Avanade's Next Generation Data Center - Data Center Optimization

In this tight economic climate, customers look to fund projects that offer a fast return on investment and provide opportunities to lower costs. In a 2008 survey, CIO Insight ranked IT cost cutting as a major priority for CIOs.[1] According to Gartner, Inc., server consolidation and virtualization projects provide an attractive option to reduce costs and improve flexibility and they predict that virtualization will be the most important technology in IT infrastructures and operations up to 2010.

Initiatives to create “green” data centers are gaining importance as companies seek to reduce costs while cutting energy demand and carbon emissions.[2] With strong price-for-performance advantages, Windows Server® 2008 Hyper-V™ and Microsoft® System Center technologies helped Microsoft attain a 23 percent share of the virtualization market in 2008.
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Key competitive virtualization vendors include VMware, HP, and IBM. Competitive offerings lack the full range of capabilities found in the Avanade solution or depend on hardware that adds cost and complexity. Independent analysis confirms that, on the whole, Microsoft virtualization can cost as little as one-third the price of VMware.[4] Drawing upon our unique and long-standing partnership with Microsoft, Avanade provides holistic solutions that help customers take advantage of compatibility throughout their Microsoft infrastructure. Our solutions provide a breadth of virtualization and management capability at the most cost-effective price for the enterprise.

Avanade is in a uniquely advantageous competitive position as a leading global IT consultancy dedicated to the Microsoft platform. Our innovative tools, methodologies, and accelerators extend the capabilities of Microsoft data center solutions and speed time to deployment and implementation.

With the Avanade Virtualization Business Case Estimator™, Avanade consultants can accurately estimate deployment time and resource requirements for server virtualization projects, and project customer cost savings. Our Avanade Connected Architecture® Dynamic Systems Framework provides a platform for Avanade consultants to design, build, and deploy next generation data centers in a highly repeatable and predictable fashion, accelerating time to delivery and enhancing implementation quality.

In addition to privileged insights into Microsoft road maps and new technology, Avanade has a depth of internal resources with more than 9,000 professionals in 22 countries worldwide, including development centers in India and the Philippines. Using the right mix of local and remote resources, Avanade helps customers realize results with our next generation data center solution.

For information on how Avanade can enable Microsoft technologies for data centers or other services that Avanade Inc. can provide your organization in Western Canada, please contact Chris Hamilton at 403-476-1473 or via email at chris.hamilton@avanade.com.

For a white paper on Virtualization entitled "Server Virtualization: A Step Toward Cost Efficiency and Business Agility", please click on http://avanadecalgary.com/Avanade_Calgary/Whitepapers.html and fill out the form.

[1] Source: CIO Insights, http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Research/CIOs-Rank-Their-Top-Priorities-for-2008/.
[2] Source: Gartner Identifies the Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2008, http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=530109.
[3] Source: IDC, http://www.virtualization.info/2008/10/microsoft-already-took-23-of.html.
[4] Clabby Analytics: Six Reasons Why Microsoft’s Hyper-V Will Overtake VMware to Become the Major Player in the x86 Server Virtualization Marketplace, May 2008, http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/itanalyst/docs/05-2008ClabbySixReasonsWhyMSwillovertakeVMW.PDF.