3. Contents
Executive Summary ........................................................................................................................................................ 1
Administration Labor Cost Savings .......................................................................................................................... 2
Hardware and Infrastructure Cost Savings from Virtualization ..................................................................... 4
Server Cost Savings ................................................................................................................................................... 4
Storage and Network Cost Savings ..................................................................................................................... 5
Software Cost Savings ................................................................................................................................................... 7
Business Benefits ............................................................................................................................................................. 8
System Availability ..................................................................................................................................................... 8
User Productivity...................................................................................................................................................... 10
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................................................... 11
Appendix ......................................................................................................................................................................... 12
About This Study ..................................................................................................................................................... 12
More Information .................................................................................................................................................... 13
References .................................................................................................................................................................. 13
ii
4. Executive Summary “We were blown away by all the
different features that Windows
In today’s economic climate, business and technology
Server 2012 has to offer.”
decision makers find themselves facing a double-edged
–Global Infrastructure Manager at a
sword. IT teamsare being stretched to respond to business large Services Company inthe U.S.
needsas quickly as possible. Also, there is now a much
greater pressure in justifyingan organization’s technologyspending. Microsoft’s® latest server
operating system, Windows Server 2012, helps address these central business and IT challenges
with a scalable, manageable, and cost-effective server platform.
More than 50earlyadopter organizations (“early adopters”) that participated in a Rapid
Deployment Program (“RDP”) for Windows Server 2012 were asked to share their experiences
using the product. Participants from several different industries and geographies came to
Windows Server 2012 looking to find IT improvements in a variety of scenarios, which mapped
to the following key Windows Server 2012 pillars:
Beyond Participants focused on Windows Server 2012’s Hyper-V
Virtualization enhancements and private cloud capabilities.
Power of Many Participants evaluated Windows Server 2012’s continuously
Servers, the available and efficiently manageable server, storage, and
Simplicity of One network capabilities.
Modern Work Style, Participants tested Windows Server 2012’s direct access
Enabled capabilities for their mobile and distributed workforce.
Every App, Any Participants focused onWindows Server 2012’s open
Cloud application and Web platform scalability features.
Throughnew product features and enhancements inWindows Server 2012, early adopters expect
to realize one-time and ongoing cost savings across these key areas:
Administration Approximately U.S.$220,000 in labor cost savings per year for
Labor Cost Savings the IT department
Hardware and Average 80% improvement in workload density
Infrastructure Cost Average 44% reduction in server hardware and associated
Savings from annual utility and real estate costs
Virtualization 20% - 40% reduction in storage space
Availability: Average 52% reduction in planned downtime;
average 23% reduction in unplanned downtime
Business Time-to-Market: Approximately 41% reduction in workload
Benefits deployment time
Productivity:Approximately 15 hours per employee per year
recovered in end-user productive time
1
5. Administration Labor Cost Savings
By reducing the number of physical servers and discrete add-on tools, IT departments can save
on server management and administrative overhead costs. 91% of Windows Server 2012 early
adopters said that they expect time saved in server administration activity; and 88% expect
savings in network administration hours. Overall, the surveyed early adopters identified total
server and network administration labor savings of approximately 3.2 hours per IT employee per
year, on average. Considering a fully burdened IT staff salary of approximately $37i per hour for
an average IT department size of 1,830 employees across all the surveyed participants, these
savings amount to a total of approximatelyU.S.$220,000 per year for the department.
91%of early adopters expectreductionin U.S.$220,000cost
annual server administration labor effort
savingsper yearfor the IT
88%of early adopters expect reduction in department
annual network administration labor effort
For server and network administrators of these companies, the biggest identified benefitsare the
ability to access integrated tools from one central location and the support for advanced
automation of common management tasks.Server Manager, which comes built into Windows
Server 2012, provides centralized and remote management capabilities allowing administrators
to control and monitor servers without logging in to individual consoles. Windows®
PowerShell™ provides automation of most management tasks via software-based policy
controls. When combined Microsoft System Center, administrators also benefit from a
sophisticated and integrated end-to-end management and monitoring platform. A Global
Infrastructure Manager of a U.S. based services company explains, “Centralized management
capability of Server Manager is very important for us. We don’t want to use servers as individual
desktops. The ability to manage all servers from a single pane of glass is a huge benefit for us.”
