Kicking off more than 225 events around the world and joined by more than 4,000 customers and partners, Microsoft Corp.'s Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer showcased the next generation of infrastructure and application platform products, including Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008. The launch represents a major milestone to help customers on the road to Dynamic IT, Microsoft's initiative to help customers optimize their people, processes and technology, and in turn position IT as a strategic asset for their business.

    These new enterprise products help customers more efficiently and securely manage their entire infrastructure and move to a virtualized environment while also delivering business intelligence and next-generation Web experiences to boost business results. The theme of the events, "Heroes Happen Here," highlights the outstanding work that IT professionals, developers and partners do every day to create solutions and cutting-edge applications that keep global commerce and industry running. Researchers at consulting agency Capgemini looked at companies and institutions in the financial services, education, retail and high-technology industries using Windows Server 2008 in a mix of geographic regions. They found that the new operating system quickly adds value to IT operations through enhancements to management, security and reliability.

    "IT professionals and developers tell us they spend too much time and money managing existing systems and not enough investing in new capabilities that create strategic advantage," Ballmer said. "That feedback is at the core of the innovations in this new wave of products. Already, the overwhelming response from thousands of IT professionals and developers around the world is that this is the most secure enterprise platform we have ever delivered, and that it will simplify management and enable them to focus more on driving their businesses forward."

    Windows Server 2008 provides a solid foundation for all of your server workload and application requirements while also being easy to deploy and manage. The all new Server Manager provides a unified management console that simplifies and streamlines server setup, configuration, and ongoing management. Windows PowerShell, a new command-line shell, helps enable administrators to automate routine system administration tasks across multiple servers. Windows Deployment Services provides a simplified, highly secure means of rapidly deploying the operating system via network-based installations. And Windows Server 2008 Failover Clustering wizards, and full Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) support plus consolidated management of Network Load Balancing, make high availability easy to implement even by IT generalists.

    Already IT professionals and developers around the world are using Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and test versions of SQL Server 2008 to implement more secure platforms and Web applications while reducing costs and speeding development.

    With the introduction of Windows Server 2008, leading global communications provider Verizon Business will deliver this next-generation platform to its managed hosting customers worldwide, enabling them to achieve greater reliability, performance and control over their IT infrastructure. In addition, Microsoft's advanced Windows Deployment Services suite will allow Verizon Business to increase the speed of deployments and simplify management.

    The combination of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 enabled the creation of a cutting-edge Web site that provides near-instant access to real estate and neighborhood information about listings for sale, home values, schools and much more. The site operates significantly faster than was previously possible and was developed at a much lower cost. The performance improvements and enterprise-class features of SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 have resulted in record-breaking results. Today Microsoft disclosed new world-record performance results on TPC-E and SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application 3-tier benchmarks running on four-socket industry-standard blade servers.

    Microsoft also announced that Microsoft Windows Server 2008 with .NET Framework 3.5 delivers faster throughput than IBM WebSphere 6.1 on Red Hat Linux as shown through two new benchmark tests measuring scalability and performance in mission-critical enterprise scenarios. The sample application shows 117 percent better throughput of Windows Server using the IBM-designed Trade 6.1 benchmark; and Sun Microsystems' WSTest Web services benchmark demonstrates 94 percent better throughput on Windows Server when processing Web Service requests.