Microsoft Bahrain said it has launched a suite of next-generation technology offerings - Hyper-V and Virtual Machine Manager 2008 - in the Kingdom.

The announcement came during a road show to showcase the next version of its data platform, the SQL Server 2008 and the feature rich browser plug-in, Silverlight 2.0, at the Gulf Hotel's Gulf International Convention Centre, said a report in our sister publication, the Gulf Daily News.

'We now expect to transform the local technology landscape as organisations in Bahrain adopt the latest technology solutions and get virtual,' said Microsoft Bahrain country manager Badea Esbai said during a Press conference.

He also said the Works Ministry has become the first to take advantage of the new technology, which would help it cut costs, increase server utilisation and increase competitiveness in administration.

The technology also aims to 'get into one place' diverse functions at an office, organisation or a ministry, eliminating the need for multiple servers.

'The Hyper-V is growing rapidly and has a market share of 23 per cent of new shipments when combined with Virtual Server 2005,' he said.

'With nearly 1.5 million copies of the Hyper-V pre-release version distributed globally, customer interest in virtualisation is moving from evaluation to the deployment phase.'

He said as a feature of Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V is available as a free web download and is designed to provide customers with familiar and cost-effective virtualisation infrastructure software that can help reduce operating costs, increase hardware utilisation and optimise infrastructure.

'It provides a simplified, reliable and optimised virtualisation solution for customers to consolidate workloads onto a single physical server or to run client operating systems in server-based virtual machines in the data centre.'

He said with management being the core component of virtualisation, the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager enables customers to configure and deploy new virtual machines and centrally manage their virtualised infrastructure.

Microsoft Gulf server and tools business group leader Ahmer Hassan said now is the time for customers to get virtual.

'Customers in Bahrain have been telling us that virtualisation is a top priority, but they continue to face multiple barriers to adoption, such as costs and complex tools. In response, we are breaking down these barriers through the launch of new solution, centralised management tools and a broad partner ecosystem to help make virtualisation ubiquitous.'

He said with desktop and data centre virtualisation offerings, customers are adopting Microsoft solutions because they have better value and will make operations more dynamic.

'These new products help customers more efficiently and securely manage their entire infrastructure and move to a virtualised environment. The launch demonstrates Microsoft's long-standing commitment to our customers and partners in Bahrain.'

He said Microsoft's new technology solutions are the most powerful platforms that a business needs to achieve significant productivity and efficiency benefits along with a dynamic technology infrastructure.

Works Ministry head of network management Jalal Anwar Al Mutawa said they are focussed on the adoption of next-generation technology solutions that will help improve national competitiveness and drive economic growth by delivering its services more efficiently and cost-effectively.

'Microsoft provides a decent suite of technologies to enable an integrated, high performance virtualised infrastructure and Hyper-V 2008 has proved to be a powerful, reliable, easy to use tool, enabling us to rapidly consolidate servers and introduce new services quicker.' - TradeArabia News Service