iYogi Secures $9.5M in Series B Funding Led by SAP Ventures, With Follow-on Investment from Canaan Partners and SVB India Capital Partners

iYogi Secures $9.5M in Series B Funding Led by SAP Ventures, With Follow-on Investment from Canaan Partners and SVB India Capital Partners
iYogi, a Direct-to-Consumer and Small Business Technical Support Provider, Paves the Way for Personal Offshoring to Become India’s Next Success Story

New York, 24 July, 2008: Personal Offshoring, which is driving the next wave of India’s outsourcing success story, got a huge boost today when iYogi - a remote technical support provider from India - raised $ 9.5 million in Series B financing from SAP Ventures, a division of SAP AG, Canaan Partners and SVB India Capital Partners, a venture fund affiliate of Silicon Valley Bank.

iYogi (www.iyogi.net) delivers technical support services directly to consumers and small businesses and is the first, global, technical support brand based out of India. The company offers its customers an unlimited, annual service subscription for $119.99 per desktop that includes support for a wide range of technologies, including PC hardware Microsoft Windows operating system, software applications, peripherals and multifunctional devices.

“Personal Offshoring has created new investment opportunities in India with incredible growth potential,” said Doug Higgins, partner at SAP Ventures. “It is very exciting to see companies like iYogi challenging the traditional enterprise-focused offshore-service delivery model by creating a consumer-focused, direct-to-customer personal offshore model. iYogi is one of the fastest-growing companies in this market segment, and we look forward to working with them to create India’s next success story.”

“Our focus on the customer experience has helped us achieve a 93 percent satisfaction rate across more than 50,000 customers,” said Uday Challu, CEO of iYogi. “We are delighted to have the support of three terrific investors as we increase our market share and continue to provide the best technical support experience possible for our customers.”

iYogi will use the funds to fuel its expansion into 12 new regions, including the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and to increase its delivery of new services including PC recovery, anti-virus/spyware, data back-up and PC optimization.

“As consumer technologies grow in sophistication, consumers will be seeking the kind of home IT support services – including remote services offered by companies such as iYogi – to help them solve their most complex problems,” said Kurt Scherf, vice president and principal analyst, Parks Associates. “In primary research, we found more than one-third of consumers are willing to pay for competent and professional remote support services, and 60% express a strong interest in software solutions – what we refer to as ‘PC Dashboards’ – that automate many basic PC performance enhancement and troubleshooting features, solving many PC-related problems before they even are noticed by end-users.”

iYogi had previously raised $3.1 million in Series A financing from Canaan Partners and SVB in April of last year. “iYogi is one of the most promising investments for Canaan Partners,” said Alok Mittal, managing director of India at Canaan Partners. “Third-party, vendor-independent technical support is an exciting new service category, witnessing explosive growth. Customers are looking beyond the traditional vendor-provided support to remote channels for better problem resolution, faster service, and greater overall satisfaction. iYogi has created an incredible value proposition and price offering for its customers that is hard to beat.”

”Several next generation outsourcing companies from India are delivering a range of personal offshoring services for individuals and small businesses in the U.S. including online tutoring, tax preparation, remote executive assistance and research services,” said Suresh Shanmugham, managing director of SVB India Capital Partners, a venture fund affiliate of Silicon Valley Bank. “iYogi has leveraged the technical skills available in India along with process expertise to scale as a global technical support provider for millions faced with increasingly complex technology”.

About SAP Ventures
SAP Ventures invests in innovative and disruptive software and services companies globally. We pursue opportunities across all stages for outstanding financial return. Our goal is to bring substantial benefit to all parties by facilitating interaction between portfolio companies and SAP and its ecosystem of customers and partners. SAP Ventures has a successful track record of building industry-leading companies by partnering with outstanding entrepreneurs and top-tier venture capital firms since 1996. For more information, visit www.sapventures.com.

