Since its Enterprise Storage Division was established in 2003, Microsoft has been committed to helping customers improve their ability to hold, protect and retrieve digital data storage at a lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). By focusing on three primary goals – making Microsoft Windows the best storage platform; creating a strong partner ecosystem, and introducing new storage-specific products and solutions – significant progress has been made in addressing IT challenges.

Managing storage is at the top of the list of IT managers’ pain points, according to a survey in CRN magazine. “Storage should be simple,” says Rich Baldwin, president and CEO, Nth Generation Computing, Inc. of San Diego, a QLogic partner. “Figure out how much you need and plug it in. It should be able to pretty much manage itself. But too often, it’s really tough, requiring a lot of training and trial and error.”

Responding to customer needs, Microsoft has outlined its Universal Distributed Storage vision, which is about mainstreaming high-end functionality to deliver storage solutions that are built on industry-standard hardware and offered via a multitude of partners in order to lower TCO. Microsoft is working to ensure that Windows manages distributed data storage more cost-effectively than any other platform, irrespective of where the data is – on a server or remote worker’s desktop, centralized or spread across branch offices, on Storage Area Networks (SANs) or Network Attached Storage (NAS).

“We’re excited about the progress made in delivering on our promise of reducing storage costs,” says Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Windows Server Division at Microsoft. “We’ve added compelling storage functionalities in the platform and released products such as Windows Storage Server 2003 and Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager. Most importantly, thanks to our partners, customers have a broad choice of storage solutions that are built on the Windows platform. Looking ahead, we have a healthy pipeline of products, including Windows Server 2003 R2 and Windows Storage Server 2003 R2, that will take us further toward achieving our Universal Distributed Storage vision. ”