Wipro Technologies has performed a lab-based assessment of the reliability, availability and manageability of enterprise servers in a variety of patching and update scenarios. The results of this Microsoft sponsored study show that Windows Server 2003 Enterprise servers incur 63% less unplanned downtime and 33% less overall downtime during patching and updating than similarly sized Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 servers.

Drupal, Alfresco, and many other open source ECMs, WCMs, and collaboration tools run effectively on Windows. And this configuration allows organizations to maintain the benefits―maintenance of existing IT skills, management tools, and operational practices―derived from standardizing on the Windows platform. Organizations should feel comfortable remaining with Windows as their underlying operating system for ECM, WCM, and collaboration tools, regardless of the individual application choice they make to support those needs.

The choice and the eventual deployment of an operating system is only the first step an organization takes in configuring and building a network infrastructure. Except in the most rudimentary networks, IT professionals need to take into account the types of network management tools that they intend to utilize to manage, monitor, maintain, analyze, and secure the network. IT professionals must also provide infrastructure services to the organization, such as directory and certificate services. Red Hat and other commercialized open source distributions tout the notion that Linux frees users from vendor lock-in, and they paint a picture of users easily moving from one Linux distribution to another. However, the reality of moving from one distribution to another is not without concerns, as Linux distributions differ in package managers, supported packages, and installed libraries, resulting in work to change distributions. In addition, some commercialized open source distributions, such as Red Hat, provide additional software that is supported only on their platforms. If organizations use this software, as many do, the problem of changing distros is compounded.

Reliability, Availability and Serviceability, often referred to collectively as R/A/S, is a term coined in the eighties to encompass the capabilities of a computer system that allow it to run in a predictable fashion and without interruptions. Windows Server 2008 implements a significant number of new features and capabilities that provide an increased ability to operate in critical environments.

Windows appears to have an edge in the talent market from both availability and cost standpoints. The availability of Windows talent is almost twice that of Linux, whereas the Linux talent market is experiencing some talent shortfalls. Some experts predict that the talent shortage will become more severe with wider deployment of open-source platforms such as Linux. Most organizations find it difficult to find experienced Linux talent. On the other hand, organizations that have deployed Windows felt that it was easier for them to find qualified, experienced Windows talent. Candidate response rates and selection rates were typically higher for Windows job postings, indicative of the larger Windows talent pool.

Reliability is a primary consideration in choosing enterprise software, and as the most reliable Windows Server yet, Microsoft Windows Server 2008 stands out from its competition as an excellent foundation. With an even stronger code base than Windows Server 2003 and a broad range of reliability features,Windows Server 2008 is an excellent choice to develop, deliver, and manage rich user experiences and applications you can count on.

For independent software vendors (ISVs), platform adoption decisions are one of the most crucial choices they make, impacting all aspects of their business from customer acquisition to operational costs to profitability. As a result, ISVs look to make the most informed platform decisions possible. Although platform adoption choices are a core focus for ISVs, they look at many of the same kinds of factors as end-user firms do and thus can be used as a barometer for how the various technology platforms compare for all companies to help other kinds of businesses make better informed platform decisions themselves. As a result, this white paper explores why ISVs make the platform decisions that they do based on four years of on-going research of over 8,500 ISVs in 2007 alone and a new behavioral study of a subset of 200 ISVs conducted around platform adoption in September 2007. It then looks at the impact of these decisions on your business and aims to provide businesses guidance on platform adoption.

IT must be fully aligned to the needs of all customers, internal and external. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) provides a strategy to define, implement, and monitor that alignment across the full spectrum of IT processes, ranging from Incident and Problem Management to Security Management. In this paper, we focus specifically on the choices available from Microsoft and the open source community to assist critical elements of ITIL.

Microsoft believes that there are significant benefits to organizations that take a holistic approach to the management of privacy risks. The first step is understanding how the organizational groups closest to the protection and use of personal information perceive the current state of privacy risk in their organization and what the ideal state would be. This study provides some insight for such understanding.

IT professionals today face an increasingly complex array of challenges: the proliferation of data, systems, and applications; the increased demand from employees to access corporate assets from anywhere at anytime; the mandate to protect the enterprise against a constantly evolving threat landscape; the need for regulatory compliance; and the ever-present demand to squeeze more value from their existing infrastructure. The IT environment itself is often complex, with myriad management, monitoring, and reporting tools and processes. Keeping up with all of this requires IT expertise across multiple specialties.

