Microsoft: It's the Era of the Cloud Operating System

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Microsoft Server and Tools President Satya Nadella delivers the day one keynote address at the 20th annual TechEd conference in Orlando, Fla. (Photo: Microsoft Corp.)

Microsoft TechEd 2012 is underway this week in Orlando this week. Microsoft declared the era of the Cloud Operating System, while EMC announced new "proven solutions" configurations and Symantec extended its Disaster Recovery as a service to Windows Azure.

Monday at the beginning of the North America TechEd conference Microsoft Server and Tools Business President Satya Nadella welcomed a sold-out crowd of more than 10,000 to the era of the cloud operating system (OS) for infrastructure. He also announced updates to the company’s developer tools and availability of the next release of Windows Intune, the company’s cloud-based solution for PC and mobile device management and security. Windows Server 2012 is the cloud-optimized server OS for customers of all sizes, and Windows Azure, updated with new services and features, delivers both infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service capabilities.

"The operating system does two things: it looks after the hardware, and it provides a platform for applications," Nadella said. "The modern data center and modern apps put more pressure than ever on infrastructure to become truly cloud-optimized, and that’s where Microsoft builds on our legacy with the OS to help our customers. Microsoft is your partner in the transformation of IT because only Microsoft offers the modern, yet familiar, platform that enables you to connect with the cloud on your terms."

A public preview was made available of Microsoft Team Foundation Service, an application lifecycle management tool hosted on Windows Azure. It features collaboration tools, a code repository, and powerful reporting and traceability tools to help teams more effectively manage software development. A new release of Windows InTune includes expanded management and security benefits through mobile device management and adds people-centric management capabilities and upgrade rights to the latest version of Windows.

EMC Proven Solutions

EMC announced new Proven Solutions and Microsoft Private Cloud FastTrack configurations to help Microsoft customers successfully transform and accelerate their Microsoft applications environments to the cloud. Solutions include EMC Infrastructure for Microsoft Private Cloud enabled by EMC VNX5300, Replication Manager, Windows Server Hyper-V,Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server and System center. These solutions and configurations provide detailed design best practices for accelerating deployments of virtualized Microsoft Private Cloud environments. EMC also announced broad technology support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 across storage and backup products following the general availability from Microsoft.

"EMC continues to provide customers with simplified management and control in virtualizing and transforming their Microsoft application environments," said Prasad Rampalli, Senior Vice President, Solutions Group, EMC Corporation. "For more than a decade EMC and Microsoft have helped customers to efficiently and securely scale their solutions to derive the full benefit of cloud computing. This announcement represents the enormous value that can be derived through joint collaboration to help customers simplify, transform and accelerate their journey to the cloud."

Symantec DR on Azure

Symantec (SYMC) announced it will extend Symantec’s Storage Foundation High Availability for Windows and Veritas Volume replicator disaster recovery (DR) software solution to the Windows Azure cloud platform.  The solution will expand the ability of Symantec’s existing business continuity solutions for Microsoft, providing on-premise-to-cloud disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).

“In this economy, customers see cloud computing as a new option for flexible, cost-effective computing,” said Jean S. Bozman, Research Vice President, IDC. “Many organizations have been looking for a way to automate the recovery of production data -- and to keep important applications running -- in the event of an outage that has the potential to disrupt business for hours. Leveraging cloud computing as a Disaster Recovery (DR) target addresses business continuity needs for organizations that cannot afford a secondary site or at-a-distance failovers for mission-critical, virtualized workloads.”

“Windows Azure is designed to provide resilience and availability,” said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president, developer and platform evangelism at Microsoft. “Symantec’s service aims to extend the built-in reliability of Windows Azure and help customers recover on-premises applications and data with a disaster recovery and business continuity solution utilizing complementary technology from both Symantec and Microsoft.”

Microsoft TechEd conference updates can be found on Twitter hashtag #TechEd.