Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center

The Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center has officially opened. The Center's primary focus is on optimizing Microsoft applications on Sun x64 systems and storage. Other objectives are to promote full interoperability in application areas such as virtualization, Java technology, systems management and identity, and support customers in running their own proofs-of-concept testing.

The Center is expected to serve as a working lab for tuning, benchmarking and creating interoperable solutions. Located on Microsoft's Redmond campus, the Center will house a demonstration and testing area for Windows on Sun x64 systems and storage, and a lab space for customer proofs-of-concept focused on Windows Server 2008 on Sun x64 systems and storage. It also will allow for:

• The certification of Java Platform Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Java Platform Standard Edition (Java SE), including Sun's Java Runtime Environment (JRE) software for and with Microsoft operating environments and applications;
• Joint work to help enable cross-platform server virtualization, including Windows Hyper-V and Sun xVM software;
• Cross-company collaboration to allow Sun Ray thin client software to provide a first-rate virtual desktop for the Windows environment and supports Windows technologies.

"I think one of the coolest capabilities it has is around co-development of solutions around things like web services and identity," commented Joe Heel, senior vice president of Sun's Global Storage Practice. "It's also a place where customers and Sun or Microsoft employees can run proofs-of-concept before deploying a given configuration."

Sun has been working on Microsoft's main campus for the past three years testing customer scenarios on Sun systems in the Microsoft Enterprise Engineering Center. Microsoft and Sun have collaborated in a number of interoperability areas including: Web services, identity management, thin clients, systems management and Windows Server engineering. Interested customers may want to try out one of the results of this testing - the Sun Fire X4600 server with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - under Sun\'s Try and Buy program, which allows a customer to test drive products free of charge for 60 days.

"Our customers and partners want to maximize their business efficiency and we are helping them do that, by opening the new Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center," said Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing at Microsoft. "The center will provide a setting for hands-on testing and tuning of Sun/Microsoft solutions and help our joint customers achieve unprecedented performance results for their standardized and home-grown solutions. It is consistent with our recently announced interoperability principles, which guide steps that we are taking, on our own and in collaboration with others, to enhance interoperability in the marketplace for the benefit of customers."

Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007

Along with the Center announcement, Sun and Microsoft have released the Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, which is designed to help enterprise customers to better manage e-mail growth and realize the benefits of Exchange Server 2007. Pre-tested end-to-end system and storage configurations allow customers to easily migrate to Exchange Server 2007 - achieving up to 85 percent in rack space, power and cooling savings and reducing total cost of ownership (TCO) for e-mail by up to 70 percent over three years, the companies report.

Heel explained the reason Sun chose to focus on email and on Exchange 2007 in particular: "Email space and bandwidth requirements have increased tremendously – some sources cite an average growth of 68 percent year-on-year for four straight years. Obviously this puts significant financial and operational pressure on organizations to manage their email growth. The transition from Exchange 2003 to 2007 has tremendous potential to save customers acquisition and operating expenses, but you won't hear many of our competitors offering these savings as they have hug installed base revenues to protect.

"I should also note that while we're focused on email archive because of growth in this area, it's critical, too, because most customers do not leverage lower-cost secondary storage for storing dated or non-critical data," he added. "This cost savings opportunity is largely overlooked in IT organizations."

Heel also pointed out that Sun Infrastructure Solution for Microsoft Exchange is more than just a storage solution. It offers a full end-to-end infrastructure, including both servers and storage. "... we have some configurations for small customers which leverage servers alone," he noted. "That said, storage is a critical part of right-sizing an Exchange environment. As such, taking a holistic approach we've taken here ensures that optimal configurations are selected for our customers."

A video on the Sun/Microsoft Interoperability Center is available for viewing. [...read more...]

		fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter