Microsoft talks virtualization and cloud
Posted by brennels on June 16, 2009
“Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business did the virtual conference thing for industry analysts last week. Fellow analyst Judith Hurwitz ably describes the limitations of this format. I concur with much of what she writes.
That said, I give Microsoft props for trying. A lot of companies have canceled or decided not to hold in-person events this year without making any real effort to put together an alternative. Limited interactivity and engagement aside, some of the pre-recorded videos were informative, STB President Bob Muglia was in typical energetic form, and I had good telephone discussions on a variety of topics.
Here are some of my take-aways and observations.
“Costs less” was a big part of Microsoft’s pitch. This is consistent with the theme of its consumer advertising. It’s also consistent in that Microsoft chooses targets for comparison with some care. For example, Microsoft isn’t so much emphasizing low cost in the context of general scale-out infrastructure (where Linux and other open-source software is most widely deployed and popular today). Rather, Bob Muglia emphasized being able to put together solutions with partners at a fraction of the cost of proprietary software; he especially emphasized business intelligence, which has been the focus of a great deal of SQL Server development over the past few years.”
Read the rest of the article for more on this discussion around Hyper-V and Cloud Computing here
