Microsoft touts strong market adoption with the launch of enterprise technologies in the Gulf

With support from its partners in the region such as HP, Intel, IBM, Dell and Quest Software, Microsoft concluded its six-city roadshow in Dubai with over 600 technology professionals, developers and partners attending the event. Microsoft's next-generation technology has been previewed and evaluated by several enterprise customers across the Gulf including Batelco, Higher Colleges of Technology and Oman Mobile.

The roadshows unveiled the company's next-generation products and demonstrated their world-class features and functionality to customers and partners in the region.

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.

In Dubai to announce Microsoft's largest enterprise launch yet, Eric Rudder, Senior Vice President, Technical Strategy, Microsoft Corp. said,

"The global technology market is undergoing dramatic change driven by related technology advances on both the hardware and software sides. When we set out to develop these products, we envisioned building solutions that offered unprecedented integration between development and the database to help our customers be more productive. With the launch of Microsoft's new enterprise product suite, we have delivered on that promise and expect to drastically change the way our customers develop and utilize their applications".

Commenting on the launch, Charbel Fakhoury, General Manager, Microsoft Gulf said, "The launch represents Microsoft's long-standing commitment to the Gulf and has been a huge success in the region. We have received tremendous interest in the new technologies from customers and partners. The essence of the tour was to showcase the new products and what makes them the most powerful platforms that a business needs to achieve significant productivity benefits".

With its strong partnerships, Microsoft is committed to understanding the business and technology needs of customers in the Gulf.

HP and Intel have worked closely with Microsoft to set the industry standard and deliver the future of enterprise computing technologies globally and in the region.

Together, these industry giants offer the foundations for a truly dynamic data center that is able to deliver unparalleled business agility from a compact, cost-effective and efficient technology infrastructure.

John Hoonhout, Managing Director, HP Middle East, said, "HP and Microsoft have a long-standing relationship that includes collaborative product engineering. Customers rely on this partnership to bring forth new technologies that help businesses achieve greater flexibility and increased protection of their IT investments. The power of HP and Microsoft together is set to deliver an extensive range of solutions that will provide enormous business benefits to customers of all sizes".

Samir Al Schamma, Intel General Manager for the GCC, said, "Intel and Microsoft have been collaborating for over 20 years to create and deliver solutions for a more dynamic and efficient data center. The capabilities of Microsoft technologies running on multi-core Intel processor-based platforms represent the next stage in IT evolution. Together, Intel and Microsoft offer the highest levels of performance, interoperability and reliability in today's complex server environments".

The seminars also detailed how the launch wave would help technology professionals and developers deliver next generation web and business applications, manage IT environments for scale and security and take advantage of virtualization to increase operational agility.

Technology professionals and developers around the world are already using Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and test versions of SQL Server 2008 to implement more secure platforms and Web applications while reducing costs and speeding development.