About Canaan Partners

Canaan Partners is a global venture capital firm specializing in early-stage information technology and life sciences companies. Founded in 1987, Canaan Partners has $2.4 billion capital under management and has invested in more than 240 companies, completed 63 mergers and acquisitions, and brought over 50 companies public. The firm catalyzes the development of innovative mobile, Internet, CleanTech, networking, semiconductor, enterprise software and services, biotechnology and medical technologies to build next-generation market leaders. Canaan was an early investor in Acme Packet (APKT), Aperto Networks, BharatMatrimony.com, Blurb, DoubleClick (DCLK), ID Analytics, Match.com and SuccessFactors, along with dozens of other market-leading companies. Canaan is headquartered in Menlo Park, California and also has offices in Connecticut, India and Israel. For more information visit: www.canaan.com.

SVB India Capital Partners Fund and Silicon Valley Bank

SVB India Capital Partners Fund is a $54 million equity fund that is focused on Indian companies and co-invests across industries and stages with top-tier venture capital firms. Silicon Valley Bank is the premier commercial bank for emerging, growth and mature companies in the technology, life science, private equity and premium wine industries. Founded in 1983 and headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., the company serves clients around the world through 27 U.S. offices and five international operations. Silicon Valley Bank is a member of global financial services firm SVB Financial Group, with SVB Analytics, SVB Capital, SVB Global and SVB Private Client Services. More information on the company can be found at www.svb.com.

About iYogi

iYogi is the first direct-to-consumer and small business technical support service from India. Providing an annual unlimited subscription to technical support for $119.99 per year, iYogi now boasts more than 50,000 customers. The company employs 450 professionals servicing customers in the U.S., U.K., Canada fast expanding to 12 new geographies across the globe. iYogi’s resolution rate of 87 percent and customer satisfaction rate of 93 percent are amongst the highest published benchmarks in the industry. For further information, please visit www.iyogi.net.

SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. iYogi shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

SAP and all SAP logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.
All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies.

Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “expect,” “forecast,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “project,” “predict,” “should” and “will” and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.



Contact:


Company Name:
iYogi Technical Services Pvt Ltd

Address:
iYogi Inc.
12 Desbrosses Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10013

Toll Free no: 1-800-237-3901

Work Number: 1-212-229-0901

F ax Number: 1-888-867-2715

Computer's for Dummies Author Releases Top Ten Tips to Extend Remote Computer Life

1) Clean out the case – Especially when you have pets, you may find lots of non-electronic things dwelling inside your PC’s console. Clean it out; all that fuzz and dust helps trap heat, especially when it clogs the PC’s fan and air vents. But do take care: unplug your PC before opening the case. Then use a vacuum or can of air to blast away years of crud.

2) Clean up the digital detritus – As with cleaning out the inside of the remote computer support case, you’ll want to clean up the digital leftovers on your remote computer’s hard drive. The Disk Cleanup tool that comes with Windows is ideal for this. For your own stuff, you should go through the things you’ve saved to disk and ensure that there aren’t things lurking there taking up space that you no longer need. If so, delete ‘em!

3) Add more memory –Your remote technical support Christmas when you add more memory to the system. Unless the PC is already packed with RAM, buy more. Heck, if it’s packed with RAM, remove it and add RAM to the maximum capacity. Your computer support will love it. You will love it.

4) Backup your files – As remote computers age, the hard drive goes. The hard drive is where you store all your stuff, and that stuff should be precious to you. To help keep that information around, run a backup program on a regular basis. That second, just-in-case copy, of your stuff will come in handy some day.

5) Add a second hard drive – The hard drive in your old PC will die someday. Before then, add a second hard drive. For example, you can add an external hard drive and use it for backup. Or add an internal hard drive and start saving your stuff there for the big, sad day when the original hard drive bites the digital dust.

6) Get a new mouse, keyboard, or both! – Like the hard drive, your PC’s keyboard and mouse are mechanical things. They will suffer from wear and tear someday. Before then, do yourself a favor and buy replacements. A new mouse can add some happy zip to your computing day. A new keyboard, well, you can see the key tops again.

7) Perform regular maintenance –The computer support does have the ability to fix many of its own problems, but you must be an active participant. Regularly run disk utilities on the drive: defragment the drive to help improve speed and performance. Run a disk- checking utility to ensure that information can reliably be accessed on the disk.

