Microsoft in New Enterprise Cloud Initiatives

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The use of cloud computing has become increasingly popular in the UK and elsewhere. It's benefits are obvious for remote working, storage capacity and, despite some doubts, information security.

Even so, there are many challenges and one of these is finding the right sort of cloud usage for each company. Should a firm use the private cloud, the public cloud or a hybrid mixture of both? And if it does the latter, what should the balance between them be?

These are just some of the questions that may be asked and as cloud usage spreads, the needs of companies may become more varied, occur on very different scales and provide individual challenges based on the unique aspects of each enterprise and organisation.

Microsoft has sought to grab the lion's share of the market with a series of new offerings for enterprises aimed at enabling companies to overcome a variety of IT challenges and make the most of cloud computing.

Cloud and enterprise executive vice president at Microsoft Satya Nadella said: “As enterprises move to the cloud they are going to bet on vendors that have best-in-class software as a service applications, operate a global public cloud that supports a broad ecosystem of third party services, and deliver multi-cloud mobility through true hybrid solutions."

It has announced its new Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2 products, which are designed to provide a more modern cloud-friendly infrastructure. The company said: "Together, these new products empower companies to create data centres without boundaries using Hyper-V for high-scale virtualisation; high-performance storage at dramatically lower costs; built-in, software-defined networking; and hybrid business continuity." It added that these can help companies deliver both self-service infrastructure and platforms from their own data centres.

Another pair of products Microsoft is launching are the Visual Studio 2013 and the new .NET 4.5.1, which are also available from October 18th. These are designed to speed up the introduction and integration of new software by IT managers and others.

Microsoft also noted that "most enterprises will take a hybrid approach to cloud" and is providing new products and services to help towards this end. It is offering its Enterprise Agreement price incentives to take on Windows Azure software and is backing this up with a new partnership with telecoms company Equinox to help ensure faster connection times to its US service users.

It remains to be seen if it will clinch similar partnerships elsewhere - such as in the UK. At present Microsoft is bringing the US government on board with new deals involving its new Azure US Government Cloud, although of course it may not get used much until the current shutdown of federal agencies ends.

The company is also heralding a second preview of its new SQL Server 2014, which is designed to deal better with big data and provide a service improvement of between ten and 30 times current levels, as well as combining with Windows Azure to give better backup and disaster recovery capacities. New software-as-a-service facilities are also being launched, with the advent of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online Fall ’13, said to be an improvement on its predecessor.

In addition to this, the company is providing more means of supporting those working on a bring-your-own-device basis. While this particular way of working has mobility advantages, there are obvious security risks involved if the hardware item is lost or stolen. Microsoft has said its new Windows Intune will provide "security enhanced applications" to ensure the data stored this way cannot fall into the wrong hands.

While Microsoft is seeking to make this month the one where a raft of new applications gives it a stronger position in the cloud computing market, others are getting in on the act.

PC World has noted Toshiba is among these firms, with the company's first cloud offering coming with the novel feature of enabling users to customise its remote hardware that hosts the virtual desktop and storage space, so it can be used on both tablets and PCs.

This is currently being deployed in the US. For firms in the UK, now may be a good time to look at what is available here to ensure each firm can get the hardware it requires to use the cloud in an advantageous way, while making sure security is never compromised.

Storetec News/Blogs."http://www.storetec.net/news-blog/microsoft-in-new-enterprise-cloud-initiatives/". Microsoft in New Enterprise Cloud Initiatives. October 9, 2013. Storetec.