MS takes on VMware with private cloud approach

BANGALORE, INDIA: In a move believed to be against cloud and virtualisation company VMware, technology major Microsoft has outlined a private cloud roadmap and unveiled Microsoft System Center 2012 to help companies build and operate private clouds.

“IT leaders tell me that private cloud computing promises to help them focus on innovation over maintenance, to streamline costs and to respond to the need for IT speed,” Nadella said. “We are delivering on that promise today. With System Center 2012, customers can move beyond the industry hype and speculation, and progress into the here and now of private cloud.”

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He added that the new Microsoft System Center 2012 comes in two editions - Standard and Datacenter.

System Center 2012 integrates eight separate component products into one unified solution, streamlining installation and reducing the time it takes to deploy from days down to hours, claims the company in a release.

Srikanth Karnakota, director, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft India, said: "System Centre 2012 brings in new and unique capabilities intended to help IT managers/customers with self-service as one of the automated functions that distinguishes a private cloud from just another data centre server cluster apart from/along with automating the delivery via System Center orchestrator, improved management tools for the data centre and cloud, native support for any hypervisor including Microsoft Hyper V, and improved base service control  for the infrastructure.”

The System Center 2012 Datacenter edition licensing covers unlimited virtual machines and so customers can continually grow their private clouds without additional licensing costs for virtualizing their infrastructure and applications, the release adds.

System Center 2012 is available today in a Release Candidate as a single, integrated private cloud management solution.