Virtualization is about having an end-to-end plan

In which verticals do you see the demand for virtualization going up?

With the launch of Windows 2008, we are now reaching out to IT
professionals, and our focus this year too would be on as many IT professionals
as possible. Besides, we are also looking at enriching our partner ecosystem by
investing in partner readiness and will be devising training modules for them.
We will also be launching a set of management products with a systems center,
where essentially there will be one core memberthe Virtualization Machine
Managerin early August. Virtualization is co-related to a number of servers,
which, in turn, are related to the sectors where IT spend is typically high. For
the SMB segment, we will be dependent on the partner channel and the nature of
the engagement would depend on the business model.

How important is virtualization for CIOs?

Incidentally, virtualization is one of the top three priority areas for any
CIO, and there is a need for it as we have already seen from our experience in
mature markets. Virtualization is not just about virtualizing servers; rather
CIOs see the need for an end-to-end plan in place. Moreover, there is the issue
of manageability of virtualization. CIOs are more comfortable in managing
physical environment but in virtualization there is the issue of managing
virtual environments.

Radhesh Balakrishnan, director, Platform Strategy, Microsoft India

What will be your strategy to grow in the virtualization domain in India?

Our virtualization strategy for this year forms the foundation
infrastructure of the companys vision, called Dynamic IT. As part of our
continued focus on virtualization, Microsoft will soon be announcing the
availability of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation Hypervisor-based
server virtualization technology that allows users to make the best use of their
server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate
virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine.

What is your outlook on desktop virtualization?

Microsoft has been looking very seriously at desktop and application
virtualization and has had an early success in India with initial adopters such
as Siemens Information Processing Services (SIPS) and Sutherland Technology
Services having a very positive feedback.

Stuti Das

stutid@cybermedia.co.in