The centralized administration console further allowsadminsto simplify management tasks and
unify server and storage management into a singular interface. IT staff can provision servers,
storage, virtual desktops and hard drives, and remote
“Centralized management capability of
applications from a desktop without requiring
Server Manager is very important for
physical accessor remote connections to each us. We don’t want to use servers as
individual server.
individual desktops. The ability to
With new Microsoft Hyper-V® enhancements such as manage all servers from a single pane
NIC Teaming, Failover Cluster Manager, Extensible of glass is a huge benefit for us.”
– Global Infrastructure Manager at a large
Switch, Live Migration, and Storage Migration,
Services Company in the U.S.
customers will be able to make more efficient use of
2
6. their time that is currentlyallocatedfor
“I would expect to save approximately 30% of time
admin activities. Says a Windows Server
managing the hypervisor platform. In reality we’ll
2012 deployment team member from a
be able to do more with the same allocation of
United Kingdom based hosting
time – be more proactive, perform more advanced
company, “I would expect to save
diagnostics and analysis for tuning, performance,
approximately 30% of time managing
and capacity management activities.”
the hypervisor platform. In reality we’ll
– Windows Server 2012 Deployment Team Member at
a Hosting Company based in the United Kingdom. be able to do more with the same
allocation of time – be more proactive,
perform more advanced diagnostics and analysis for tuning, performance, and capacity
management activities.”
Over 70%of Windows Server 2012 early adopters were large enterprises and hosting companies
with users or customers distributed across a multi-server and multi-site IT
infrastructure.Common challenges for these companies includedlack of standardnetwork
management processes and reliance on internally developed solutions and tools, such as
spreadsheets for tracking IP addresses and managing access policies. Manual processes and lack
of accountability led to hundreds of hours lost annually in data validation,ensuring that the
information is up to date,and in fixing errors related to duplicate or inaccurate information. For
one such early adopter, a major automotive company in Europe, the dealer and financial
applicationsare provisioned for different countries and customers. Currently, lack of automated
processes leads to extra effort in troubleshooting and managing their Web farms. However, the
company expects to reduce its admin labor costs by 20%once fully automated with Windows
Server 2012 and Internet Information Services 8 (IIS8).
Theseearly adopters expect to recover much of the administrative time lost in network, identity,
and access management tasksby using new Windows Server 2012 capabilities, such as IP
Address Management (IPAM), IIS8, and enhancements in Microsoft Active Directory® Domain
Services (AD DS) functionality. Windows
Server 2012 IPAM allows these “We have applications that run for different
customers to easily provision, track countries and customers and thus have a lot of Web
usage, view utilization statistics and farms to troubleshoot and manage. Currently, all
trends, and create reports related to certificates are managed centrally, but it is a manual
their day to day network management process which causes a lot of work. Our goal is to get
activities.“We use an in-house solution fully automated with Windows Server 2012 and IIS8.
for tracking IP address usage. It is a Automation of tasks will lead to estimated 20%
manual process, which assumes that all reduction in costs.”
administrators follow the rules. The – Windows Server 2012 Deployment Team Member at a
process is error prone and it can take large Automotive Company in Europe.
3
7. considerable amount of time
“We use an in-house solution for tracking IP address usage. It before updates are entered
is a manual process, which assumes that all administrators into the tracking application.
follow the rules. The process is error prone and it can take We expect that IPAM will
considerable amount of time before updates are entered into replace our current solution
the tracking application. We expect that IPAM will replace our and save us at least half of the
current solution and save us at least half of the time that we time that we currently spend
currently spend for managing IP addresses.” for managing IP addresses,”
– Windows Server 2012 Deployment Team Member at a
says a Windows Server 2012
largeTelecommunications Company in Europe.
deployment team member at
a large European telecommunications company.
