Today Microsoft kicks off the Microsoft Efficiency Launch (Silverlight Required) to introduce Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010.  i365 and Seagate are Platinum partners with Microsoft in this effort.  Over the next six months, we will travel around the world together getting the message out – from movie theatres to boardrooms.  Some of the more jaded of you out there are probably asking: what is new this time?  Are Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 really different enough for me to spend my time and invest my resources?  It’s just another updated operating system, right?

Wrong.  These products really are significant releases and merit your time and attention. Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 represent an inflection point for another level of productivity for users of i365’s EVault Data Protection, analytics, and storage solutions, whether on your premises or in the i365 Cloud.  Here are a couple of reasons why.

Interaction Improved

Windows 7 improves the way we interact with data.  For years companies such as i365 have been squeezing the last bit of performance out of the existing interface paradigm supplied by Windows.  The current Windows paradigm gives us powerful abilities to view, manipulate and analyze data that is output and presented to the end user.  Windows today allows us to churn through huge amounts of information quickly, store and protect, and distill the data down to its key essence.  We can present the data to users in a succinct and meaningful way.  An example is a social network created by our email indexing and search tool that visualizes communication patterns over terabytes of data, quickly exposing who talked to whom about what and when.  In the same display window, we currently enable users to drill down into more detail, navigate around through the huge collection of data and look for gems and key patterns.  This scale of processing and form of visualization is something that most companies are very good at using the current technology.

That’s all well and good but, to really make people more efficient, we also need to improve the input side too.  We need to make it even easier to navigate, search and interact with the system.  Windows 7 new operational features such as touches, voice, and gestures, coupled with the Silverlight rich web interface, make the way users interact with Windows 7 applications more efficient than they ever were before.  i365’s next generation applications using Silverlight and Windows 7 new input paradigms are snappy, efficient, and a, quite honestly, a joy to interact with.

The fastest way between two points – skip the trip

Windows Server 2008 R2 improves performance.  A key challenge that both Microsoft and i365 are solving is what is the fastest way to get data between your remote office and your main office, or between your office and the Cloud given a world of limited data speeds?

The answer:  The fastest way is to not send the data at all.

In our i365 EVault Data Protection solutions, we optimize performance by utilizing DeltaPro™ block level deduplication. This means we only back up changed blocks in the data, not entire files.  In a typical case, 99% of the data on a system never needs to move because it hasn’t changed since the previous backup.  Because bandwidth is a relatively finite resource, the less data that has to be moved, the better the overall performance of the system!

Microsoft is doing a similar thing in Windows 2008 Server R2 with a technique called BranchCache™.  Imagine you ask for a file or web page from the main office, which is a long way down a narrow glass fiber.  In what is called Distributed Cache mode, when you make a data request, all of the local machines yell out to each other, “Hey have you got that file?”  If the file is present locally, it comes at Ethernet speeds and never needs to squeeze down the pipe.  In Hosted Cache mode, one server in the office is designated as the caching machine, and the same economies ensue.  Once the file is read remotely the cache captures it for any more requests in the near future.  Improved performance.  Improved efficiency.

Will it make a difference?

With the logarithmic growth in data, it’s essential to find new and improved ways of managing, reviewing and interacting with the data.  Windows 7 – and Silverlight – provide application developers like i365 with new capabilities that can lead to evolutionary, if not revolutionary, improvements in the user experience.  An improvement in bandwidth management through intelligent application design not only improves overall performance, but actually saves money by reducing the demand on IT infrastructures.

So, this Microsoft Efficiency Launch isn’t just more of the same old thing.  In the coming months and years, you’re going to see some amazing new features that capitalize on the new capabilities built into Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.  So take the time.  Read up on i365 data protection and Microsoft on our website www.i365.com/solutions/solutions-by-platform/microsoft.html.  It may change the way you think about interacting with your data and save your data a trip one day.

Posted by Rich Faris