IT professionals today face a number of challenges. As if it were not enough that they have to stay ahead in one of the world's fastest-changing industries, where new technologies can emerge and become obsolete in less than a five-year span, they also must deal with internal business issues, in which top management often views their area of the business as a cost center rather than as a resource that boosts employee productivity and improves corporate agility in a globally competitive environment.

This white paper examines the implementation of advanced network solutions by medium-sized firms, those with 100-1,000 employees. IDC has found that these firms are especially interested in leveraging past technology investments, even while capitalizing on the latest advances. For many, the incremental benefits associated with the Microsoft product family of Windows Server, Exchange, and SharePoint, as well as Microsoft Office Manager (MOM), have helped speed the introduction of new capabilities in a timely fashion. While medium-sized businesses may vary in their immediate needs—improving customer service, reducing costs, improving information sharing—they are remarkably consistent in their interest in applying affordable technology that allows users to be as productive as possible as soon as possible.

The rate of security vulnerabilities documented in the National Vulnerability Database for the major database vendors is noteworthy for the stark contrast between Microsoft, MySQL, and Oracle. ESG believes that Microsoft's investments in secure development processes are responsible for the impressive results in SQL Server quality. ESG considers Microsoft, with proper execution, to be years ahead of Oracle and MySQL in producing secure and reliable database products.

When it comes to Microsoft and security, few people ever mention Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL). ESG believes this is an unfortunate omission. The fact is that Microsoft's commitment to SDL is an area of stealthy security leadership. ESG believes that other ISVs should embrace an SDL model as soon as possible and that enterprise organizations should mandate that technology vendors establish a measurable and transparent SDL process by 2008 or risk losing business.

Mercer Management Consulting, a global strategy consultancy, was commissioned by Microsoft to conduct research with 30 senior IT decision-makers globally to understand why organizations are migrating from UNIX, how alternative platforms are selected, and what value companies have generated by migrating from UNIX to Windows, Linux, or other flavors of UNIX. This document summarizes the findings from those interviews.

As enterprises become more complex, involving multiple operating systems, the challenges of identity management also become greater. What is identity management? At the core, it is about control of authentication, authorization and access. All other areas of identity management—provisioning, single sign-on, password management, audit, federation, etc.—grow from the fundamental challenge: to ensure that the right users are given the right access to the right resources. Through Quest Vintela Authentication Services, UNIX and Linux systems and applications can join the AD domain for centralized management and single sign-on.

The goal of this paper is to go beyond the Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) ratings and protection profiles, and help technology (IT) managers understand the importance of the evaluated software configuration in determining the usefulness of Common Criteria evaluated operating systems. Dickerson Technologies took two EAL4+ operating systems, the Windows Server 2003/Windows XP and the Novell SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 evaluated systems, and attempted to deploy six common client-server roles following the respective security configuration guides. The lab team found that they could successfully build and deploy all six roles using the Windows evaluated configuration, but could only implement the print server role using the SuSE evaluated configuration. "Based upon the overall examination, this study has found that operating systems having equivalent assurance level certifications (EAL4+) and satisfying the same Common Access Protection Profile under the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation are not necessarily created equal. The vendor selection of the evaluated configuration is critical and will make a huge difference in the types of server and client roles that can be deployed while following the security configuration guidelines as approved by the certifying authorities."

Despite the growing capabilities offered by Intel and Microsoft for enterprise computing environments, many customers are unaware of the value that Intel® Itanium® 2 processor-based systems running Windows Server offer over UNIX infrastructures for hosting critical workloads. To illustrate the motivating factors that led enterprise companies to choose this open standards-based solution over the proprietary UNIX architecture, Ideas International (IDEAS) conducted a study of real-world business cases. The participating enterprises expressed a multitude of reasons for migrating to Windows Server on Itanium 2-based servers. They were attracted to Windows Server due to the ability to leverage their existing desktop skill sets across a broader range of applications, and they perceived that their software costs would be reduced. The Itanium 2-based platform was appealing to these users because it offered maximum scalability for Windows Server workloads, and it was perceived as having a long-term future with much room for innovation and improvement.

This white paper provides an overview of the Common Criteria (CC) program, the benefits of certification, the Windows platform scenarios that have been certified, and resources available to help customers configure and administer a Microsoft Windows platform environment that is secured in accordance with the CC.

This paper compares the costs of acquisition and support of Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Based on their research, Ideas International found that across several scenarios, Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 license and support costs are competitive, and in some cases, significantly lower than the license and support costs of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.