Azure Stack Technical Preview Promises Azure Experience in a Hybrid Environment

Microsoft recently announced what it calls the "next phase of its hybrid cloud strategy" with the first Technical Preview of Microsoft Azure Stack, the technology that will allow organizations to deliver Azure services from their own datacenters.

While Microsoft claims 100,000 new Azure subscriptions per month, it also recognizes that many enterprises "still have business concerns around moving fully to the public cloud, such as data sovereignty or regulatory considerations." So they are in limbo between the public cloud and on-premise; hence the need for a hybrid cloud approach that provides consistency across private, hosted, and public clouds.

Among the capabilities:

• Azure and Azure Stack feature a standardized architecture (e.g., the same portal, a unified application model, common DevOps tools); thus, developers can offer the same end-user experience as Azure delivers.
• IT professionals can transform on-premise datacenter resources into Azure IaaS/PaaS services while maintaining oversight and corporate governance, using the same management and automation tools that Microsoft uses to operate Azure.

The result is yet to be seen, but cloud partners in the Microsoft Dynamics space that we spoke with have different views thus far on the implications of Azure Stack for private cloud and hybrid-cloud scenarios.

For heavily-regulated companies, control where data resides

As Linda Rose, CEO of RoseASP describes, "For us, Azure Stack will be very relevant. Since our Cloud Services is focused on highly regulated companies (SOX, HIPAA, FDA, etc.) having their data hosted at a Microsoft Azure datacenter doesn't typically meet all of their regulatory requirements. The ability to bring the Azure stack to our datacenter will allow us to better service those customers ...