Hardware and Infrastructure Cost Savings
from Virtualization
Server Cost Savings
In keeping up with the advances inserver
virtualization technology, many of the Windows 100%of early adopters
Server 2012 early adopters had already begun expect improvement in
their journey towards complete virtualization of virtualization density and
their IT workloads. All of the surveyed companies private cloud tenant density
were either standardized on VMware or using
Hyper-V on older versions of Windows Server®. Depending on the workload and performance
needs, these customers were achieving a virtualization density of an average 27 virtual machines
(VMs) per host (based on a range from 8 to 90).
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V provides an
“With Windows Server 2012 we expect to achieve
enterprise level hypervisor that enables
a density of 32:1 [VM to Physical Core] for a 2 x 8
organizations to consolidate and host
core CPU blade. Currently we can only expect 17
multiple, mixed workloadsand a larger
VMs per blade with Windows 2008 R2.”
– Windows Server 2012 Deployment Team Member number of VMs on their physical servers.
at a Hosting Company in theUnited Kingdom. Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V provides
enhanced support for large workloads
with up to 64 virtual processors and 1TB of memory, allowing organizations to run powerful and
highly dense VM environments using fewer servers and operating system licenses. A Windows
4
8. Server 2012 deployment team member from a United Kingdom based hosting company
explains, “With Windows Server 2012 we expect to achieve a density of 32:1 [VM to Physical
Core] for a 2 x 8core CPU blade. Currently we can only expect 17 VMs per blade with Windows
2008 R2.”100% of the companies evaluating the Hyper-V virtualization scenarios expected to
improve their workload density and hence their server footprint and related utility costs.
On average, these early adopters expected to raise their host virtualization density to
approximately 48 VMs per host – an increase of approximately 80% from their hypervisor
technology currently in use (based on a range from 20 to 125). Windows Server 2012 early
adopters viewed the ability to consolidate their VM workloads and the aboveHyper-V
enhancements as an essential requirement that allowed them to control and cut their server and
IT costs.With virtualization, these companies expected a 44% reduction in their existing server
hardware – contributing to one-time savings on their future hardware needs, annual
maintenance cost savings, and hardware associated annual utility and real estate cost savings.
80%improvement in 44% reduction in server
hardwareand associated annual
workload density (VMs per host)
utility and real estate costs
Storage and Network Cost Savings
The amount of data in enterprises is growing ata tremendous rate making storage efficiency a
critical requirement for IT departments. Windows Server 2012 brings cost efficiencies with new
storage capabilitiessuch as Storage Spaces, Thin Provisioning, and Data De-duplication. These
features greatly increase disk space availability by ensuring that data is stored and accessed
efficiently, only storage needed at a given point in time is provisioned for use, and unused
storage is reclaimed.86% of the early adopters evaluating storage management capabilities of
Windows Server 2012 expect to see a reduction in storage space utilization. Internet hosting
providers evaluating these scenarios expect a significant recovery – ranging 20% to 40% – in
their current storage space needs.
Windows Server 2012 also features
“Considering our future requirements, we enhancements such as Failover Clustering,
estimate [U.S.] $75,000 savings for server Server Message Block version 3(SMB3) , and
shared SAS solution and 5TB Fibre Channel Remote Desktop Services (RDS) that allow
SAN through use of commodity hardware.” organizations to leverage their existing
– Windows Administrator at a Leading
commodity storage infrastructure and stem
U.S.based University.
demand for new and high-end SAN or block-
5
9. based storage hardware. With SMB “We’re not scratching the surface of what
Direct, companies also expected cost BranchCache can do. We will migrate from NetApp to
savings from using Network Interface Windows Server 2012 and take it to the next level.”
Cards (NIC)that support the Remote – Windows Server 2012 Deployment Team Member from a
Direct Memory Access (RDMA) Public Education Institution in Canada.
protocol to achieve class performance
similar to fibre channel, which usually comes at a 10% or more cost premium. A Windows
Administrator from a U.S. based university says, “Considering our future requirements, we
estimate [U.S.] $75,000 savings for server shared SAS solution and 5TB Fibre Channel SAN
through use of commodity hardware.”
