Microsofts Centro Solution Aims to Boost Midmarket Infrastructure - ' The Aim of Centro ' (
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is to Keep it Simple">
"We believe the automation of these mundane tasks will greatly improve our customers lives, give them back that lost time and help them move from being reactive to more proactive and help them push IT forward," he said.
The Centro code name is Spanish for center, and reflects the square in the middle of the town around which the whole village revolves.
"We believe that with Centro in their core infrastructure, customers are planting the foundation in their company to enable the business benefits of IT far beyond where they are today," VanRoekel said.
Microsoft is also currently talking to OEMs and evaluating the various hardware platforms on which Centro will run, especially around where hardware is likely to be in the 2007 timeframe.
"We are looking at both 32-bit and 64-bit as well as the hardware we have today. Some of the prototyping we are doing inside the company is on todays hardware and things are going pretty well," VanRoekel said.
Asked by eWEEK.com if Centro would be 64-bit only if a decision was made to make Windows Longhorn Server 64-bit only, VanRoekel said that Microsoft was still evaluating whether Longhorn Server should be just 64-bit and if it were "that would not necessarily be the case for us."
Microsoft is also looking at a range of licensing and pricing options for Centro, based on its goal of making it "easy to consume," but no decisions have been made.
"We will do a model probably pretty similar to Small Business Server(SBS), which we consider part of the family. The solutions team also owns SBS and so you can think of this offering as a SBS, but for the midmarket," he said.
Earlier this year, Microsoft offered customers a new bundle for the midsize market at 20 percent less than the open pricing for the products.
Click here to read more on Microsofts midmarket bundle.
VanRoekel said this pricing continuum would continue, "but we are still very much deciding on price and there are lots of considerations relative to price, all of which are being evaluated," he said.
VanRoekel also confirmed that Microsoft was looking at offering Software Assurance-type solutions for Centro.
The team was also working with Microsoft Capital, which allows customers to finance the purchase of hardware, software and finances.
The Redmond software giant will also, in October, announce the launch of Open Licensing Value 2.0 for the midmarket segment, which will give those customers more of the benefits of Software Assurance, including spreading payments across three years and better support, Van Roekel said.
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