Microsoft Ramps Up Virtualization Management, Management ServicesMicrosoft Ramps Up Virtualization Management, Management Services

While Microsoft doesn't have the management clout or breadth of capabilities as Hewlett-Packard, IBM, BMC, and CA, it does have unique expertise in its own software, a distinct advantage for a company that finds its logos on a huge majority of workers' computers.

Now, the company intends to push into two new areas: management as a service and private clouds.

This week, the company is expected to announce several new products and features at its annual Microsoft Management Summit, including an online service for managing corporate desktops and improved virtualization and virtualization management technology aimed at helping companies set up their own private clouds.

Management is a fast-growing segment for Microsoft, with overall revenue in the company's System Center line growing by more than 20% even as Microsoft's quarterly revenue dipped last quarter for the first time ever.

Enabling Private Clouds

Virtualization management is exploding, and Microsoft is following fast on the heels of VMware, which last week unveiled vSphere, the next generation of VMware's Virtual Infrastructure virtualization management suite. VSphere is a step toward realizing the company's ambitious Virtual Data Center Operating System initiative, which aims to let customers create and manage cloud computing environments in their own data centers and move workloads among and between both these private and Web-based public clouds in a model becoming known as hybrid clouds.

Microsoft, meanwhile, is playing from behind. According to Forrester Research analyst James Staten, Microsoft remains at least a year behind VMware in terms of virtualization management capabilities. It was also late to release a hypervisor. Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager has less intelligence about where and how to place workloads, fewer storage optimization capabilities, weaker automation, and more complex fault-tolerance capabilities than VMware.

That's not stopping Microsoft. "We'll be delivering technology that helps build private clouds," Brad Anderson, general manager of Microsoft's management division, said in an interview. "When you go to publish or start up a service or application, you will publish that application into a service, and that service will be able to intelligently figure out where to put that load." Microsoft also intends to enable hybrid clouds. Instead of wrapping its announcements with a nice bow like VMware did with vSphere, Microsoft is making a number of separate announcements that touch on virtualization and virtual machine management.

One of the biggest announcements is that Microsoft will be applying its Microsoft Application Virtualization technology (formerly SoftGrid) to server applications, though it won't set a release date for that functionality, instead making it available in a test version for now. With Microsoft Application Virtualization, Microsoft packages apps like Office plus any configuration data into a virtual package and streams that package from a server to a client, where the application runs isolated from the operating system, thus allowing for easy install and easy management.

In the server world, Microsoft will package a server app with any of its related services (for example, with SQL Server) inside a VHD, which makes it much easier to add instances of the application or move an application between virtual or physical servers. Organizations will also end up with a single "golden" image of an OS and one of an application rather than bloated image libraries. This functionality will be accessible through Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager.

Microsoft also will unveil a new add-in that gives administrators using System Center Virtual Machine Manager tips on how to manage their virtual infrastructure, letting them know when there's excess computing power available and when virtual machines are maxing out on their capacity, and even automating that process if the admins so choose. New documentation called the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit for Enterprises will give customers additional guidance on how to build a private cloud.

In addition, Microsoft will announce a partner application from hosting company MaximumASP that will let admins see available capacity in and move workloads back and forth from MaximumASP's hosted environment. Understanding cloud infrastructure and moving workloads back and forth between cloud and on-premises are key elements for enabling hybrid clouds, and Microsoft plans to allow similar functionality with other hosters and with Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Azure cloud. This is one area where Microsoft has an advantage over VMware today, since Microsoft has a large network of hosting partners.

With Windows Server 2008 R2, due out soon, likely alongside the release of Windows 7, companies will be able to move virtual workloads on the fly with a feature called Live Migration. That's been the most requested feature for Hyper-V, since it means workloads can be moved while still keeping systems up and running. Microsoft will demonstrate that feature this week at the conference. Rumors of a management-as-a-service product from Microsoft appeared more than two years ago. But this week, Microsoft will finally announce the first piece of System Center Online, a remote desktop management service called System Center Online Desktop Manager. The service comes after more than two years of testing a desktop management service with a handful of customers, including Energizer Holdings.

System Center Online Desktop Manager will include malware protection, asset inventory, software inventory, and patching services as well as error reporting and configuration management. Admins will be able to get notifications when errors occur, and they'll be able to use a technology called Microsoft Easy Assist to remotely log on to and control specific PCs. They'll also have control over which patches they want to apply and how often they want desktop configuration information to be updated.

The service will use the Windows Update infrastructure as its base to manage corporate desktops, and all system information will travel over an encrypted connection. When a customer signs up for System Center Online, they'll get an enrollment package that includes a certificate tied to that specific account. They push a 1-MB package to computers they want to manage, redirecting those computers' Windows Update client to System Center Online, which then gives those machines unique certificates to allow admins to manage their corporate machines individually or as a group.

A number of managed services companies offer desktop management as a service, including IBM, Wipro, and Tata Consultancy Services. Several startups, including Everdream (now a part of Dell) have also toyed with remote desktop management.

Joseph Dadzie, Microsoft's principal group program manager for System Center Online, expects early demand for System Center Online Desktop Manager to come from organizations looking for easier ways to manage their laptops, since mobile users often aren't on the corporate network.

In the future, Microsoft says it will expand System Center Online to include server management and potentially some sort of backup service, though it's unclear when those services might be coming. New identity management software called Geneva is also forthcoming. Microsoft also demonstrated at last year's Professional Developers Conference an Azure-based service called System Center Atlanta that would give companies additional guidance on their data center implementations.

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