Riding the downturn: Network vendors eye new markets in ’09
Today's rough economy hasn't put the breaks on vendor ambition.
Microsoft aims to become a dominant player in hosted software and cloud computing in 2009, despite its late entry in these markets. Ditto for Microsoft in the virtualization arena -- where early arrival VMware has some lofty goals of its own, including shooting for a bigger role in data center management.
No less ambitious is Cisco, which is plotting a switching upgrade, blade servers for the data center and a security plan for virtualized and cloud-computing environments. Juniper Networks plans a refresh of its entire product portfolio, and Avaya will sharpen its focus on unified communications.
Read on for details on what to expect this year from these and other key IT vendors, including their most pressing 2009 priorities and potential stumbling blocks.
Microsoft sharpens services, virtualization focus
Microsoft's services push dominated its 2008 agenda, and now it's time to deliver the goods.
Industry watchers are tuned in for details on Azure, Microsoft's newly unveiled cloud operating system, as well as the first Web-based versions of popular Office applications, due this year. These play prominently in Microsoft's battle vs. Google to attract enterprise users of online productivity applications.
Just released online versions of Exchange and SharePoint, two of Microsoft's most popular infrastructure servers, also are expected to make waves. "Exchange Online could be a sleeper product," says Peter O'Kelly, principal analyst with O'Kelly Consulting.
It will be a big year for virtualization at Microsoft, too. With its Hyper-V hypervisor firmly on IT's radar as part of Windows Server 2008, and with the recession now official and reinforcing virtualization's cost-saving benefits, Microsoft will deploy a full-court press in order to make its case that Hyper-V was worth the wait.
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Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
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