CIOL: How will customers benefit from the Linux device drivers?

TH: Many customers are looking into how virtualization can reduce the cost of deploying and managing their IT infrastructure through server consolidation and more efficient use of server resources.

Customers have told us that they would like to standardize on one virtualization platform, and the Linux device drivers will help customers who are running Linux to consolidate their Linux and Windows servers on a single virtualization platform, thereby reducing the complexity of their infrastructure.

Consequently, they’ll have more choices in how to develop and deploy solutions, while still managing their entire data center from a single management console.

CIOL: What motivated Microsoft to do this?

SR: The current economic climate has a lot of companies consolidating their hardware and software assets, deferring new software and hardware purchases, and reducing their travel and training expenses, doing everything they can to cut controllable costs to the bone and get the most out of what they’ve got so they can hang onto their skilled staff.

Many companies are turning to Microsoft more frequently to help them succeed in a heterogeneous technology world because we understand that reducing complexity is a key factor to reducing cost. We are seeing interoperability as a lever for business growth.

So there’s mutual benefit for customers, for Microsoft, and for commercial and community distributions of Linux, to enhance the performance of Linux as a guest operating system where Windows Server is the host.

CIOL: Can you share some of the examples of work happening at Microsoft in the area of open source?

SR: Many people are surprised when they hear how much open source community and development work is happening across Microsoft. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that we’re focused on getting the work done, and engaging with communities on a one-to-one basis, rather than promoting it. We currently participate and collaborate on a number of open source projects through contributions of technical support and code.

Examples can be found in the work we have done with the PHP Community, which has involved contributing to the PHP Engine, optimizing PHP 5.3 to perform strongly on Windows, and working to improve the performance of numerous PHP applications on Windows.

Then there is the ongoing participation in various Apache Software Foundation projects, such as Hadoop, Stonehenge and QPID. In addition to this, we worked to improve interoperability with Axis2 and provided support to the Firefox community to optimize Firefox for Vista and Windows Media Player.

Examples like these can be found scattered across the company, so there will continue to be many more on the horizon.