ICO: Microsoft Virtualisation Technology Helps Hosted Services Provider Broaden Choice, Cut Service Costs and Expand Market

ICO provides infrastructure hosting solutions for developers and business customers. They need to cut the costs of its hosted services, ICO technical staff started to build virtual dedicated server environments using the VMware hypervisor. This proved popular, but meant ICO had to pass on a virtualisation licence fee to its customers. They chose Microsoft to overcome these challenges. They deployed Windows Server 2008 R2 in October 2009, the operating system included the Microsoft virtualisation technology Hyper-V. This enabled ICO to offer virtualised customer environments at no additional cost, proving a very attractive option. The benefits are reliable environments, reduced costs, expanded markets, and happier customers.