HPE announce integrated Azure hybrid cloud solution

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has revealed the specs and features of their new HPE Microsoft Azure Stack solution.

In recognition of the growing demand for a consistent hybrid cloud experience, the integrated system offers businesses much greater agility and flexibility by harnessing Azure-compatible IaaS and PaaS services from their on premises environment.

Using Azure Stack powered by HPE integrated systems, enterprises and service providers are now able to bring the speed and simplicity of the public cloud to life while still maintaining the cost-effectiveness and security of an on-premises private cloud.

HPE and Microsoft have a long history of partnering on successful projects and the new solution has been co-produced by both companies. It essentially provides customers with an Azure hybrid cloud platform in their own datacenter that is fully compatible with Azure public cloud services.

“Many enterprises would like to host Azure within their data centers for performance, security or compliance reasons and many service providers would like to offer Azure-compatible services for data sovereignty or other targeted services,” said Paul Miller, vice president of marketing, Converged Data Center Infrastructure, at Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

“HPE is teaming with Microsoft to deliver the right mix of on- and off-premises Azure services with built-in security, operations management, pay-as-you-go pricing and the expertise that provides unmatched flexibility and cost savings for enterprise workloads.”

Seamless, standardised interface

The HPE Azure Stack solution’s interface is standardised across both public and private cloud. This means IT owners can now access the Azure public cloud as easily as their private set-up, allowing them to quickly provision new cloud resources with ease. Developers are able to build new apps and services quickly and seamlessly shift them between their Azure public environment and Azure stack, running on-premises. It’s built on the HPE ProLiant DL 380, officially the world’s bestselling server.

HPE have also announced new consulting services for Azure Hybrid Cloud projects, to enable enterprises to tap into the support they need to implement their Azure Stack as well as enhancements to HPE Flexible Capacity that form part of the pay-as-you-go solution for hybrid IT.

“Microsoft and HPE share a view that hybrid cloud capabilities and consistency across public and private cloud environments helps customers accelerate their cloud strategy,” said Mike Schutz, general manager, product marketing, Microsoft Corp. “The HPE solution for Azure Stack builds off the relationship we announced last year, tightly integrating the hardware, software, support and services to help customers benefit from the pace of cloud innovation while reducing deployment complexity and risk.”

The HPE | Microsoft Azure Stack solution is targeted for availability in mid-2017.

HPE Consulting for Azure Hybrid Cloud services are available immediately to assist organizations planning their Azure Stack deployments.