Microsoft Launches ‘Cloud OS’ Windows Server 2012

Microsoft has officially launched its ‘cloud operating system’, otherwise known as Windows Server 2012

Microsoft has finally launched the server operating system that’s been in development for four years, with the official release of Windows Server 2012.

According to Microsoft, it is geared to serve the current needs of IT for secure but reliable access by workers to corporate data and applications regardless of their location and type of device they are using.

Product Launch

Microsoft experts from the Server and Tools businesses delivered a live streaming presentation 4 September, doing a deep dive on Windows Server 2012 features in the data centre, in the development and deployment of applications and in the delivery of what the company calls “people-centric IT.”

Microsoft officials have dubbed Windows Server 2012 the “Cloud OS,” saying it maximises the use of cloud computing with the reliability, scalability, flexibility and performance capabilities that are built into the OS.

“Today is a momentous day for us,” said Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft’s Server and Tools business, comparing this launch to the release of Windows NT, which ushered in the client-server era of computing in 1993.

Some of the IT trends that are reflected in Windows Server 2012 are ones that have been discussed repeatedly in IT of late: the consumerisation of IT, bring your own device (BYOD), the cloud and Big Data.

“You want to be able to connect the world’s data,” Nadella said. “You want to be able to blend the data that you have in your enterprise with the world’s information to create new value.”

Despite the popularity of cloud computing to help companies reduce the costs to procure and manage hardware, the compute cycles still have to be generated on servers somewhere. Bill Laing, corporate vice president in the Server and Tools business unit, detailed some of the horsepower Windows Server 2012 delivers in a server environment, be it on-premise or at a cloud service provider such as Rackspace, one of several Microsoft partners announcing support for the new OS. Dell introduced new PowerEdge servers running the new OS, and chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices announced that recently introduced Opteron 4200 and 6200 series processor are now optimised to run Windows Server 2012.

Virtualise Everything

Windows Server 2012 can virtualise more than 99 percent of all SQL databases, and support virtual machines (VMs) with 64 virtual processors and 1 terabyte (TB) of memory per VM, and 8,000 VMs per cluster, Laing said.

“You want to virtualise everything, even those workloads considered ‘non-virtualiseable’,” said Jeff Woolsey, principal program manager lead for Servers and Tools. He mentioned SharePoint, Exchange and Dynamics CRM as examples of high-demand workloads that use dozens of processor cores, gigabytes of memory, and have high input-output (I/O) demands.

In software application development, Windows Server 2012 includes .NET 4.5, the Microsoft platform for developing apps to run in Windows.

The development tools are designed to make the apps cloud scalable, flexible and easy to develop, run in a hybrid cloud environment and enable a “rapid, dynamic application lifecycle,” said Scott Guthrie, another corporate vice president in Server and Tools. The goal is to create apps that run in either Windows Server 2012 for on-premise data centres or Windows Azure, the cloud version of the OS.

To make the picture complete, Microsoft detailed how Windows Server 2012 delivers corporate data securely to employees on any device anywhere, what it called “people-centric IT.”

“Having a common identity system is critical to being able to do this,” said Brad Anderson, another corporate vice president in Server and Tools.

To that end, Windows Server 2012 synchronises Microsoft Active Directory credentials from on-premise with Windows Azure Directory in the cloud, Anderson said. Active Directory is the “underpinning” of Microsoft Share Point for document sharing and Windows Intune for device and desktop management.

The Windows Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) for delivering apps and desktop images to end point devices has also been improved to make deployment easier, requiring no more than 13 clicks to provision a VDI, he said.

Corporate apps and data are secured regardless of the end user device with a security protocol that has two requirements, Anderson said: it must require a password at the point at which the use powers up the device and the data must be encrypted.

VMware Challenge

With Windows Server 2012, Microsoft believes it has a server OS for virtual and cloud environments that is competitive with VMware, the virtualisation market share leader. Microsoft has even launched a “Switch to Hyper-V” campaign to get VMware customers to switch to Microsoft, whose virtualisation hypervisor is called Hyper-V.

But VMware was compelled to trash talk Microsoft at its recent VMworld 2012 conference.

“In the virtualisation space their strategy for the last seven years has been to say ‘Our product is good enough,’” former VMware CEO Paul Maritz said of Microsoft.

Maritz said Microsoft is behind the times because enterprise customers’ demands are not just for server virtualisation, but for virtualisation of the entire data centre, including storage, and networking.

However, those are the areas in the data centre that Windows Server 2012 reaches into, said Microsoft’s Nadella.

“You need to take all the resources of the data centre – compute, storage and network – bring them together and share them,” he said.

India is No.2 in education-related search

Over 60 per cent of Indian students who have access to the Internet use Google as their first source of research information related to educational courses and institutes, placing India at Rank 2 globally for education-related search queries.

