Microsoft and Dell launch VMware-Microsoft Azure Partnership

Microsoft and Dell have together announced a new partnership between themselves to deliver the full VMware cloud infrastructure natively in Microsoft Azure.

The partnership will allow customers to deploy and mansage VMware’s “Cloud Foundation”technology natively in Azure. Customers will be able to migrate and manage their on-premise workloads to Azure without needing to reconfigure any of their their applications or services.

What is unique and really impressive here is that unlike VMware’s partnership with Amazon, known simply as “VMware on AWS”, the Azure/VMware service will be fully managed by Microsoft.

Thsi partnership will also allow VMware to extend the capabilities of Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop leveraging VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure just like Microsoft have already done with Citrix.

Why would Microsoft be promoting VMware on Azure?

Despite the market share gains and traction Microsoft has with Hyper-V, there is no denying that VMware has an incredible install base which is still growing at an impressive rate. VMware customers are loyal and its customers know their products well. Brining the complete on-premise solution of virtualised compute, storage and network into Azure will not only help drive Azure consumption and growth but it does so on the customer’s terms without them having to compromise their investment and experience of VMware.

Is it available now?

Not yet, initial capabilities are expected to be available as a technical preview by the end of CY 2019.

 

Do you think this will help drive Azure growth?