New Delhi, Sep 8 (ANI/Business Wire India): Microsoft India and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) – a leading IT services, consulting, business solutions and outsourcing firm today announced a strategic alliance between the two companies to launch Microsoft-TCS virtualization Center of Excellence (CoE) in Chennai.

Designed to help customers experience the right approach to applying and managing virtualization across IT architectural layers (namely server, machine, application and desktop) in their business environments – the CoE will leverage best of breed Microsoft technologies (such as Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008) to showcase virtualization scenarios to customers.

The Microsoft-TCS virtualization CoE is a joint initiative by the companies to accelerate the adoption of virtualization technology in India.

“Virtualization is one of the most disruptive technologies in the world today. Though there is adequate knowledge on the benefits of virtualization – only 5% of the world’s servers are virtualized today! There is a clear gap between awareness and adoption of this technology – which has emerged from the lack of guidance among customers around actual implementation of this technology and their inability to demystify the conceptual transition from physical to virtual environments. Through our partnership with TCS to launch the virtualization CoE, we will address this crucial market need and help customers land the benefits of virtualization technology in accordance with their business requirements”, said Rajan Anandan (Managing Director, Microsoft India).

“We are always looking to enhance the services we provide to our customers. Virtualization has clearly emerged as a revolutionary technology with wide reaching implications for global as well as Indian businesses – one that our customers are showing a great deal of interest in. Due to its key benefits such as improved performance, reduced total cost of ownership and increased availability of IT infrastructure – virtualization is increasingly being viewed as an imperative technology by customers, specifically in these challenging economic times,” said P. R. Krishnan (Vice President and Global Head IT Infrastructure Services, TCS).

“The Microsoft-TCS virtualization CoE is an initiative aimed at enabling our customers rapidly realize the advantages of this revolutionary technology. Based on robust virtualization solutions from Microsoft – the CoE will leverage best of breed technologies that are best suited to help our customers stay ahead in today’s competitive market environment”, added Krishnan.

The Microsoft-TCS virtualization CoE will deliver a heightened user experience that will help customers demystify Virtualization: migration from physical to virtual environments, user experience and performance, management of physical and virtual infrastructure from a single console – and experience how virtualization technology deployment in the datacenter can enable improved performance, higher availability and lower cost of ownership of IT infrastructure.

With a holistic approach to virtualization, Microsoft addresses its customers’ end-to-end virtualization requirements – with technologies and solutions spanning across the datacenter to the desktop, and from implementation to management (both virtual and physical resources). (ANI)