver integrated solutions in conjunction with Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology and Microsoft System Center. Together we’re giving our customers innovative ways to help reduce costs, and improve availability and efficiency.”

For A & A, the end-to-end virtualization solution from Microsoft and NetApp represented a way out of constantly adding disks to its storage solutions, while still having a scalability problem. Following the implementation of the Microsoft and NetApp technologies, A & A now requires 60% less servers to run its applications. Manageability has also increased with the adoption of System Center, and no less than 70% of storage capacity is now free for use for Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V.

“A & A is an excellent example of how our customers are reducing their storage requirements by 50 to 70 percent using our storage efficiency technologies,” added Patrick Rogers, vice president of Solutions Marketing at NetApp. “We understand the challenges our customers are facing to do more with less and reduce costs and unplanned downtime. Microsoft’s server virtualization platform gives customers a powerful solution to consolidate their IT infrastructure. Together, we’re helping customers maximize the value of their storage and servers in their virtualized environments. NetApp will even guarantee that customers will use less storage as part of our Virtualization Guarantee* Program.”