8) Upgrade the optical drive – Rather than live in the 20th Century with a plain CD-ROM drive, get yourself a DVD drive, or a recordable drive. Replacement optical drives are inexpensive and easy to install yourself. They also come with the software necessary to use the new drive, even if Windows lacks those features.

9) Upgrade the video adapter – Video technology has come a long way since you bought your PC. A new video adapter, packed with abundant video RAM and a high-speed graphics processor, can make your PC look brand new. Well, on the screen at least. (Do ensure that you get an adapter that can plug into your remote computer support.)

10) Buy a UPS – Your remote computer support relies on power to keep it going. With an Uninterruptable Power Supply, you can ensure that the power is not only always there, but conditioned as well. The UPS will help keep your computer's aging bones from breaking during a snap outage.

source: businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080708005246&newsLang=en

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Remote Computer, Computer Jobs Hit Record High

Unemployment among computer-related jobs hovers near historic lows as the U.S. information technology workforce tops 4 million for the first time.

The size of the IT workforce in the United States has topped 4 million workers for the first time last quarter, according to CIO Insight’s analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data. And the number of employed IT pros reached 3,956,000 in the second quarter of 2008, also a record high.

The IT unemployment rate inched up one-tenth of a percentage point last quarter to 2.3 percent, but still hovers near historic lows. That’s in contrast to overall unemployment, which last quarter stood at 4.7 percent, more than double the IT jobless rate. (In June, overall unemployment stood at 5.5 percent for the second consecutive month, after shedding 62,000 jobs that month. Comparable numbers aren’t available for computer-related occupations.

Why would IT employment remain robust as unemployment rises in most other job categories? IT performs a critical role in business productivity, and the efficiencies it brings are crucial for employers looking to trim costs—including payrolls—as fuel and related expenditures soar and the economy and dollar weakens. In addition, companies today cannot operate without functioning IT systems, so certain business technology skills cannot be eliminated if a company wants to remain competitive.

A year earlier, the IT unemployment rate stood at 2.1 percent, with 3,599,000 workers employed in IT and 77,000 jobless and looking for positions in the field, for an IT workforce size of 3,675,000.

With 4,050,000 managers, professionals and other staffers holding or seeking computer-related positions last quarter, the IT workforce has grown by 10.2 percent over the past four quarters.

Another sign of a strong IT economy: the number of workers employed by IT services firms rose by 56,100 this past year to 1,414,400, a 4.1 percent increase, according to last month’s BLS establishment survey of some 160,000 businesses and government agencies covering about 400,000 worksites. The active sample includes about one-third of all nonfarm payroll workers.

The increase in IT services employment reflects the continuing need by companies for outsourcers to manage corporate IT infrastructures as well as provide hard-to-find but needed skills to develop and support new applications and systems.

Not every person employed by IT services firms—officially labeled by the government as remote computer support systems design and related services—is an IT pro, but a majority are. A 2006 government report estimates that 53 percent of IT services firms' workers hold IT jobs such as programmers; software engineers; remote computer repair the preferred choice of customers, network systems and data communications analysts; or database, network and systems administrators. Another 3 percent are computer repair and IS managers. The remaining employees—44 percent of payrolls—encompass non-IT managers and administrative and operational support personnel, including those in finance, human resources and sales.

Besides the establishment survey, the government also queries 60,000 households to determine employment and unemployment in the U.S. For our analysis, we use a BLS quarterly report that aggregates the monthly reports and details employment in hundreds of occupation categories. The government tracks seven major computer-related job categories: Today Many firm needs more remote computer professionals to log on and systems analysts, remote computer programmers, computer software engineers, computer support specialists, database administrators, network and computer systems administrators and network systems and data communications specialists plus computer and information systems managers.

