New Blog Series Teaches Lessons from the Cloud

If you haven’t had a chance, take a look at the new Microsoft Server & Cloud blog series, “Learning from Cloud.” The series is a virtual tour of Microsoft infrastructure innovation. 

“We want to show you how it all fits together, and how cloud can change the way you think about your IT strategy,” notes the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform team in the series first   post. The goal is to “help you to think about how IT strategy is changing and the new options created by the cloud.”

The six-week series intends to focus on cloud-related topics such as how Microsoft customers are leveraging cloud technologies to drive business value; datacenter innovation, hybrid computing, and software-defined networking (SDN); and third-party research study takeaways.

The blog also offers access to the “Success with Hybrid Cloud” webinar series, which is hosted by Microsoft Technical Fellow Mark Russinovich and Corporate Vice President Brad Anderson.

Posts will focus on the new levels of standardization, automation, and resiliency that today’s highly customized datacenter requires. One key to this new approach is software-based control that unifies the entire datacenter into one resource pool that can be managed as a whole, across compute, storage, and networking. This SDN approach enables you to change how you frame your IT strategy.

Emerging trends such as big data and the mobile workforce demand a platform that can provide these capabilities. With Windows Server 2012 R2 and Microsoft System Center 2012 R2, organizations can take advantage of built-in features that let you build a software-defined infrastructure platform. On-demand cloud resources are also a vital part of any solution, but must be customizable according to each organization’s needs, not part of a one-size-fits-all cloud mandate.

The six-week series kicks off with “Learning from Cloud: Insights to Inform Your Strategy.” Check it out, and get more information about Microsoft enterprise virtualization, storage, and networking.