Customer Insights on Windows Server 2012, Virtualization and Private Clouds Presented in an Infographic
The last couple of weeks have been exciting times for those of us at Microsoft who have been working on Windows Server 2012, as we officially launched the product and made it broadly available to you, our customers. As part of our launch activities I’ve been presenting keynotes at our global events, including those in Turkey and Johannesburg over the last week. As I’ve done so, it’s been great to talk with many of you and hear about the excitement and plans you have for Windows Server 2012, including the ways you’re looking forward to using it in your businesses to improve and advance your IT infrastructure.
Many of you have told me that you’re most excited about the powerful, new Virtualization and Private Cloud capabilities delivered through Windows Server 2012. This sentiment is echoed by your peers in the results of recent research of IT professionals conducted by Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG)*, some of which is available in an easily consumable infographic. You’ll see from the infographic that 90% of the applicable respondents plan to deploy Windows Server 2012 within 24 months!!! That’s a great indicator of excitement for the product.
Other results from the research showed that for respondents familiar with Windows Server 2012, 51% found Server virtualization to be an important product capability, while 49% cited Private Cloud enablement as another. These are certainly areas were we made significant investments to ensure that Windows Server 2012 could address your most demanding IT needs, such as scaling up your virtualization and private cloud environments, while also providing you with licensing programs to help keep your costs down.
The survey results also provided some interesting information on why organizations were deploying Hyper-V, with a couple of the top reasons being the product capabilities and economics. With Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V capabilities such as the ability to host 320 logical processors, 4TB of physical memory, or support 2,048 virtual CPUs and 1,024 active VMs per host, you can see how it is engineered to meet your most demanding IT needs. You can read about some of the technical advantages that Windows Server 2012 has in this whitepaper comparison. Combine these capabilities with the economical licensing model of Windows Server 2012 Datacenter, which supports unlimited virtual instances at no extra costs, and you have all the tools you need to consolidate your workloads into VMs, while maximizing your hardware without being penalized for doing so. You can build out your virtualized environment today, while laying the ground work for your own private cloud.
On the topic of private cloud, the results showed that 42% of those surveyed said they were delivering IT services to users in their organization today via a private cloud, which was defined as - a fully virtualized, self-service, scalable and elastic environment running on centrally managed shared resources with usage based tracking enabled. 32% of respondents cited elasticity as an important attribute of private cloud infrastructure, while 26% cited scalability. The great news for you as you’re trialing Windows Server 2012 is that you have the foundation for your private cloud deployments built right into the product with Hyper-V. Combine Windows Server 2012 with System Center 2012 and you’ve got a complete Private Cloud for your enterprise.
Check out the full infographic, which I've included at the bottom of this post, for a better idea of what you’re peers are doing with virtualization and private clouds, as well some of their thoughts on Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V.
Thanks for reading and your time.
---- Edwin
* ESG Research, Microsoft Virtualization and Private Cloud Custom Survey, June 2012
Complete Infographic below (click here or on graphic to download high-res version):
