Private Cloud gets real! - System Center 2012 Announcements….

As you may have heard, there have been some big announcements regarding System Center 2012. All of these announcements are directly related to the Private Cloud conversations I have been having with IT Pro’s for the last year. Before I dig into the specific announcement information, let me summarize the importance of Private Clouds.

In many of my presentations on Private Cloud, I use a time warp scenario to drive home the changes in IT that Private Cloud offer us.

15 years ago - Developers in your company have a project that needs dedicated resources

A Domain Controller (user accounts, authorization, security, rights and roles)

A Database Server (data storage for the apps be developed, reporting data, inventory, sales, etc)

A Mail Server (notifications, collaboration)

1-3 Client machines for testing

Time/Labor to make it all happen

In 1997, this meant identifying hardware requirements, ordering the hardware, provisioning the hardware, then delivering to the developers. The amount of time between the request for resources and delivery of the resources could be weeks or even months. Not to mention that the development staff is limited on what they can do until the resources arrive. Not very efficient or productive.

Present Day - Developers in your company have a project that needs dedicated resources

Same Resources requested for same purpose

In 2012, the IT staff can deliver these resources “on-demand” by selecting capable resources, much of which is virtualized, from a pool or library, and provision those to the needs of the developers. Thus reducing the time between request and delivery to a matter of days or even hours. Furthermore, resources can be generalized and stored in a library along with scripts to customize the resources. The library can be securely exposed to requestors through a self-service portal. With requesters can be assigned roles that allow a requestor to search through resources or select a canned environment along with customization scripts to create the environment they need – without direct interaction of the IT staff. You can have as much or as little automation as required for your own needs.

From months to hours, it is pretty clear that Private Clouds offer an opportunity to streamline and create agility in IT operations. IT as a Service is a reality now!

And now back to the announcements!

We have an on-demand webcast available that solidifies the Microsoft Private Cloud story using Windows Servers, Hyper-V virtualization, and the System Center 2012 Suite. Microsoft’s Server & Tools Business division leaders participated in a webcast, “Transforming IT with Microsoft Private Cloud” where they announced the release candidate of System Center 2012 and simplified Microsoft’s private cloud management products.

As you well know, Microsoft has built global scale public cloud platforms with Windows Azure and a variety of consumer cloud products (Live Mail, XBox Live, Office 365 and more!). The System Center 2012 announcements bring us closer to the final release of the SC2012 suite and closing the loop by adding a complete Private Cloud solution. We offer customers the flexibility to choose how/where they want to run their cloud applications.  Microsoft’s private cloud solutions benefit from the feedback loop of delivering our cloud services at massive scale and applying those learning's to our on-premises products. 

Brad Anderson published a blog post that describes how public and private clouds come together.

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You can start working with Microsoft Private Cloud solutions now. Better yet, you can do it for FREE!

Download the System Center 2012 Suite (all of it is select only what you are interested in)

I would also encourage you to check out these additional resources for more information on Private Clouds and System Center 2012 -  

The Official Microsoft Blog - System Center 2012: Where Public and Private Clouds Meet

System Center 2012 – Licensing Datasheet (PDF)

System Center 2012 – Licensing FAQ (PDF)

If you are a Microsoft Partner, please check out the value proposition documents on the Microsoft Partner Site -

Microsoft Partner Site – What is the Value of Private Cloud?

Cheers!