Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Cloud and Enterprise at Microsoft, and Antonio Neri, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Enterprise Group at HPE, took to the stage to announce a collaboration in hybrid cloud computing through Microsoft Azure, HPE infrastructure and services and new program offerings.
The partnership appointed Azure as a preferred public cloud partner for HPE customers and designated HPE as a preferred partner in providing infrastructure and services for Microsoft’s hybrid cloud offerings. The duo also revealed plans to collaborate across engineering and services to integrate innovative compute platforms aimed at helping customers optimize their IT environment, leverage new consumption models and accelerate their business.
“Our two companies have a shared, common vision for hybrid cloud computing, and in the past year have made progress towards blending the power of Azure with HPE’s leading infrastructure, support and services to make the cloud more accessible to enterprises around the globe,” wrote Ken Won, Director, Cloud Solutions Marketing, Hewlett Packard Enterprise in a blogpost.
The two companies have also introduced HPE Consulting for Azure Hybrid Cloud services to help enterprises and service providers implement Azure Stack, as well as enhancements to HPE Flexible Capacity and support for Azure. This is ideal for customers who want to deliver Azure consistent services from their data center. This would further help HPE delivered reference architectures that combine Microsoft products and HPE infrastructure to make it simpler for our customers to deploy hybrid clouds.
In addition, to address the complexity of managing hybrid cloud environments, Microsoft and HPE worked together to integrate Microsoft Operations Management Suite with HPE OneView to help customers gain visibility and control across their hybrid cloud. This is aimed at enabling customers to manage infrastructure as well as applications.
Scott and Antonio also shared plans to offer a proof-of-concept workshop to help companies set up an Azure Stack solution. They revealed the creation of a joint innovation center where organizations can meet with HPE and Microsoft experts and learn about the HPE | Azure Stack solution. The first innovation center is located in Seattle and options are being explored for opening a second innovation center in Europe.
