Microsoft Focuses on the Cloud at TechEd 2011

Atlanta—At the Microsoft TechEd North America 2011 conference here, Microsoft officials spoke on how to build, deploy, manage and scale applications for the cloud and for devices.

In a keynote, Robert Wahbe, corporate vice president of the Server and Tools Marketing Group at Microsoft, said as the trend toward virtualization increases, the move to the cloud will be easier.

After citing figures on the increased use of virtualization in data centers, Wahbe said, “This move to virtualization is setting us all for a much bigger inflection point, and that is the cloud—the public cloud and the private cloud.”

Then Wahbe showcased how customers HSBC and Travelocity.com LP are using Microsoft’s virtualization and public and private cloud solutions to help reduce costs and speed innovation. In addition, NetApp and Cisco Systems have joined the growing ranks of partners in Microsoft’s Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program, designed to streamline the delivery of a private cloud.

Meanwhile, to help ensure that HSBC, a worldwide financial services firm, can accommodate shifts in demand for a range of internal systems and also further simplify management of its infrastructure, the company announced it will use Microsoft Hyper-V in combination with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. HSBC today announced its first project to deploy Microsoft Hyper-V to support Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, which will help reduce the cost of desktop management.

In addition, NetApp and Cisco joined the Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track program, which enables Microsoft and its partners to deliver a broad choice of predefined, validated configurations to accelerate well-managed private cloud deployments. NetApp has teamed with Cisco to develop a private cloud solution, the NetApp Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track with Cisco datacenter architecture.

“By creating a solution with Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track, NetApp with Cisco is simplifying private cloud deployment and operations,” said Phil Brotherton, vice president and general manager of the Microsoft Business Unit at NetApp, in a statement. “Customers will be able to reduce deployment time from days to hours, and they will gain greater utilization.”

For more, read the eWEEK article: Microsoft Plays Up Public, Private Cloud at TechEd 2011.