CIO Insight analyzes these eight occupation categories to determine current IT employment conditions. Because these IT professions comprises less than 3 percent of the overall workforce, and each occupation category’s size on its own would be statistically unreliable, CIO Insight aggregates the last four quarters to determine each quarter’s workforce, employment and unemployment levels. For example, we added BLS data from the last two quarters of 2007 and the first two quarters of 2008 then divided by four to determine second-quarter 2008 data. Statisticians and economists say aggregating four quarters worth of data makes them more statically reliable than just using one quarter’s worth of data.

source : cioinsight.com/c/a/Workplace/Computer-Jobs-Hit-Record-High/

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Firms Need More remote computer support Professionals to Log On

The world is full of youngish people who know everything there is to know about computers and the Internet, right?

Wrong.

In fact, industry sources say there are shortages worldwide of the people who know how to make that entire blinking, beeping cyber-universe go.

All those high-tech jobs that went to India, Pakistan and so on? They were mostly low-level support jobs, according to more than one professor of Computer Help and Support science.

Today, just about every company has a Web presence, said Kelly Lewis, president of the nonprofit Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania.

"There are not enough skilled people in the world to do this kind of work," Lewis said.

In the greater Harrisburg area, Lewis said, the industry is short 500 to 1,000 technology professionals, with companies raiding one another for techs and engineers.

"It's an international competition for talent, the scientists, technologists, engineers and project leaders," he said. "The demand will only get greater."

GeoDecisions Inc., a division of Gannett Fleming Inc. in East Pennsboro Twp., has had such a tough time finding qualified Web developers that the company helped Harrisburg University of Science and Technology create a curriculum to meet this specialized need, said Eric Darr, university provost.

GeoDecisions has hired three of the university's 20 graduates in the last two years. Five GeoDecisions employees teach at the school, Darr said.

Bob Scaer, president of GeoDecisions, said the motivation behind the company's commitment to the university is to add entry-level high-tech workers to the region. The company must still rely heavily on recruiters to scour the country and find workers who possess the advanced skills that GeoDecisions needs.

"We struggle to find these people," he said.

GeoDecisions isn't the only company that has come to Harrisburg University with a need for more talent, Darr said. Smart & Associates, a regional technology consulting firm, created two internships for Harrisburg University students just to support a contract Smart has to develop a Web portal for the state Department of Education.

Part of the looming problem in the networking field is that many of its earlier experts are retiring.

"The real challenge in the midstate is that 30 percent of the work force right now at all the Department of Defense facilities in our area is eligible for retirement," Lewis said.

Employers are desperate for workers in the networking field, said Kenneth Yarnall, a professor of math and remote computer support science at Lebanon Valley College. Reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that there will be tremendous growth in the next decade for jobs in the computer support science and math industry.

Despite the need, the number of students majoring in computer science has not kept pace.

David Hutchens, chairman of Millersville University's introduced new computer support automation utility software for science department, said enrollments have dropped in the past seven years, leveling off in the past two to three.

"We have half as many incoming students as we had in 2001," he said.

At Shippensburg, Carol Wellington, chairwoman of the computer science department, said it's a national trend that fewer students are enrolling in computer science programs.

At Lebanon Valley College, Michael Fry, a math professor who also teaches computer support science courses, believes the decline in students has stabilized.

"There is more demand for our students than there are students," he said.

But why the ups and downs?

"I think there is a misconception in the general population that there are no jobs to be had in computer science because they're all being shipped overseas," said Lewis.

"That's not true. There are more people working in the field than in 2001, and the job market seems very strong," he said.

Some companies, like California-based Cisco Systems, have created partnerships with government and non-government organizations, schools and industry designed to teach students how to build and maintain computer networks.

Cisco's Networking Academy is now in its 11th year, said Gene Longo, who manages the program. Pennsylvania was one of the first states where the Cisco program caught on, and Carlisle was one of the first districts to adopt it, Longo said.

The 90 or so academies in schools across Pennsylvania have put 11,000 students through the Cisco program, including Jon Strine, 24, systems engineer at The Patriot-News. Strine went through four semesters of the academy at Carlisle High School, graduating in 2000.

"For me, it was the first entry into data networking at a deeper level," he said. "I fell in love with data networking. It opened up a lot of doors."

Abner Vargas, 22, came to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic when he was 11. He just graduated from Harrisburg University and has gone to work for Highmark, for whom he interned while he was working toward his computer science certification.

