Microsoft to fast-track private clouds
Hyper-V Cloud is designed to help businesses set up their own private clouds more quickly and with existing hardware vendors.
Microsoft today announced several enhancements to its Windows Server platform, aimed at giving IT buyers hardware and software configurations ready for use as part of a private cloud.
The new platform additions, which were announced as part of Microsoft's annual TechEd event going on this week, are dubbed Hyper-V Cloud. This is essentially a blueprint for the software and hardware configurations that Microsoft's customers and partners can use to get a private cloud set up quickly and without changing hardware buying habits.
These configurations are highlighted in a new program called Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track, which sets each configuration up against the company's private cloud reference criteria. This goes hand in hand with a new Hyper-V deployment guide, which breaks down how 200 companies of varying sizes and server set-ups have created their own private clouds using Microsoft's software and cloud services pairings.
As part of the Hyper-V Cloud push, Microsoft has also partnered with server hardware vendors like Dell, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Hewlett-Packard, IBM and NEC. For the past six months these companies have been working with Microsoft in mixed engineering teams to come up with hardware and software combinations that would meet the right specifications. IT buyers who are looking to use Microsoft's system can then identify the right hardware to get, which has effectively been given the thumbs-up for compatibility.
Previously: Microsoft hungry to eat VMware's lunch