20% -
86%of early adopters expect improvement in
storage space utilization
40%reduction in
storage space (data
100%of early adopters expect reduction in includes hosting
network bandwidth utilization with BranchCache
With the continued consumerization of IT, organizations are increasingly providers only)
asked to providetheir
employees an “always-on” access to the corporate data and business applications from virtually
anywhere and on any device. 75% of the organizations that evaluated branch infrastructure
enhancements currently lacked any data caching capabilities.Each of these organizations
expected to see significant improvements in the Wide Area Network (WAN) traffic utilization
and also reduce their bandwidth costs via Windows Server 2012’s BranchCache® capabilities,
whichallowthem to cache the network content and make it available at their branch locations,
thus reducing WAN use.A Windows Server 2012 deployment team member of a Canadian
educational institution explains, “We’re not scratching the surface of what BranchCache can do.
We will migrate from NetApp to Windows Server 2012 and take it to the next level.”
Using Windows Server 2012’sDirectAccess features, remote users can now securely access
internal resources without connecting to a Virtual Private Network (VPN), thus allowing
organizations to save on VPN infrastructure costs. Although most of the organizations that
evaluated DirectAccess scenario did not see their VPN infrastructure eliminated immediately,
they did, however, expect to reduce
“As we transition more and more mobile workstation their dependency on VPN
users to DirectAccess, we anticipate use of our infrastructure over time by relying on
traditional VPN infrastructure by more than 3,500 DirectAccess instead. For example, a
Windows clients to decrease significantly.” leading healthcare company in the
– Windows Server 2012 Deployment Team Member from a U.S. currently supports a large
Healthcare Organization in the US.
number of disparate mobile
workstations over VPN. With Windows Server 2012, the company has plans to transition its
6
10. mobile workstation users to DirectAccessinstead of VPN, and thus significantly reduce
relianceontheir traditional VPN infrastructure.
Software Cost Savings
Windows Server 2012 provides organizations
“With XenServer, the technical skills of our IT
the key, built-in capabilities that are needed to team were not exposed and we had to rely a lot
deploy and support multi-site and multi-tenant on partners. Hyper-V is something we have a
private clouds, maintain continuous availability, better understanding of.”
easily move virtual machines and virtual hard
– IT Manager at a leading retailer in Australia.
disks (VHD) between remote sites, and manage
other core infrastructure services required to
run their IT environment. Currently, participants were either outsourcing their network and
storage management tasks or relying on third party software solutions. Says an IT Manager from
an Australian retailer, “With XenServer, the technical skills of our IT team were not exposed and
we had to rely a lot on partners. Hyper-V is something we have a better understanding of.”The
medium sized company with approximately 500 employees also expects a one-time cost
savings of more than U.S.$60,000 in third-party software products such as XenServer
and StorageCraft for VM replication. Similarly, a European hosting company expects to
realize U.S.$2,500 savings for each of its 500 servers by eliminating third party
replication software. Like these companies, several other early adopter companies that
were surveyed relied on disparate software solutions, which included:
XenServer, VMwarevCenter, and manual procedures for VM provisioning;
CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution, SolarWinds, Secure CRT, and Hitachi network
management tools for managing the Ethernet switching infrastructure;
SymantecNetBackup, HP Data Protector, IBM Tivoli, and EMC Networker for storage and
backup management;
Microsoft SharePoint®, Microsoft Excel®, andlegacyin-house applications for IP address
space management; and
Other third party tools for monitoring, policy, and patch management of the
virtualization environment.
These organizations expect significant cost savings from virtualization, which reduces the
number of servers and thus cuts down the number of licenses required to support the
hypervisor platform. For example, a global financial services company expects to save more than
U.S.$2.5 million by eliminating third party hypervisor platform licensing. AnotherTurkish IT
services company is currently virtualized on a mix of server OS that includes both Linux and
7
11. Windows Server products. The customer expects to increase their virtualization density by as
much as 33% after migrating to Windows Server 2012 and achieve significant OS license cost
savings through increased density and licensing options.
