Global Alliances - Microsoft

Microsoft Solutions

Microsoft is a worldwide leader in software, services, and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software—any time, any place, and on any device.

Foundry is engaged in efforts with multiple groups within Microsoft to develop solutions such as the following:

• High Performance Computing (HPC)
• Network Access Protection (NAP)
• Unified Communications Partner
• Secure-IT Alliance Partner
• Interop Vendor Alliance Partner
• Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC)
• Virtualization

High Performance Computing (HPC)

The Microsoft Windows Compute Cluster Server provides an extremely cost-effective and powerful HPC solution that runs on commodity X64-based computers and can be easily and quickly expanded and deployed using familiar tools and technologies.

Together Foundry Networks and Microsoft bring these combined benefits:

• Foundry offers the highest density gigabit and 10 gigabit Ethernet non-blocking switches and routers as the fabric to Microsoft's HPC solution.
• Foundry's expertise in high-performance switching and routing teams with Microsoft's simplified cluster deployment to provide a scalable management environment that is easy to use.
• Foundry and Microsoft's integrated HPC solution allows for deployment around the world.
• Microsoft's HPC solution is better integrated with IT infrastructure to allow developers to leverage their existing Windows-based skills and experience.

Network Access Protection (NAP)

Foundry Networks, a longstanding Microsoft Technology Partner, is delivering NAP interoperability for Foundry switches. Foundry switches perform in conjunction with Microsoft Windows-based clients and the Microsoft Network Policy Server (NPS) to manage policies that restrict client access to network resources based on the health of the system.

Using network-based 802.1x port protection, with Windows Network Policy Server, provides Foundry clients a mechanism for validating client health and securing network access, without having to resort to proprietary networking technologies.

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 clients enjoy significantly reduced deployment and operational costs when securing endpoint resources using NAP interoperability on Foundry switches.

Microsoft NAP and Foundry Networks interoperability testing implements both Policy and VLAN enforcement using the following platforms and applications:

• Foundry Networks FastIron LS, FastIron GS switches (all 802.1X compliant)
• Windows Vista Client
• Windows Server 2008

Microsoft and Foundry Networks are committed to providing our customers with the highest levels of security for their networking environments. Interoperability between Foundry Networks and NAP is an important milestone in delivering on this commitment.

Microsoft NAP Partner Brief

Unified Communications Partner

Microsoft Unified Communications Technologies use the power of software to deliver complete communications—messaging, voice, and video—across the applications and devices that people use every day. Integrating telephony experiences (phone calls, voice mail and conferencing) into the work done on a computer (documents, spreadsheets, instant messaging, email, calendars) provides the power to fundamentally change the way the world works.

Foundry ServerIron switches when deployed in front of the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007:

• Increase application uptime
• Maximize server farm utilization
• Shield the servers and applications from malicious attacks
• Provide other performance metrics using sophisticated and customizable "health checks"

Learn more about our Microsoft Unified Communications Solutions

Benefits of Unified Communications Partner Brief

Secure-IT Alliance Partner

Secure-IT is a group of industry partners working together through an online Web community to develop, enhance, and promote applications that interoperate with the Microsoft platform, providing informational resources for security technology professionals.

For more information visit Secure-IT at http://secureitalliance.org

Interop Vendor Alliance Partner

The Interop Vendor Alliance Partner program is a community of software and hardware vendors working together to enhance interoperability with Microsoft on behalf of mutual customers.

For more information on the Microsoft Interop Vendor Alliance, visit http://interopvendoralliance.org/

Foundry Networks Joins The Interop Vendor Alliance To Enhance Its Best-Of-Breed Networking Solutions With Microsoft Systems

Benefits of Unified Communications Partner Brief

Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC)

Located at Microsoft's corporate campus in Redmond, Washington, the Enterprise Engineering Center (EEC) is a state-of-the-art proving ground for the world's most complex computing environments. With over $75 million in hardware and networking equipment from the industry's top manufacturers, the EEC can replicate virtually any production environment. Many of Microsoft's most important customers come to the EEC to get a very clear view of how Microsoft's pre-release products will perform in their home environments before they actually deploy. Through the EEC, customers can influence the final release, reduce uncertainty, and lower their deployment costs. The EEC can tackle the most complex re-creations of real enterprise production environments.

When the EEC wanted to deploy a new network that enabled internal and external customer access to its resources while isolating traffic and taking advantage of multiple services, it looked to Foundry Networks to meet these demanding requirements. The result is a 10 Gigabit MAN/CAN that not only delivers the performance and traffic separation the EEC needs, but also delivers simplified management in a complex environment.

Microsoft EEC Case Study

Virtualization

Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology, is available as an integral feature of Windows Server 2008 and enables you to implement server virtualization with ease. Hyper-V allows you to make the best use of your server hardware investments by consolidating multiple server roles as separate virtual machines (VMs) running on a single physical machine. With Hyper-V, you can also efficiently run multiple operating systems—Windows, Linux, and others—in parallel, on a single server, and fully leverage the power of x64 computing. Together, Foundry Networks and Microsoft enable organizations to take advantage of the benefits of virtualization for the reliable, secure delivery of services.

Benefits of a joint Foundry and Microsoft's Hyper-V Solution:

• Data center-to-desktop virtualization
• Proven interoperability
• A virtualized infrastructure to complement a virtualized server environment
• Maximized server use with better use of rack space, reduces power and cooling requirements and decreases costs

Microsoft Virtualization Partner Brief