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Day two at HostingCon 2009 kicked off with an early (8:15 a.m.) keynote by Microsoft’s Zane Adam, entitled – hold on, this might take a minute – “Virtualization: Enabling Hosting Providers to be Successful in the New Era of Software-Plus-Services.”
As might be expected – and I’ve said it before, but I’ll reiterate that this isn’t really a criticism of the content per se – the presentation was by and large a product roadmap, or an ideological roadmap, around virtualization technology, from the perspective of Microsoft. And it was part sales pitch. But, presumably, that’s a decision a lot of people at the conference are dealing with.
Adam talked about the evolution of IT services, from traditional data center services toward more transparent, scalable, flexible services – toward a lot more of the product itself being contained within the service level agreement. Long-term, that means a customer just has to plug in to your website to receive services as they need them. Technologically, that’s what Microsoft is building to long-term.
The key technologies in Microsoft’s plan for virtualization for hosting providers include its System Center, the management platform for server technology and infrastructure and its Dynamic Data Center Toolkit.
We’ve discussed it before, when it was launched at the Microsoft Hosting Summit in March. Generally speaking, it’s a collection of resources designed to help hosting providers build managed services, specifically with the goal of creating a virtualized infrastructure system wherein customers can provision their own virtual machines from the hosting company’s website without otherwise interacting with the host.
The package is a free download you can get from Microsoft’s Dynamic Data Center Toolkit page.
Adam says Microsoft currently has nine hosting partners working with the Toolkit as envisioned, and is looking to add more hosting providers to the program.
The company is planning to launch an update to the toolkit in the first quarter of 2010, building in more dynamic provisioning, more application monitoring and a one-click provisioning system.
He also says the development cycle on the toolkit is not tied to the company’s life cycle for Windows or other products. It’s more of an ongoing refresh, rather than an update every two or four years.
And, as it has been saying for quite some time, Microsoft is focused on distributing this kind of technology through partners, which is an opportunity for hosting providers like you. The idea is that Microsoft’s success is based on your success, so it stands to reason that they’re working to your benefit (in part, by building things like the Dynamic Data Center Toolkit).
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Comment by Anonymous on Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Liam,
I hear a lot about the Data Center side in hosting and managed services. I completely acknowledge the importance of virt, management, administration and monitoring of the big iron delivering the hosted services. What I don't hear enough about is how the last mile is being addressed.
It seems to me that the customers experience is not being completely managed if the hoster is soley focused on infrastructure within their own walls. I beleive they must participate in management of the infrastructure right through to the customer and back again. This is inclusive of the bandwidth, the on premise network, the on prem servers and terminal device be it netbook, notebook, desktop or mobile device.
So, the question to guys like Zane and the Hosting community then becomes, "what are you doing to manage my total experience?".
Take a look at Level Platforms. We have a good story there and one that I think is worthy of some discussion in the hosting community.