With Windows Server 2012 and System Center
“We are looking at Hyper-V as a
software, organizations can leverage their current
replacement for our VMware and NetApp
network infrastructure without introducing new
applications. This represents millions of
routing and switching, data recovery,
dollars in cost savings for us going
management, and administration add-ons.Built-in
forward for all our companies.”
– Global Infrastructure Manager at a Large
NIC teaming capabilities of the OS works with all
Services Company in the U.S. network adapters and does not require any
additional third-party teaming solutions. The
Hyper-V Extensible Switch (vSwitch), a layer-2 virtual network switch, allows organizations to
emulate full capabilities of third-party hardware-based networking solutions.Windows Server
2012 also includes built-in support for IPAM, which allows discovering, monitoring, auditing, and
managing IP address space used in a network from one central location.
By eliminating the use of these add-on products, organizations expect to save significantly in
software licensing and maintenance costs.A GlobalInfrastructure Manager at a U.S. based
services company explains, “We are looking at Hyper-V as a replacement for our VMware and
NetApp applications. This represents millions of dollars in cost savings for us going forward for
all our companies.”
Business Benefits
In addition to the IT cost savings discussed above, Windows Server 2012 also provides certain
indirect benefits leading to more revenue generating opportunities for businesses.
System Availability
Besides serving as a foundation for virtualization solutions, such as Virtual Desktop
Infrastructure (VDI) and private cloud, Windows Server 2012 introduces continuous availability
solutions for server and storage at no added cost.More than 60% of the early adopters said that
they expected to reduce their planned and unplanned downtime after migrating to Windows
Server 2012.
With Windows Server 2012, availability is accommodated during planned downtime or
maintenance windows. Hyper-V Live Migration and Storage Migration allow organizations to
move multiple running VMs and VHDs between physical hosts or storage locations with no
8
12. downtime. With Online Corruption Isolation
“We have zero planned downtime in VM and
and Repair, check and repair activities on
VHD migration. A lot of in house
storage disks can be done while the volume
development was needed to create this
remains online, ensuring that the services are
situation. I expect this in house development
continuously available to the users. Cluster
is not needed with Hyper-V as Live Migration
Aware Updating integrates with existing
is always in the Microsoft solution.”
Windows Update Agent and Windows Server
– Windows Server 2012 Deployment Team
Member at a major Bank in Europe Update Services, and maintains availability
during planned update activities. Windows
Server 2012 early adopters evaluating these features expected to reduce their annual planned
system downtime by an average of 52%.
67%of early adopters expect reduction in annual planned system downtime
52% reduction in annual planned system downtime expected
For a few others, although the companies did not directly benefit from downtime improvements,
they did, however, expect to reduce development and maintenance time required in managing
uptime using their existing solutions. A Windows Server 2012 deployment team member at a
global financial institution explains, “We have zero planned downtime in VM and VHD migration.
A lot of in house development was needed to create this situation. I expect this in house
development is not needed with Hyper-V as Live Migration is always in the Microsoft solution.”
Windows Server 2012 early adopter organizationsalso expect to lower their unplanned
downtime during failures via built-in continuous availability, replication, and disaster recovery
features such as NIC teaming, Failover Clustering, Hyper-V Replica, and new file share protocol
enhancements. File server availability is now improved via transparent failover capabilities that
make node outages transparent to dependent services. Thus, a workload running on an active-
active cluster remains available even when the particular cluster node running that service fails.
Companies evaluating these features expected to reduce their annual planned system downtime
by an average of 23%.
62%of early adopters expect reduction in annual unplanned system downtime
23% reduction in annual unplanned system downtime expected
9
13. Also, by cloud optimizing their IT infrastructure,
“VM deployment currently requires a lot
organizations can now respond to new business
of manual steps and about 30-45 minutes
needs at a fraction of time it took them
to provision each time. Using Windows
before.Windows Server 2012 early adopters
Server 2012 and System Center, over the
expect to reduce their workload deployment
next few months we expect to create
time,thus making their applications available
automated processes to deploy and move
quicker by an averageof 41%.This allows them to
workloads around.”
start taking advantage of the revenue generating
– IT Manager at a leading Retailer in
Australia. opportunities enabled via these workloads sooner
than they could before.
