In his address, Bob Muglia, senior vice president of Microsoft's server and tools business, said this is a very healthy business climate, with IT spending going strong and growing, with billions of dollars being spent on architectures that benefit both Windows and Linux.

The trend toward industry-standard architectures will benefit Windows; Microsoft feels good about this and is putting mechanisms in place to engage with its customers and partners over the long term, he said.

Microsoft will take share from Linux in the High Performance Computing space over the next few years, Muglia said.

Microsoft is also living up to its promise to reach out and build bridges with the Linux and open-source community, and on July 18 announced a strategic relationship with XenSource for the development of technology to provide interoperability between Xen-enabled Linux and Windows Server virtualization.

As Microsoft starts providing software solutions in new areas, like the High Performance Computing and security spaces, it is once again turning to partners to help it gain traction and market share in those markets.

Click here to read more about how Microsoft is pulling out all the stops to woo new partners.

Muglia acknowledged the company had been weak on the Web hosting side as Apache had provided a better solution than Windows, but that has changed since December as Windows has gained eight points of market share, which translates into server sales for Microsoft from the Web hosting market.

"I see turnaround this year in HPC, the beginning of a turnaround on the Web, with security 18 to 24 months out. If we improve on these three we will outgrow Linux on a percentage and unit basis," Muglia said.

The security business is one of great opportunity for Microsoft, and there are huge upside opportunities, even though this is a nascent market for the company.

To read more about how Microsoft plans to take on Linux in the HPC space, click here.

Microsoft is also driving the industry forward in the management product space, where it is the sixth largest player, Muglia said.

"Watch what happens in the virtualization space over the next few years. Microsoft is going to own that space," he said.

This article was originally published on eWEEK.com.