12 Innovative Products For Your Business


In 2008, a host of new products debuted (or introduced enhancements), many of them with unique appeal for small and midsize businesses. Sorting through the thicket of new products to find the ones that best suit your needs is a daunting task, but we're here to help. In the first annual bMighty Innovation awards, our editors select 12 (one for each month) of the best products for growing businesses.



Virtualization: Microsoft Hyper-V

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Virtualization: Microsoft Hyper-V

Most observers rate VMware as the dominant vendor in the world of virtualization. And by almost any measure it is just that. But bMighty is recognizing Microsoft Hyper-V because it's changing the rules for server virtualization. Ironically, though, it's accomplishing that feat more through pricing than technology.

Hyper-V, like VMware and other virtualization software, lets you run multiple "virtual" servers on a single hardware server. That's because virtualization can boost server efficiency and utilization, helping companies reduce the number of servers they need to buy and maintain.

Few observers claim Microsoft's Hyper-V beats VMware in a technological sense. But that's not the point. Hyper-V is built into Windows Server 2008, and on the low end, Hyper-V Server 2008 is a free download (of course, you still need to buy software licenses for all Windows Server virtualized operating systems hosted on Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008). VMware pricing, on the other hand, is... complicated.

Cheap -- or even free -- virtualization is changing the technology's role from an esoteric outpost into mainstream technology. Recent research says more than three-quarters of midsize companies are using it. Small companies aren't going to be far behind.

Sometimes, innovation isn't all about technology.

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