The results were revealed through a survey titled “Students on the Web,” which was compiled by Google India. A Google release said, “With over half of the Indian Internet population in the age bracket of 18-35, India has raced to the number two spot globally when it comes to absolute volume of search queries related to education on Google Search.”

According to the survey, vocational courses were the most searched accounting for 44 per cent, followed by engineering with 40 per cent and postgraduate courses — mainly MBA courses — at 16 per cent. Over 40 per cent of the education-related searches were directed towards higher education courses and institutes.

Rajan Anandan, vice-president and managing director, Google India, said: “With over 60 million Internet-user population in India being in the 18-35 age group, education-related search queries are exploding on Google.” He said that the main objective of compiling the data was to understand the role that the Internet was having on decision-making by students. With the popularity of mobile phones increasing, it is not surprising that the mobile searches have increased by 135 per cent year after year.

An offline research was also conducted by TNS Australia to quiz students on the criteria they use for researching and selecting courses. Close to 56 per cent of the students said placements were the most important criterion. Faculty, course content, reputation of the institute and fees were the other important factors.

During the survey, students expressed their desire to have more mobile-friendly websites, and close to 46 per cent of the students said they would prefer watching videos which would help them make their decision.

Most students prefer watching videos about the career options, placements, videos of faculty and videos of classroom sessions which would aid them in their decision-making process.

Most of the report was complied after combining the search internal tool results and an offline research.

The majority of the respondents were in the 18 - 24 age group, and 24 per cent of the respondents were between the age group of 25 and 29 years. Only nine per cent of the students were in the 30 - 35 age group. The study was done seven cities: New Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The most searched institutes in India during January - June 2012 were IIM Ahmedabad, followed by IIM Bangalore, IIM Indore, IIM Calcutta and IIM Kozhikode.

Bharti group exits education business, sells Centum Learning to Everonn Education

NEW DELHI: The Bharti group has exited the education business, selling group company Centum Learning to Everonn Education.

The Bharti Family Office, which manages investmentsmade by the promoters of the group in their personal capacity, will receive a combination of cash and equity shares in Everonn. Bharti group declined to reveal the deal size or their stake in the combined entity.

The deal is part of the Bharti group's plans to exit non-core businesses. "This transaction is in line with our stated objective of focusing our energies on our core businesses," Centum chairman Rakesh Bharti Mittal said

BSE-listed Everonn rose more than 3% after the announcement and closed at 169.10. The company is now run by the Dubai-based Varkey Group/GEMS Education after Everonn's former managing director P Kishore quit last year on accusations of bribery by the CBI. The company's stock had tanked last month on speculation on liquidation by investors.

Everonn Education provides end-to-end training programmes and skill development solutions.

"With this acquisition, Everonn will expand its reach in the Indian training space by adding corporate training, the flagship product of Centum, as a new vertical," Everonn Education director and CEO of GEMS Education India Rakesh Sharma said.

"Other business segments of Centum (skill development, employment generation, professional education & training) will seamlessly integrate with the existing verticals of Everonn." Centum works with over 350 global companies for their training requirements.

Microsoft Replaces Hotmail With Outlook.com

Microsoft says Outlook.com will make it easier to organise messages and interact with social networks

Microsoft is ditching its Hotmail webmail service in favour of Outlook.com, claiming it will be easier to organise inboxes and interact with contacts on social networks.

Outlook.com will “re-imagine” webmail, according to Microsoft, offering the most radical changes to its user since Hotmail was first introduced in 1996, adding that email is becoming less and less useful as inboxes become cluttered with newsletters and other updates.

The preview of Outlook.com is being launched today, with users able to move over to the new service by clicking ‘upgrade’ in the options menu of their Hotmail account.

Outlook.com

“You already know Outlook via the Outlook desktop application-for PCs and Macs-as the world’s most popular application for reading email, managing a calendar, and connecting to people,” said Microsoft in a blog post. “And you may have used the Outlook Web App connected to Exchange Server in your organization. Now, in addition to a desktop application and a service for businesses, we’re offering Outlook as a personal email service – Outlook.com.”

Outlook.com has been designed “cloud-first” so that mail is accessible on PCs, tablets and smartphones and using ActiveSync to share calendars and contacts across devices.

A new user interface has 60 percent fewer pixels and there are 30 percent more messages visible in the inbox, while there are no display adverts or large search boxes. Emails are sorted automatically, with messages from contacts, newsletters and social updates all separated.

Social integration is a key feature of the new service and Outlook.com will connect with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google and eventually Skype, the Microsoft-owned VoIP application. It also worked with the Outlook desktop application and attachments can be added through Microsoft Office Web Apps.

Microsoft promises that users will be in control over what personal information is shared and to which networks. Once upgraded, users will still be able to receive and send emails on their @hotmail.com, @live.com and @msn.com addresses in addition to their new @outlook.com address.