"I am working on Highmark's legacy modernization program, which means basically that I am helping to modernize their system, and automating some of the processes," Vargas said.

He said there is clearly a shortage of people trained in the computer sciences and technology.

"We have some contractors from other countries working here now, because there aren't enough trained people over here to do everything they need done," he said.

He added that bringing engineers and other technical people from overseas to work is expensive, time-consuming and requires whole forests of paper work.

"They would much rather have people from here. But there has been a real shortage in the past few years," Vargas said.

According to figures provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, a software engineer in the commonwealth can earn between $55,000 and $96,000 annually.

A computer support specialist can make between $28,000 and $48,000, and a network administrator from $41,000 to $78,000.

The industry has been working for some time to boost interest in students in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics courses network professionals need. But Hutchens said there is no easy answer as to how to get that done.

Hutchens said incoming students could use a better math background in high school. He said his department even visits middle schools to spur interest among students. At the college, he tells students there are jobs everywhere.

At Shippensburg, Wellington said, there are usually 25 to 50 graduating with a degree in computer science.

"Everyone who graduated who wanted a job had a job," she said, with many in the midstate. "Students need to know computer science is fun."

Source : redorbit.com/news/science/1435567/firms_need_more_web_professionals_to_log_on/

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It's not Online vista technical services: Windows Server 2008 gets nod from IT

It may look like Windows Online vista technical services . It shares the same code base as Windows Vista Support and Help Services. It even rolls in Vista's first Service Pack. But in terms of customer adoption plans, Windows Server 2008 is no online vista technical services.

A new Computerworld survey shows that 63% of the 403 respondents plan to adopt Microsoft's new server operating system. (You can read This contrasts with the intention of some IT organizations to skip Vista entirely and move directly to Windows 7 on the desktop. According to an of 372 IT professionals conducted by Sanford C. Bernstein in May, companies expect just 26% of their PCs to be running Vista by the beginning of 2011, down from an estimate of nearly 68% of computers based on a similar survey a year ago. "I haven't seen any shadow of Vista being cast over Windows Server 2008," says John Enck, analyst at Gartner Inc. Most industry watchers, in fact, agree that deployment is not a matter of if, but when and where.

IT executives say that for the most part, Windows Server 2008's many new features won't compel them to change their normal refresh schedules to adopt it right away. "It's just an evolutionary step from Server 2003," says Rick Redman, senior IT analyst for the city of Amarillo, Texas.

Jim Thomas, director of IT operations at window manufacturer Pella Corp. in Pella, Iowa, says Microsoft's new virtualization hypervisor, is interesting. But other than that, he says, there's "not a whole lot" that he finds compelling. And Hyper-V is and immature to warrant rushing ahead to convert his 425 Windows servers, he adds. Overall, however, IT decision-makers give the operating system a qualified thumbs up and plan to move to it as part of the normal server refresh cycle, which typically ranges from three to five years. Some customers, for instance, phase in new servers by replacing one-third of their machines each year; others replace all of their servers at once. One can get excellent exchange server support from many reputed companies like microsoft, iyogi etc.

"We're coming at it much more from a normal rollout of an operating system," says Bob Yale, IT principal at The Vanguard Group Inc. in Valley Forge, Pa. Vanguard has about 1,200 Windows servers, most of which are running Windows Server 2003.

Overall, 59% of Computerworld 's survey respondents who said they plan to adopt Windows Server 2008 (WS '08) expect to get started within the next 12 months. More than half -- 55% -- expect to complete the transition within two years. The highest level of interest came from respondents at midsize organizations with 100 to 1,000 employees; 69% of them said they expect to get started within the next 12 months.

Selective service

In most cases, the early adopters are deploying WS '08 selectively in a bid to leverage specific new features in the operating system. While more than half of respondents in our survey said they will follow the usual upgrade schedule, about one in four said they will accelerate adoption for some applications. One in three respondents said that their organizations have a business need for a new feature in WS '08.

