2008-03-05Staff Report 2 "By Catherine Sasman WINDHOEK Microsoft yesterday introduced three new software solutions to the Namibian market that it said would ultimately allow companies to maximise value and drive down overheads. Microsoft General Manager for East and Southern Africa, Louis Onyango Otieno, said Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008, would help users secure their information, manage their networks more efficiently and ensure their users deliver better results. ""It could be making a business run more smoothly, it could be helping a government to deliver better services to citizens, or it could be someone developing a piece of software to meet a specific local need,"" Onyango Otieno said. Windows Server 2008 is the operating system that drives servers that sit at the heart of a large-scale computer network. According to Otieno, it will give IT managers a set of tools to manage and control their network infrastructure - in the areas of security, virtualisation, web productivity and business intelligence. Otieno said this, with Windows Vista, would provide the ""most reliable platform from the server to the desktop"". The other two products are key productivity applications complementing Windows Server 2008. Visual Studio 2008 allows programmers and developers to work together using visual and graphical tools to develop software programmes and business processes. SQL Server 2008 is a database server software, aimed at driving greater reliability and availability of business information. The three products, said Microsoft, represent the largest enterprise launch ever, offering innovations organisations demand from a powerful, agile software platform. ""For a large company or government department in Namibia to find extra resources is not easy. That leaves even less time and money to focus on interesting ways to have meaningful impact on business,"" said George Ferreira, Microsoft Business Development Manager in Namibia. ""Windows Server 2008 makes this much easier - with new technologies that allow people to secure information, control access to the network and take greater responsibility for the overall performance of their IT systems. It literally frees people up to do more with their time."" The technology is said to help cater for companies with different offices in the country, as well as in other countries on the continent. ""Being able to access your IT systems in remote locations is just one of the invaluable features in Windows Server 2008, allowing you to find, manage and fix problems on your IT systems from one location, instead of having to drive of fly there,"" said Ferreira. The products were brought to Namibia under the theme 'Heroes Happen Here'. " 2008-03-05Staff Report 2