67%of early adopters expect reduction in workload deployment time
41% reduction in workload deployment time expected
User Productivity
Windows Server 2012 enhancements are not only visible to the IT admins, but are also extended
to end-users in the form of productivity improvements. Windows Server 2012 supports the
modern, distributed workforce by giving users the full Windows experience and access to data
and applications from anywhere and on any device they choose.The few companies evaluating
remote access scenarios had almost 20% of their total employees mobile or remote. These
companies expect to benefit from Windows Server 2012’s ease of access features such as single-
sign-on to VMs and Remote Apps, DirectAccess instead of connecting to VPN, and cached data
access at branch networks, which allow the remote and mobile users to authenticate, open, and
start working on their data much faster and reduce the unproductive time lost due to waiting.
91%of early adopters expect improvement in end-user productive hours
15 hours per employee per year recovered inend-user productivetime
10
14. With Remote Desktop Services, users can also disconnect and then reconnect to the RemoteApp
programs and VMs all at once, saving time to restore the work environment. User
personalization settings are saved across sessions. Backed by these enhancements, Windows
Server 2012 early adopters expect to see the end-user productivity improve by an average15
hours per employee per year.
Conclusion
Windows Server 2012 allows organizations to consolidate their existing IT infrastructure and
optimize it for the future cloud services. The operating system allows for complete virtualization,
dynamic and faster provisioning of workloads that support business needs, and centralized
management of tasks.These capabilities bring about cost savings across administration and
management activities, hardware purchases and maintenance, energy and cooling requirements,
and software licenses. Moreover, improvements in system availability and end-user experience
allow businesses to make optimum use of their resources, serve their customers more efficiently,
and createfaster and more revenue generating opportunities.
The phase one of this TCO study included early adopter organizations that were still evaluating
Windows Server 2012 features and aims to capture the percent of these companies experiencing
benefits from this new server operating system. Feedback from these early adopters shows that
Windows Server 2012 will indeed reduce costs and deliver business benefits that helpthese
organizations generate additional revenue. Phase two of the study aims to confirm and capture
the exact numbers and dollar amounts for thebenefits identified in thisTCO study.
11
15. Appendix
About This Study
In early 2012, 51 participants from Windows Server 2012 Rapid Deployment Program were
surveyed, with a few augmented with phone interviews, to share their experiences and
expectations about the cost savings and indirect benefits from managing their assigned
workloads or scenarios on a day-to-day basis.
Interviewees represented companies across North America, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. These
companies, operating in different industry segments, ranged in size from less than 20 to more
than 150,000 employees. See Figure 1 below for an overview of all participating companies by
location and size.
30
25
Small (<250)
20
15 Medium (<500)
10 Large (<1000)
5
Enterprise (1000+)
0
Americas APAC EMEA
Figure 1: Distribution of Windows Server 2012 RDP participants by company size and region
Overall, all respondent companies were asked to evaluate a mix of scenarios that span different
Windows Server 2012 features. The different scenarios are as follows:
Beyond Virtualization:
o Hyper-V Density and Scale
o Cloud Optimized IT
o Multi-site Private Cloud
Power of Many Servers, the Simplicity of One:
o Efficiencies in Server and Storage Management
o Flexible and Highly Available Storage Services
o Address and Network Management
12
16. o Identity and Access Management
The Modern Work Style:
o The Branch Infrastructure
o The Remote User
o The Virtual Desktop
Every App – Any Cloud:
o Internet Information Services (IIS) 8
More Information
For more information on Windows Server 2012, follow these links:
Windows Server 2012 Website
Windows Server 2012 Datasheet
Windows Server 2012 Detailed Product Overview Whitepaper
References
i
System Administrator - ServerSalary (U.S. Average). PayScale.com. Web. 20May 2012.
<http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=System_Administrator,_Server/Salary>.
13