Mike Moore, IT principal at Vanguard, says his company has implemented a few WS '08 machines where the new features filled a business need. For instance, Vanguard has servers in place that leverage WS '08's new (NAP) features. "We'd like to extend that further with the more-granular policy servers that Windows Server 2008 provides," he says. But he doesn't expect to get serious about WS '08 rollouts until sometime in 2009. Neither does the city of Amarillo's Redman, who says he'd like to see a base of documentation and best practices before moving forward. "The biggest problem is getting useful Online vista technical services articles out of Microsoft that don't have a lot of marketing hype," he says.

But Ward Ralston, senior windows vista support services product manager for Windows Server 2008, argues that plenty of resources exist today. He points to the as examples. Redman expects to begin migrating to WS '08 within a year. For now, however, he'll stick with Server 2003 when the need for new servers arises. While it's not hard to install the new operating system, it's quite a bit of work to load the fixes and patches and deal with Online vista technical services support, he says. "If this one is working, why break it? We have 1,500 other things to do," he notes.

Early adopter Pacific Coast Cos. in Cordova, Calif., upgraded three server-based applications to WS '08 while participating in Microsoft's beta program. The applications, which include an estimator, a design application and a quality-control application, are all hosted using Terminal Online vista technical services and have been stable. Because they're critical, however, administrators perform a preventive reboot every month, just to be safe, says enterprise architect Matt Okuma. But he'd like to see the operating system season a bit before he migrates other applications. "Would I run an SAP portal on Server 2008 right now? Probably not," he says.

Like Vanguard, Pacific Coast plans to selectively deploy WS '08 as a replacement for third-party products. "We don't want a fancy environment for network access protection. We just want to know when someone unauthorized has accessed our network," Okuma says. His organization has also deployed Windows Server 2008's Terminal Online vista technical services , with its ability to publish applications, as a replacement for his Citrix environment, which was hosted by a third party. The new setup saves on licensing and maintenance costs and performs better. "We've offloaded the cost and maintenance of Citrix. That's why we went to Server 2008," Okuma says. It was, he adds, a "no-brainer."

Broader deployments at Pacific Coast will likely start with Active Directory servers, but that's at least a year away. "We'll stick with Server 2003 in the interim," Okuma says.

Virtual possibilities
is probably the most talked about new feature in Server 2008. But with the hypervisor and management tools just emerging from beta, most organizations don't take Hyper-V seriously -- yet. "It's on our watch list, but not on the critical path to our virtualization strategy by any means," says Vanguard's Yale.
"Down the road, I think Microsoft will crush VMware, but they're far behind VMware at this point," says Okuma. He currently has 150 Windows servers, most of which are running virtualized Windows Server 2003 sessions on VMware products. Many of those virtual servers are "Tier 0" virtual machines, where server recovery would be time-consuming. "I would not move them to Hyper-V at this point," Okuma says.

"In 12 to 18 months, [Microsoft] will give VMware a run for their money," says Gartner's Enck. He thinks Microsoft will push Hyper-V into the enterprise through aggressive licensing practices. "It is very good at using the as a tool to shift the base," he says.

VMware also faces a competitive challenge from Microsoft for IT organizations that use more than one hypervisor. The of System Center Virtual Machine Manager, which offers some of the same tools found in VMware's VirtualCenter, will support not only Hyper-V but VMware ESX hypervisors as well when it's released later this year. And support for Xen is planned, according to Microsoft. VMware supports only its own hypervisor.

Right now, management tools are the No. 1 issue when it comes to virtualization, according to IDC. Microsoft's offering is not nearly as complete as VMware's, says Amarillo's Redman. But as it matures and the number of virtual machines under management continues to grow, System Center Virtual Machine Manager's flexibility will be increasingly attractive.

For now, however, most large companies are already committed to VMware. While 62% of large-company respondents in the Computerworld survey said they were using VMware for virtualization, nearly half (45%) of small companies and 29% of midsize companies said they weren't using virtualization at all yet. Gartner estimates that the installed base for virtualization as a percentage of all servers in use is still somewhere around 10%. That leaves plenty of room for Microsoft to move in.

"We think Microsoft will get big chunks of the market" and push out competitors, Enck says, leaving the market with two dominant players: VMware and Microsoft.

