14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is aiming high with its goals related to virtualization. The Redmond company is by no means the leader of the virtualization market, but has come up with a strategy that could very well take it to the top. Concomitantly with the latest Windows Server operating system, Microsoft is also making available a virtualization solution. Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is currently in Beta stage, being scheduled to be released to manufacturing in the next few months, and is just beginning to get its place into the company's broader virtualization strategy.
"Think it's well known, we're not the market leader in server virtualization," Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer during his keynote address at the Heroes Happen Here Windows Server 2008 launch in Los Angeles. Ballmer's vision of virtualization is that Microsoft will implement a strategy where it also focuses on the management of data centers, applications, hardware, software, operations, data configurations, etc. And in this context, virtualization is just a piece of the puzzle. The immediate goal is to make reduce the costs associated with virtualization solutions, while simplifying complexity and streamlining implementation.
"And so as we brought Windows Server 2008 and Hyper-V to market, we took a simple goal in mind: we want to democratize virtualization. Virtualization should be, properly, if desired, run on 90 percent or 100 percent of servers, not the current five percent, six percent, seven percent. Now, people said: this can't be a big compromise, Steve. You're going to still have to give us the kind of high scalability, high memory, good performance that the market leader does. You're going to need to really work hard to make sure that you continue to maintain minimal footprint, because some of the advantage of virtualization is to have fewer moving parts in the market," Ballmer stated.
What is Microsoft's recipe for virtualization success? Well, for starters, the company is providing a single set of management tools, this in combination with basing the solutions on already existent management concepts. Furthermore, Ballmer considers that Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V comes with the right price tad, as do the management tools. This is the company's way of catalyzing the democratization of virtualization.
"And we think with these three elements in place, we can really help propel virtualization to be a mainstream technology on all servers as opposed to, in some senses, something which is only simple -- which is too complicated for most machines, and too expensive for most machines. So I think a lot of good work in Hyper-V, Windows Server 2008, and I'm sure if you talk to some of the heroes, some of our leading-edge adopters, you'll really get something of a sense of that in a strong way," Ballmer added.