Cisco & Microsoft: Optimizing the Branch Together
Some people make friends easily. Others find it a hard thing to do. Still more people are challenged to keep their friends over time.
Today Cisco and Microsoft announced that they’re working hard to address some of the key IT challenges our most important friends have—our customers. Specifically in this announcement, our mutual branch IT customers and their end users.
What did the companies announce?
Windows Server 2008 (specifically Windows Server 2008 Server Core), will be hosted on upcoming versions of virtualized Cisco WAAS appliances later this year.
What makes that so interesting to our customers?
Several things:
1) The ability to flexibly design branch office IT architectures to meet information and business requirements, while actively lowering management cycles and cost.
2) Reducing IT devices in the branch, while still delivering required end user experience and local services (can you say print server, DNS, DHCP?)
3) Leveraging the network, and the benefits of WAN optimization (Cisco WAAS) coupled with virtualization, to enable the ideal mix of local branch and centralized data center services. Selectable by the customer.
What are people saying about this?
Here’s one point of view: http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=206900159
And here’s another from Microsoft’s Windows Server branch team, posted today: http://blogs.technet.com/windowsserver/archive/2008/02/26/check-out-the-latest-branch-solution-powered-by-windows-server-2008.aspx
What are Microsoft and Cisco execs saying about it? See them yourself in video: http://www.cisco.com/go/microsoftalliance
If you’re in Los Angeles, CA tomorrow for the Microsoft Windows Server 2008 launch, or in another of the 250+ cities where events are occuring, you can see this for yourself: http://www.microsoft.com/heroeshappenhere/default.mspx.
We’d be keen to hear your thoughts on this integrated solution from Cisco and Microsoft, too. Send us a reply with your thoughts…
Mark Weiner
Marketing Director, Data Center Solutions
Posted by Mark Weiner at 08:30PM PST
Dave Ohara Feb 27, 2008
I’ve referenced your entry in my blog http://www.greenm3.com/2008/02/greening-the-br.html for a method to Greening a Branch Office. You could also make the point that your solution reduces hardware required and energy consumption, resulting in lower costs and a more Green/Sustainable solution.