Scott Zimmerman, CIO at CenterPoint Properties in Oakbrook, Ill., is using VMware to host six of the real estate development and management company's 25 Windows servers. Zimmerman says he's very interested possibly using Hyper-V. "Is it a viable substitute? We'll want to find out," he says.

The city of Amarillo, with 100 to 150 Windows servers, is just starting to look at virtualization, Redman says. He's interested in Hyper-V but wants to see a broad community of support surrounding it before he'll consider deployment. "With VMware, a lot of people can help," he says.

Chad Mawson, IT manager at law firm Woods & Aitken LLP in Lincoln, Neb. agrees. He says he's seen "bits and pieces" of information on Microsoft's but notes that "there doesn't seem to be any real community base."

Overcoming VMware's entrenched position and customer loyalty won't be easy. "We're probably going to stick with VMware unless there's a huge price differential," Mawson says, noting that his ESX virtual machines are "incredibly stable." VMware isn't cheap, but that doesn't keep him up at night. "We get a good value for our money," he says.

Better living through Active Directory
and group policy are another area where users say even incremental improvements are welcome. Overall, however, the improvements in Active Directory, such as the new read-only domain controller and improved logging for change events, are minimal, says Gartner's Enck. More important improvements, including better integration with Lightweight Directory Online vista technical services or non-Windows Kerberos implementations, aren't there yet.
Microsoft's Ralston counters that WS '08 includes more than 1,800 group policy settings that used to require the creation of custom scripts. "We closed the loop on all of those group policy features that were missing," he says. Microsoft also rolled in tools from its Desktop Standard acquisition, now called Group Policy Preferences, to automate the creation of group policies.

Woods & Aitken deployed a single instance of WS '08 for an Active Directory domain controller in a remote office that needed a new server. Mawson says the system is working fine, but he acknowledges that the deployment was a gamble. "It's more of a test in active use," he says. The enhanced group-policy management features are a step up, and Mawson intends to take full advantage of those features. He'll begin moving to WS '08 immediately but will only migrate as servers come up for their regular replacement, he says.
found the new Active Directory features sufficient to upgrade some servers. "The improvements in the Active Directory Online vista technical services [and] fine-grained password policies are really compelling," says Michael Lebiedzinski, director of infrastructure for the company s Global Wealth Platform. "In the past, different password policies were a driver to separate domains," he says. While the ability to fine-tune password policies drove the firm's adoption of WS '08, enabling domain consolidation was a secondary benefit, he says.
Others say they like the improvements but are in no rush to upgrade servers. "We've had talks about upgrading our Active Directory, but what do we actually gain from it? The risk is higher to go to 2008 than to just stay with 2003 at this point," Okuma says.

Stripping down to the core
Server 2008 offers 19 role-based installations that strip down the operating system to only the components needed to perform a given function, such as DNS. "We removed everything that wasn't needed for those roles. No .Net Framework, no Media Player, not even a GUI," says Microsoft's Ralston.

Redman thinks that the Server Core roles such as Active Directory and DNS server configurations will be particularly useful for remote sites. "A stripped-down operating system has less of a footprint for viruses, etc.," he says. Still, he's not going to put them in ahead of the normal refresh cycle.

Some of the roles fall in areas where Linux has been a popular alternative, but Gartner's Enck doesn't think WS '08 is a Linux-killer. Server Core is limited to a few specific roles, making it less flexible than Linux, he says. And while Server Core versions are easier to administer and are more secure than full-blown Windows Server installations because of the smaller footprint, there's no clear cost benefit to moving off of Linux. However, Server Core could blunt further advances by Linux into the enterprise for those role-based Online vista technical services it does support, he says.
Internet Information Server
part of WS '08, offers more security features. Like the rest of the operating system, IIS has been componentized. There are more than 40 different pieces that can be installed to build a Web server, says Ralston. IIS 7 includes many security improvements, he adds. For example, a remote procedure call can't write to the registry or file system anymore because the security token for the account it runs under no longer has those privileges baked in.
IIS 7 is the most interesting part of Server 2008 for Zimmerman at CenterPoint Properties. "All of our applications are Web-based, so we like to keep current," he says. He points to improvements in streaming-media capabilities and in how IIS interacts with Active Server Pages, as well as the ease with which WS '08 can propagate configuration updates to Web server farms, as compelling reasons to upgrade.

