REDMOND, Washington, January 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

- System Center 2012 is a true "private cloud builder."

In an online broadcast today from Microsoft Corp. headquarters, Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft Server and Tools Business, laid out how Microsoft's private cloud solution will help businesses move faster, save money and better compete in 2012. He highlighted how companies, such as webcast participants Lufthansa Systems, T. Rowe Price and Unilever, can use Microsoft System Center 2012 to build and operate private clouds for the delivery of business applications across both private and public cloud platforms. System Center 2012 is available today in a Release Candidate as a single, integrated private cloud management solution for the first time.

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"IT leaders tell me that private cloud computing promises to help them focus on innovation over maintenance, to streamline costs and to respond to the need for IT speed," Nadella said. "We are delivering on that promise today. With System Center 2012, customers can move beyond the industry hype and speculation, and progress into the here and now of private cloud."

All Together Now: Private Cloud Simplicity and Best Economics

New advances in System Center 2012 demonstrate Microsoft's commitment to easing the acquisition, deployment and economics of private cloud computing.

"A private cloud is our answer to corralling our server infrastructure into a single entity we can use to more rapidly deliver services that really matter to our business," said Peter Daniels, vice president of IT at T. Rowe Price. "System Center 2012 is truly a game changer."

System Center 2012 integrates eight separate component products into one unified solution, streamlining installation and reducing the time it takes to deploy from days down to hours. The number of product versions has also been simplified, so customers will be able to choose between the Standard and Datacenter editions of the product, based on their virtualization requirements. And because System Center 2012 Datacenter edition licensing covers unlimited virtual machines, customers can continually grow their private clouds without additional licensing costs for virtualizing their infrastructure and applications.

The Microsoft Private Cloud: Built for the Future. Ready Now

Lufthansa Systems and Unilever are also relying on System Center 2012 and the Microsoft private cloud.

"We are making the move to cloud computing across our company, and after looking at our options, Microsoft offers the right solutions for us," said Holger Berndt, head of Microsoft Servers at Lufthansa Systems. "With the integrated approach and technology, we can use the people and skills we have in place now to build the private cloud services we need to meet the complex IT requirements of our customers. Microsoft brings it all together, including the clear path to public cloud on Windows Azure."

"Our private cloud will help us meet our goal of doubling Unilever's business without increasing our environmental footprint," said Mike Royle, enterprise services IT director at Unilever. "Working with Avanade, we are betting on System Center 2012 as the management platform to extend our investments in virtualization toward private cloud, to automate processes, and to ensure the reliability of our infrastructure and application services."

More information is available here, including the on-demand broadcast, links to the Microsoft private cloud evaluation software and more. The conversation on Twitter can be followed at #MSFTprivatecloud.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

SOURCE Microsoft Corp.