At a time of economic uncertainty, Microsoft serves as a Wal-Mart of software, offering high-volume, low-cost products, a Microsoft executive said in an interview.Discussing Microsoft's economic value points and its open source outreach last week, Robert Duffner, senior director of Platform and Open Source Strategy at Microsoft, compared the company to the giant discount department store chain, calling the Redmond, Wash. software giant the Wal-Mart of software.[ Test Center review: Microsoft's money-saving Hyper-V virtualization software ]''We're a good choice right now in this economic downturn,'' Duffner said.In the current economic climate, Microsoft is finding that strategic IT vendors become even more strategic, Duffner said. Companies should be enlisting these vendors to help reduce costs, he said.As an example of Microsoft's cost-cutting efforts for customers, the company is heralding its Hyper-V virtualization software featured in Windows Server 2008 and virtualization management   News widgets and RSS feeds on Feedzilla.com