Research Reports

Shattering old myths about migration from UNIX, the results of a study conducted by Pique Solutions offer compelling reasons for enterprises to consider migration from UNIX® to the Windows Server® operating system.

Microsoft makes heavy use of tools throughout the Security Development Lifecycle.  In this article, you will see how tools assist in threat modeling, code analysis, and penetration testing.

This article examines how Microsoft uses defense-in-depth at an organization level to ensure that there are many opportunities to detect and remove software vulnerabilities. You'll see how security responsibilities are assigned from individual developers, up through the global security team.

This report looks at all of the vulnerabilities fixed by Apple, Microsoft, Red Hat and Ubuntu during the first half of 2008. At the vendor level, the report examines all vulnerabilities as well as Days of Risk (DoR) associated with those vulnerabilities. The report further drills down to examine just those issues affecting the commonly installed desktop operating system components.

The latest Security Intelligence Report includes a detailed examination of the

Wipro Technologies performed a lab-based comparison of five common security management scenarios. The study concluded that Windows Server 2003 Enterprise servers average 40% less IT effort  than Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 servers across the entire lifecycle of these scenarios - from gathering data, performing analysis to remediating or fixing any security issues. 

This study provides a side-by-side analysis of different security features in the Windows Server 2008 with those in  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (with SE Linux) and its Advanced Platform version. The analysis spans across a gamut of features and uses Harvey balls to represent the availability and the robustness of each feature.

This article focuses on open source applications supported on Microsoft Windows for customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). CRM applications typically include features for tracking sales opportunities, tracking marketing campaigns, and analyzing lead generation activities. ERP applications focus on integrating the functions and data from two or more traditional applications (for example, accounting and supply chain management) into one system. Microsoft's products in the CRM and ERP areas include those products that make up the Microsoft Dynamics suite, including Microsoft CRM, Dynamics GP, Dynamics AX, and Dynamics SL. Given the wide range of potential CRM and ERP applications available today, IT organizations need to pursue a strategy that limits vendor lock-in and provides the widest range of application choices. When this objective is met, these organizations have the option of mixing and matching solutions to best meet the evolving needs of the end users.

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.