Informing Decision-Making for Customers at the Crossroads in Their Server-Purchasing Choices Announced today, the Windows Server/Compare site provides customers with in-depth resources and comparative information about Windows Server, Linux and UNIX.
Enterprise customers at the crossroads of their server platform investments must weigh numerous considerations.
To name a few: What server technologies are best suited to particular workloads? Which platform will deliver the desired security, reliability and cost savings while interoperating smoothly with disparate technologies? And what can be learned about Windows Server and competitive offerings such as Linux and UNIX from third-party analysts and from customers who have had direct experience with the alternatives?
Ryan Gavin, Director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft
To help customers answer these and other questions, Microsoft today launched a new Web site, Windows Server/Compare. Designed to help enterprises with their server purchasing decisions, and provide customers with real-world examples of comparative evaluations, the new site is an evolution of the Microsoft ?Get the Facts? Web property.
For more information on the new site and the changes in the marketplace that led to its creation, PressPass spoke with Ryan Gavin, director of Platform Strategy at Microsoft.
PressPass: How are enterprise customers thinking about Microsoft and Linux or open-source software (OSS) today?
Gavin: There?s been quite a dramatic evolution in the IT marketplace. As recently as four or five years ago, Linux was considered a relatively new alternative to existing platforms like Windows Server, Netware, UNIX and Mainframe. At the time, there was a lot of discussion about Linux and open-source software, but customers were hard pressed to find firsthand, practical information to help inform their decision-making. Today, a lot of the ambiguity about Linux and OSS in general has been addressed, and customers are reverting to the same type of pragmatic decision-making that they?ve always used. Not surprisingly, the things that mattered to them yesterday still matter today ? things like reliability, security, total cost of ownership (TCO), interoperability and manageability.
PressPass: What can customers expect from Microsoft when it comes to making informed technology decisions?
Gavin: The type of information customers tend to ask for really depends on where the organization is in the technology evaluation process and what that specific individual?s role is in the decision-making process. Broadly speaking, IT organizations at the beginning of a purchasing decision really want to have some sort of validation at the platform level. How does a given platform perform against the fundamentals ? such as reliability, application availability, skills to support, and security? They also want to hear from their industry peers to better understand what the experience of other customers similar to them has been.
Beyond that, you start to get into a very specific, detailed assessment of how the technology or solution maps to that customer?s particular requirements. The customer is evaluating technical integration, deployment specifications, standards support, application integration and interoperability, as well as looking forward to planning their future technology road map.
So, to answer your question, while we work to provide customers with information that spans that gamut of decision-making criteria, we?ve learned that what customers appreciate most is the customer-to-customer connection. This is arguably the most trusted source of information, and we have a wealth of customer insights and experience that we can share broadly.
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