March 21, 2013 News Thursday: Microsoft Wins 17 CRN Channel Champion Awards and more Server and Tools News…
by STB Blogger
Microsoft Wins 17 CRN Channel Champion Awards
Microsoft’s commitment to working with partners to deliver solutions that meet joint customers’ needs was acknowledged as CRN announced the winners of its annual Channel Champions survey. The survey included over 4,000 solution providers that rated technology vendors on overall satisfaction, technical satisfaction, support and financial value. Microsoft was honored with 17 awards in six categories including Systems and Network Management, Business Analytics, and Server and Desktop Virtualization.
Check out CRN.com for more information on the Channel Champions Awards.
Big Data Webcast with The Economist
Get an insider's view on trends and technologies driving the consumerization of data, as well as Microsoft's approach to big data, and the impact of big data on the future of global business. You are invited to tune in to a Webcast by Microsoft, in association with The Economist, on Tuesday, March 26 at 9:30 a.m. PT. You'll hear from Tom Standage, digital editor of the Economist, on the social and economic benefits of mining data, followed by a moderated discussion featuring two Microsoft data experts, VP/technical fellow Dave Campbell and technical fellow Raghu Ramakrishnan. For more details and a link to register, visit the Data Platform Insider blog.
Customer Gains by Dropping VMware in Favor of Microsoft Private Cloud
Pedcor, a real estate company based in Indiana, wanted to enable better IT services for the business. Pedcor was able to deliver end-to-end services infrastructure and save $560,000 in IT costs. The company achieved this impressive result when it deployed Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V and System Center 2012, replacing previous solutions from VMware and Citrix.
In this blog, Sumeeth Evans, Pedcor Vice President of Information Technology, outlines the company’s private cloud implementation, his vision for the company’s future, why they chose Microsoft over VMware, and ultimately how Microsoft is keeping Pedcor ahead of the curve.
Big Data Comes to Windows Azure and Data Explorer Preview
Following through on Microsoft’s commitment to making big data accessible, the company announced that Windows Azure HDInsight Service – the company’s cloud-based distribution of Hadoop – is now available as a standard preview service through the Windows Azure Portal. Windows Azure HDInsight Service builds on top of the Hortonworks Data Platform to ensure full compatibility with Apache Hadoop while providing customers with the low cost and elasticity of cloud computing. During preview, the compute cost for HDInsight Service will be only 50% of the normal compute cost for Windows Azure. Customers can get started here today.
Data Explorer Preview was also updated with HDInsight support. Read the post on the Data Explorer blog to learn more.
For more information on this week’s HDInsight announcements, please read the Data Platform Insider blog post.