Wave of new Microsoft enterprise products bring big benefits to public and private organizations in the Kingdom

Kicking off more than 225 events around the world and joined by more than 4,000 customers and partners, Microsoft Corp.'s Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer showcased on Wednesday the next generation of infrastructure and application platform products, including Windows Server 2008, Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008.

Working closely with global and local partners in the kingdom, the leading software company has launched its next generation of IT solutions through a series of events and activities in Khobar, Riyadh, and Jeddah.

The launch represents a major milestone to help customers on the road to Dynamic IT, Microsoft's initiative to help customers optimize their people, processes and technology, and in turn position IT as a strategic asset for their business. These new enterprise products help customers more efficiently and securely manage their entire infrastructure and move to a virtualized environment while also delivering business intelligence and next-generation web experiences to boost business results.

The theme of the events, "Heroes Happen Here," puts the spotlight on customers and partners who make use of the technologies every day to address business challenges and develop cutting-edge applications.

"Customers have told us that they spend too much time and money on managing existing systems and not enough on investing in new innovations that will make them more competitive. Taking that feedback to heart is at the core of our new wave of products," said Dr. Khaled Al-Dhaher, General Manager of Microsoft in the kingdom.

"The overwhelming response from thousands of IT professionals and developers in Saudi Arabia and around the world on this new platform has been that it will simplify management and offer the most secure enterprise platform and tools we have ever delivered."

More than 20 global and local partners have supported the launch and participated in the events in the kingdom including HP, AMD, Dimension Data and ACS who developed innovative software and hardware solutions for customers to get the maximum benefit and added value from Microsoft's new solutions.

"Supporting the "Heroes Happen Here" launch is very important for us, demonstrating once again how our ongoing collaboration gives our customers the confidence to easily and efficiently connect their AMD hardware with Microsoft software", said Naser Samaenah, Business Development Executive, MENA & Pakistan.

Speaking at the launch event, Ashraf Al-Madhoun, Server & Tools Product Manager at Microsoft said "This next generation of IT solutions will help fast growing businesses transform IT from a cost centre to a contributing asset that adds value. Those three new solutions along with the rest of Microsoft's offerings form the end-to-end solutions that can help build a smarter, more secure and dynamic e-Government".