Application infrastructure provider Peakstone announced late last week that Microsoft will feature its eAssurance capacity management solution in the newly opened Chicago-based Microsoft Technology Center (MTC).
The Chicago facility is the latest of five MTCs, which are spread across the United States and Canada. The centers are designed by Microsoft to support the planning, development and deployment of customer-driven Microsoft .NET Platform solutions and XML-based Web services.
MTCs provide companies with access to Microsoft consultants, associates, tools and other information needed to develop scalable and reliable Internet and intranet solutions.
Peakstone eAssurance is designed to deliver information on infrastructure cost and utilization, service quality guarantees, and operational cost and risk. As part of the technology agreement between the two companies, Microsoft will make eAssurance a standard offering to customers in all MTC Chicago centers.
eAssurance is one of only a small number of prodcuts selected for the Chicago MTC, according to Microsoft. Peakstone’s product will help customers test and deploy their new applications and environments with greater speed and accuracy, and will also provide insight into various aspects of capacity utilization and consumption, according to a statement by Microsoft.
For the handful of third-party companies like Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Peakstone, being selected for inclusion in an MTC is an inexpensive way to gain access to possible customers. “It’s a nice arrangement. Although no money is exchanged, we can visit with customers, hang our signs, display our white papers — it’s a great lead-generation tool,” Peakstone’s vice president of marketing Tom Buiocchi told ASPnews.
While pleased by the agreement, which places eAssurance in a pure .Net application environment, Peakstone is quick to point that it is not strictly a .Net solution. “We are technology-agnostic,” Buiocchi told ASPnews. “We work equally well in a Sun environment.”
In addition to the Chicago-based MTC, Microsoft has similar centers in Austin, Boston, Silicon Valley and Toronto.
