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A Common Platform
Microsoft termed System Center Essentials 2007 as a unified management solution to help IT professionals in midsize organizations proactively and efficiently manage their IT environment. The solution featured a single console from which IT management could view and manage servers, clients, hardware, software and IT services.
Muglia provided examples of how Forefront and System Center solutions delivered greater integration to help customers simplify the task of deploying, managing and protecting IT environments, and improve overall productivity of IT staff and end users.
He showed how deeper integration between Forefront and System Center offerings would help customers more dynamically address and enable key scenarios, including identity and access, change and configuration management, service management, problem resolution and reporting. He used the context of the Microsoft's Infrastructure Optimization (IO) model, which charts a course for companies to transform IT infrastructure into a strategic business asset, to show how deeper integration between security and management solutions will benefit businesses of all sizes.
| On the Sidelines... |
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Is Indian outsourcing going to lose its edge to technology?
Speaking on outsourcing work overseas to India or China, Bob Muglia said it was not going to be a lasting solution for reducing costs.
"We think that through technology and through software, we can fundamentally change the dynamics of our environment. There's a lot of ways to reduce cost. You can reduce cost by outsourcing things to India or China, and that will work for a while. There's a lot to be said for that, and I know many companies have done that for some part of their operation, but, ultimately, that won't be a way that you can contribute to reduce cost, especially as those parts of the world begin to become more expensive in the years to come," he added.
Muglia believed software could, from a long-term perspective, transform the IT system, reducing costs, and enabling new solutions.
Not So, Says India
According to Nasscom, however, India would benefit from a boom in offshore outsourcing. It estimated the country's software and services exports to grow by 32.6% to over $31 bn in the current Indian fiscal. Also that employment in the sector was likely to reach 1.6 mn by March 31, up from 1.28 mn in 2006.
India's top outsourcing companies, TCS, Infosys, and Wipro reported strong growth in revenue and profits for the financial year ended March 31, 2007, mainly on increased volumes of business.
A report recently released by management consulting firm McKinsey & Co and Nasscom predicted that India's outsourcing industry could grow at an annual rate of over 25% to generate export revenue of about $60 bn by 2010. To get to this revenue, however, India will have to improve the quality of education and train more staff to counter an expected shortage of 500,000 staff by 2010, added Nasscom.
Meanwhile, a survey released on Sunday by Mintel International Group suggested that a few major UK firms could take back their telephone operations back to Britain. However, this move was attributed to cultural misunderstandings and concerns over quality of service from offshore call centers rather than rising expenses in India.
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For enterprise customers, Muglia detailed how security and management solutions will be unified through a common service management solution, enabling workflow definition, process automation, and comprehensive reporting across security and management teams.
For mid-market and smaller customers with IT professionals performing both security and management functions, he described how deeper integration between security and systems management solutions would provide a standard, integrated set of tools.
Microsoft said the new products were a "great foundation and framework" for its long-term plans around the integration of security and management.
"Our engineering teams are working together to build out solutions that are more deeply integrated and address specific needs of companies of all sizes-from small- and mid-sized businesses to large enterprises," said Kelly.
According to Scott Crawford, senior analyst with Enterprise Management Associates, "Security and IT operations professionals are demanding more effective integration of solutions in both domains and the benefits of improved risk management and efficiencies that integration brings. Microsoft's plans to more closely align its System Center management solutions with its Forefront security products offer an integrated approach in line with this demand."
Meanwhile, Analog Devices said it had used System Center management solutions to roll out Forefront Client Security in half of its 6,000 desktops and laptops. It would be deployed on the rest of the machines in the next few weeks.
Microsoft said Forefront Client Security was licensed on a per-user, per-device basis, starting at $12.72 per user or device, per year for the security agent and at $2,468 per year for the management console. The product is available for purchase now, as part of Microsoft Enterprise Client Access License suite via Microsoft Volume Licensing, with stand-alone product availability in July via standard Microsoft volume licensing channels.
Microsoft is offering System Center Essentials as a management server with built-in support to manage 50 clients and 10 servers starting at $2,000. Microsoft said the product would be available in July via Microsoft volume licensing and retail channels.
Majnu Babu
maildqindia@cybermedia.co.in
The author was hosted in Los Angeles
The author was hosted in Los Angeles
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