Microsoft has shown a desire to work asymmetrically by deploying technology that will let customers use its Azure cloud tools on competing services.
Microsoft introduced it’s Azure Arc software at the Ignite conference in Orlando, Florida, on Monday.
Developers will be able to use Arc to deploy a database or virtual machine onto infrastructure from Amazon or Google but manage that software from Microsoft Azure.
This strategy is consistent with the software maker attempting to provide customers with maximum flexibility in a platform agnostic manner.
For example, in recent years Microsoft has made its products more accessible on Apple’s iOS devices and integrated the open-source Linux operating system into Windows.
Jason Zander, executive vice president of Azure, said Arc builds on the company’s past efforts to give customers access to rival vendors’ software, through partnerships with the likes of Oracle, IBM’s Red Hat and SAP.
“There wasn’t a lot of debate or angst around bringing this goodness out to folks and making it easier for them to embrace these new solutions,” Zander said in an interview.
Azure, a critical piece of Microsoft’s expansion, delivered 59% revenue growth in the latest quarter, more than quadruple the growth rate of the parent company.
Even though Cloud providers have historically kept their cloud services tied tightly to the infrastructure they maintain in data centers located around the globe, the emerging trend is to decouple those things, giving customers more options to use the products they like in their environment of choice.
