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