It's not, however, compelling enough to make an IIS migration a top priority. "We don't have the time and project plan to focus on Windows Server 2008 right now," Zimmerman says. For now, he will continue to deploy Windows Server 2003 as needed and gradually begin upgrading later this year, starting with noncritical servers, he says.

SP2: The new SP1
While it's typical for organizations to wait for the first service pack before deploying a new operating system from Microsoft, in Computerworld 's survey, just over a third of respondents said they'd wait for the next service pack before deploying WS '08. Small companies were the most cautious.

One reason may be the perception that WS '08 has already had its first service pack, since Microsoft rolled up Vista's SP1 into the initial release of the product. Indeed, Microsoft has announced that the first true service pack for WS '08 will be labeled "SP2."

But while Vista and WS '08 do share a common code base, the server OS is far more modular and has many features that aren't part of Vista. At best, Vista SP1 was a partial service pack for WS '08. "SP2 is the old SP1," says Vanguard's Moore. "I'm not convinced that they've fixed all of the quality issues. We'll wait until SP2." Vanguard will begin a gradual rollout only when SP2 finally ships, he says.

Pacific Coast's Okuma is also cautious. "Our organization will definitely wait" for SP2, he says.

But that's not stopping Mawson at Woods & Aitken. SP1 "was already integrated into Server 2008, so that didn't play into the decision for us," he says, adding that he has seen no crashes so far with his test server.

Zimmerman currently has WS '08 running on a test machine. "We like it," he says but notes that he'll wait for the next service pack. "We kind of hang out until [SP2 ships], unless there's some overwhelming argument that it's stable," he adds.

"Sometime after SP2 comes out, we will start to look at rolling through a refresh," says Moore. He expects to start sometime next year. The rollout will require six months of planning and 12 to 18 months to complete.

Perhaps the biggest reason why SP2 doesn't matter is that the update is likely to arrive before many organizations can initiate major deployments. Redman says SP2 is important but not a concern on his planning horizon: "By the time we get around to [deploying Windows Server], there usually is [a service pack]." The real bottleneck, he says, is evaluation and planning time. "It could take us six months to a year to finish looking at the features, play with them and see what it will buy us," he says.

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Source : reseller.co.nz/reseller.nsf/feat/D73057162C06DBE5CC257478007F80F4

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StarHub to Introduce Asia's First online Windows tech services

StarHub today announced Asia's first integrated instant messaging (IM) mobile client that allows mobile customers to access two leading IM services - Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger - on their mobile phones.

Available later in June 2008, Chat Anywhere will be offered as a value-added service to StarHub Mobile post-paid customers for an affordable monthly flat fee of S$5.35. There will be no additional data usage charges for the use of the service.

With StarHub's Chat Anywhere service, customers will soon be able to enjoy real-time, unlimited access to their existing IM accounts on Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger from their mobile devices. It delivers a similar user experience of the online Windows tech services Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, with the added benefit of the freedom to chat with their Windows Vista Support and Help Services contacts anywhere, anytime.

Mr Anil Nihalani, Head of Mobile Services, StarHub, said: "IM services are very popular among our customers, who use the service to keep in touch with their contacts from home, at the workplace, and increasingly, would like to do so on the go. With this new service, we are excited to bring the desktop IM experience to the mobile phone. It will have a familiar user experience, enabling our customers to instantly use the service to keep in touch with their contacts throughout the day, regardless of where they are. The best part is, of course, StarHub's deterministic, peace-of-mind pricing for our mobile data products. With this service, you get unlimited chatting with your IM contacts from your mobile phone without incurring any additional data usage charges."

Chat Anywhere works on a wide range of handsets that are capable of running Java applications. The application can be downloaded and installed in the mobile device for direct access from the handset.

Source : hardwarezone.com/news/view.php?id=10895&cid=9

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