Businesses Save Thousands Moving to Microsoft Virtualization

Customers can save $170,000 on average when switching from VMware; Microsoft
management business grew 30 percent annually due to server virtualization.

REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. today
announced that some business customers are saving on average $170,000 (U.S.)
when they switch to Microsoft virtualization software from VMware Inc.
software. Customers are turning to Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and Microsoft
System Center management tools to help reduce energy consumption, hardware
costs and recurring licensing costs, and improve their overall management of
virtual and nonvirtual applications, servers and computers.

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Customers that have switched to Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, System Center and
other Microsoft virtualization solutions include Avanade; Brick Township Board
of Education, New Jersey (U.S.); Convergent Computing; Crutchfield Corp.; INA
(Croatia); Ingersoll Rand plc; Jackson Energy Authority; Mamut ASA (Norway);
the National Concert Hall of Ireland; NetBenefits (U.K.); PoundHost Internet
Ltd. (U.K.); Siemens Standard Drives (U.K.); T2 Systems Inc.; Voith IT
(Germany); and University of Miami.

Strong customer adoption of server and application virtualization software
helped drive growth of the Microsoft System Center suite of management tools.
Microsoft recently reported that the company's management division revenues
grew more than 30 percent from 2008 to 2009 and is now at approximately $1
billion in annual sales.

Industry consulting firm Information Technology Intelligence Corp. recently
published its "2009 Global Virtualization Deployment Trends Survey" of more
than 700 IT professionals. The results showed that Microsoft made big
year-over-year market share gains across small and midsize businesses and
enterprise organizations. The survey showed current use of Windows Server 2008
Hyper-V is 32 percent. The survey also showed that 59 percent of the
respondents plan to adopt Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V in the next 12 to 18
months.

"The light switch has gone on for customers, and they realize they no longer
have to pay a virtualization tax with VMware that creates an isolated, virtual
island within their IT departments," said David Greschler, director of
virtualization and management marketing in the Server and Tools Business at
Microsoft. "The System Center management suite and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
provide a cost-effective, interoperable and scalable enterprise-class
virtualization solution. As a result, more and more customers are switching to
the Microsoft solution, and some are saving on average $170,000 when they
switch."

Customers Switch to Microsoft Virtualization
PoundHost is a fast-growing hosting service provider in Maidenhead, England,
that embraced server virtualization as a way to curb hardware costs and lower
hosting prices. However, the high cost of VMware software and lack of physical
management tools hurt PoundHost's competitiveness and ability to manage its
entire infrastructure. PoundHost turned to Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V
technology to help reduce licensing costs by 80 percent and add new services.
With the addition of Microsoft System Center management tools, automated
server provisioning has reduced IT costs by more than $50,000 annually. The
dramatic increase in virtual machine sales and reduced licensing costs has
enabled PoundHost to increase profitability by 55 percent.

"We could use VMware tools to manage the virtual machines, but we wanted to
offer server monitoring, backup and software-update services to increase our
services and revenue," said Matthew Munson, group technical director,
PoundHost Internet Ltd. and BlueSquare Data Group Services Ltd. "VMware didn't
have a suite of tools to do these things. The Microsoft System Center products
work with Hyper-V, so we could manage and provision servers much more easily
than we could with VMware."

Crutchfield, based in Charlottesville, Va., is a leading consumer electronics
retailer with a mail-order catalog and e-commerce Web site. The company's IT
staff turned to virtualization to cut datacenter costs, improve IT staff
productivity, and promote business agility. However, its VMware-based solution
limited its server consolidation ratios, and a software upgrade would have
cost $44,000. Instead, Crutchfield deployed a cost-effective solution using
Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V technology and the Microsoft System Center
management suite. Today, Crutchfield has cut datacenter heating output by 50
percent and reduced physical servers by 30 percent. The IT staff uses
Microsoft System Center to manage both physical and virtual servers, boosting
IT staff productivity by 40 percent.

"We had so many reasons for building out our virtualization solution, but with
the VMware-based platform we couldn't make any headway," said Craig Vanhuss,
system administrator, Enterprise System Group at Crutchfield. "Since deploying
Hyper-V, IT has shown a new level of agility and responsiveness. Thanks to our
Microsoft virtualization solution, we are meeting the needs of the business
while minimizing costs."

More information about how to begin cutting costs, including case studies on
PoundHost and Crutchfield, can be found at
http://www.microsoft.com/virtualization. Microsoft product and solution
experts at VMworld 2009 can be followed via Twitter at
http://www.twitter.com/virtualization or by monitoring the hash tag #MS_Virt.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software,
services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full
potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.

Rapid Response Team of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, +1-503-443-7070,
rrt@waggeneredstrom.com, for Microsoft Corp.