Microsoft executives talk about Windows Server R2

The Windows Server platform, which Microsoft publicly demonstrated last week, R2 the interest of IT administrators.

Brad Anderson, vice president of project management at Microsoft server and Systems Center, discusses the new features of the platform, as well as the rapid release plan and how it maintains synchronization, with the Searchwindowsserver website.

What is the adoption of Windows Server 2012 within six months of publication, compared to Windows Server 2008 R2?

Brad Anderson: We have only 8-9 months to date, so we don't have a strong benchmark. But when it comes to value, Hyper-V and storage capabilities are the driving forces for enterprise upgrades. If businesses are virtualizing and creating clouds on the Microsoft platform, they tend to need new hyper-V versions. IDC's survey of Hypervisor shares showed VMware accounted for 50%, while Hyper-V coverage was 30%. We're going to keep catching up with 1% each quarter.

So, is there a lot of people waiting for a Windows Server R2 release before migrating from a comfortable windows 2008 R2?

Anderson: In the past, a lot of people are waiting for SP1 because they think that Microsoft will usually handle SP1 very well. I think we've provided users with a lot of great things that can help them simplify the process of upgrading from Windows Server 2012 to Windows Server R2. For example, we demonstrated the dynamic migration feature at the tech Ed2013 Conference. So, if I run virtual machines on Windows Server 2012 in the Enterprise data center, I can migrate them dynamically or upgrade to Windows Server R2. And it's 0 downtime.

How does the new delivery rhythm affect the delivery of server-level products, and in turn, how will it be affected by an IT department that has a fairly rigorous pace in assessing and deploying products?

Anderson: That's a good question. The real driving force in this game is the cloud. From a competitive standpoint, because of the cloud, you can innovate at a speed that we haven't seen before. So when we create and operate these cloud services, we learn a staggering amount. We continue to learn, and integrate the learning into the product, let them become faster. We start with the bit in the cloud, pass the test, and then deliver the delivery. I think this argument will be included in a set of products to be released this fall. No one would have thought that we had done so much in less than a year.

So how does this help the IT department to test, assess, and deploy the rigid requirements of business-critical products?

Anderson: My suggestion is that IT departments be more proactive and faster to adopt and upgrade to new products. We still have a lot of work to do for easy upgrades. Therefore, our goal is to upgrade the version to be seamless and 0 downtime. Look at the upgrade from Windows Server 2012 to R2--a dynamic migration. My advice to the organization is to consider how the process should be changed to achieve faster innovation.

Is Microsoft moving too fast on innovation? You're asking it to configure new devices such as surface, buy office as a subscription service, migrate large amounts of data to the cloud, along with service cloud films such as Azure and Office 365.

Anderson: What I want to emphasize is that part of our core strategy is to make choices. Organizations can choose what kind of cloud they want to consume at what time. We offer Office 365, but you can still use Exchange and SharePoint in your own data center. I think the combination of System Center Configuration Manager and Intune is a good start. Most people in the world use System centers to manage their PCs. The process of extending System Center and Intune to the cloud has become so simple that it is now possible to manage all of your windows, Apple, and Android devices in the cloud through the System Center console. This is a mixed scene for managing computers and devices.

With Windows Server 2012 and R2, you have Hyper-V replication and disaster recovery capabilities that you can copy to your service provider or copy your virtual machine to Azure. The data center works fine, but you have a mixed pattern of backup and disaster recovery, and so on. These start to bring you the cloud experience. So, you're getting the experience of managing the cloud in a mixed model without changing anything. As experience increases, you can better decide whether to migrate more or less.

Therefore, you first need to identify new cloud products at the server level. But how do you attract people to be interested in buying these desktop devices and services?

Anderson: First of all, we are a equipment and service company. We will be capable of distinguishing between our equipment and the need to create these devices. I think we have proved it for a long time. But I have a second job, which is to get out of the device that the user chooses. We want our back end to support all of these devices. So even if users use Android devices and iOS devices, we still want them to use Azure and Windows Server and System Center.

In the second part of the interview, "Microsoft executives talk about BYOD management in Windows Server R2," Anderson discusses the new mobile features of Windows, Apple iOS and Android devices that are assembled in Windows Server R2.