REDMOND, Wash., July 31, 2002 — Microsoft Corp., together with industry-leading partners, today unveiled the Microsoft® Systems Architecture (MSA) program, designed to make it easier for enterprise customers to simplify implementation while minimizing the time and cost associated with Windows®
2000 Server integration into corporate computing infrastructures. The Microsoft Systems Architecture for Internet Data Center (IDC) is the first in a series of prescriptive architecture guides (PAGs) enabling enterprises to get online datacenter operations up quickly and efficiently.
MSA comprises three core components integral to configuring and maintaining an optimized Windows 2000 Server-based computing environment:
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Prescriptive architectural guides that provide preconfigured, lab-built and tested system architectures, together with complete documentation
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A services model for supporting customer implementations of the prescriptive architectures
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A support model that defines superior ongoing system support from the associated vendors
“Microsoft, together with its industry partners, is providing customers with a blueprint for IT success through the Microsoft Systems Architecture program,”
said Brian Valentine, senior vice president of the Windows division at Microsoft.
“MSA integrates best-of-breed implementations of hardware, software, services and support designed to help reduce the time, cost and risks generally associated with enterprise deployments. MSA delivers optimized Windows Server infrastructures that are rigorously tested in the lab and have proven themselves to be highly available, reliable and scalable.”
PAGs are designed with the goal to help customers create an enterprise computing environment that is secure, highly available, reliable, scalable and manageable. Customers benefit immensely from integrated systems architectures that include all core technologies — operating systems, servers, storage and networking — and have been built, tested and proven before the customer ever starts an implementation. PAGs reduce implementation risks and improve return on investment and time to market.
“We need a platform solution that lets us confidently add to and redeploy our Internet datacenters quickly and at a reasonable cost, to address large increases in worldwide demand,” said Holger Jensen, senior director of technology at LEGO.com. “Our using Microsoft’s predefined and tested Internet datacenter system architecture will enable future deployments to get up and running quickly. It helps give us a secure, scalable, reliable and manageable infrastructure based on best practices that keeps us flexible to meet constantly changing and peak-season business needs.”
“The Microsoft Systems Architecture reference architectural guides helped provide our company with peace of mind in our decision to deploy a datacenter,”
said Martin Witt, COO at T-Mobile Business Solutions.
“The proven guidance helped us to set up a datacenter with known costs and integrated knowledge of the hardware and software we were looking to use in our implementation of a service integration platform, which our company depends on 24×7.”
In addition to LEGO.com and T-Mobile Business Solutions, the Internet Data Center (IDC) prescriptive architecture guides have been adopted by IndyMac Bank, one of the largest online mortgage banks in the United States, and the Learning Station, an online educational-content-delivery service application service provider (ASP) with close to 1 million subscribers. The solution applies equally to the high-availability requirements of enterprise businesses such as IndyMac Band and the needs of small businesses such as the Learning Station, with a staff of only 25. Both have seen the benefits PAGs provide for Windows 2000 Server-based computing environments by running mission-critical, primary-line-of-business applications and utilizing advanced technology.
Microsoft and industry partners are working together to develop PAGs — both Microsoft-led and industry-partner-led — that provide customers with an integrated set of essential data on the following:
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Infrastructure support for specific enterprise computing functions such as directory services or messaging
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Enterprise datacenter configurations, such as IDC
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Full corporate end-to-end computing requirements
These architectures are built and tested in Microsoft’s labs or in industry partners’ labs, resulting in designs incorporating all the infrastructure technologies that have been optimized for Windows products.
MSA PAG Qualification Program
Microsoft provides a qualification program to ensure PAGs meet specific criteria:
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Meet or exceed standardized test results
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Produce high-quality implementation and support guidance and documentation
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Demonstrate the partners’ ability to provide a high level of support for the combined vendor solution
MSA-qualified prescriptive architecture guides offer customers a number of proven options based on their unique architectural and platform requirements.
The first qualified industry-partner-led IDC PAGs,
“The Internet Blueprint for the Microsoft Systems Architecture”
and
“The Internet Blueprint Plus for the Microsoft Systems Architecture,”
are available from Avanade Inc., Brocade Communications Systems Inc., Dell Computer Corp., Emulex Corp., EMC Corp., Nortel Networks Ltd. and Unisys Corp. on their respective Web sites. Links to these sites are available at http://www.microsoft.com/systemsarchitecture/ .
The Microsoft IDC PAG, including information from Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Cisco Systems Inc., EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Microsoft Consulting Services and Nortel Networks is available to customers at no charge on Microsoft’s TechNet Web site, which can be linked to from http://www.microsoft.com/systemsarchitecture/ .
Additional industry partners currently developing, or committed to developing, and delivering systems-architecture guidance include Accenture, Fujitsu Siemens Computers and Siemens Business Services, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM and IBM Global Services, NEC, and NetIQ.
More information about the MSA program is available on the Web at http://www.microsoft.com/systemsarchitecture/ .
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“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
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