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REDMOND, Wash. — March 21, 2011 — Microsoft Corp. announced today that Target Corp. is running business-critical workloads for all its retail stores on 15,000 virtual machines using Microsoft virtualization and management technologies, giving its IT department greater agility and economies of scale. The second-largest discount retailer in the U.S., Target has virtualized inventory, point-of-sale, supply-chain management, asset protection, in-store digital media and more on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V and Microsoft System Center.
“Target’s investment in Hyper-V is a result of the strong technology partnership between our two companies,” said Jeff Mader, vice president, Target Technology Services. “With Hyper-V, Target can reduce our stores’ server footprints without sacrificing the mission-critical application performance that contributes to a superior retail experience for our guests.”
Minneapolis, Minn.-based Target Corp. serves guests at 1,755 stores in 49 states and operates 37 national distribution centers. Earlier this year, Target scaled its deployment of Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V to every U.S. store in the chain. Applications, ranging from Microsoft SQL Server 2008 SP1, SharePoint 2007 and Exchange 2007 to third-party, line-of-business software, can now be deployed and managed more quickly, with 8,650 fewer physical servers to maintain, power and refresh. Target has also implemented the Microsoft System Center management platform to manage and patch more than 300,000 endpoints, ranging from servers and PCs to mobile inventory devices and point-of-sale registers. System Center provides the automation, insight and data to help ensure Target guests can quickly find the products they need at the lowest possible cost and check out without delay.
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