Microsoft Makes Its V-Move

Now that Microsoft has finally released Windows Server 2008 (along with Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008), no one wants to be left out of the loop.

Today alone saw a stream of announcements of certification, integration, and/or support from a range of storage vendors, including EMC, Emulex, QLogic, and Rackspace, to name just a few.

Others have sworn interoperability, as Symantec did with its SaaS-equipped Backup Exec release last week.

It's all to the good. No storage supplier can risk being left behind, so the more announcements, the better. In fact, it's appropriate to question any vendor that doesn't have a clear strategy for working with the new OS. A company's email archiving, e-discovery, or application strategy may depend on the ability of its storage and software providers to work with the new systems.

And there's something else: In addition to being an important enhancement to a key server operating system, Windows Server 2008 is now shipping with a beta version of Hyper-V hypervisor (aka, "Longhorn"), which is the platform on which Microsoft will mount its desktop virtualization war against Citrix and VMware.Up to now, Microsoft has been considered something of a laggard compared to VMware and Citrix. Now the ante is upped. While it's too soon to tell how it will play out, increased competition among server virtualization providers can only bring more innovation -- a boon in any data center.

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