As reported by Wired today,Microsoft Pitches Private Cloud to IT with System Center 2012.
Microsoft’s System Center 2012 is available today as a Release Candidate, the last milestone before a final release. Along with Hyper-V and Windows Server, the upgraded System Center forms the keybuilding blocks for Microsoft’s private cloudstrategy, providing management tools for desktops, mobile devices, both physical and virtual servers, and a mix of resources across private data centers and public clouds such as Windows Azure.
This is a very interesting product suite now that Microsoft is officially looking at Systems Center for Private Cloud management. System Center 2012 is the first time Microsoft is releasing a fully integrated suite of tools for the provisioning, management, and automation of private clouds. Clearly Microsoft sees the opportunity and is making investments along the lines ofBMC,HP,CA, andIBMand their private cloud management solutions. While Microsoft is focused on Microsoft specific products, such as HyperV, Microsoft desktops and servers, and enterprise applications (Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.), Windows Mobile (or ActiveSync), andAzure, expansion to other areas may be around the corner — perhaps driven by their customer base.
If Microsoft officially starts supporting VMware, Vblock, NetApp, Unix systems, Zen, and other technologies, their expansion outside of the traditional Microsoft datacenter starts to get very interesting indeed.
All this is good for enterprises. Competition drives innovation, as long as all the vendors execute on their strategies.
