News

Microsoft Launching 'Cloud in a Box' Appliances with Dell

• By John K. Waters
• October 20, 2014

Microsoft is partnering with Dell on an offering that integrates hardware from the computer manufacturer with Microsoft's Azure, Windows Server and System Center products.

The resulting on-premises cloud appliance, dubbed the Microsoft Cloud Platform System (CPS), will provide "Azure-consistent cloud in a box," Microsoft said Monday during a press event in San Francisco. The first appliances will be available beginning next month, according to Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft's cloud and enterprise group, who presented at the event alongside Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Microsoft expects the new appliance to bring Azure into its customer's existing datacenters, Guthrie said.

This isn't Microsoft's first attempt at creating a cloud appliance, observed GigaOM Research analyst Andrew Brust, who attended the briefing. When Microsoft launched the Azure platform in 2008, then-CEO Steve Ballmer promised a similar hardware/software combination.

"It finally came out after numerous delays," Brust recalled. "But it turned out that it was really best for managed hosting providers, like Fujitsu and couple of others, and ultimately it fizzled."

But those were early days for the cloud, Brust said. "It makes much more sense now," he said. "The markets are mature, customers have a greater sense of what they need, and back then, Azure was a PaaS cloud exclusively, and now it's not."

Microsoft can't afford to get this cloud appliance wrong, said Forrester analyst John R. Rymer, who was also at the event. "Their first one was way too big and way too early," he said. "But they've drawn a line in the sand here, and they have to deliver."

Nadella prefaced the announcements with an impassioned attempt to "define the uniqueness of our approach" and to clarify Microsoft's vision, which embraces "the mobility of the individual experience [on] more than just the device."

"We are well and truly in this mobile-first, cloud-first world," Nadella said.

Microsoft is currently attracting about 10,000 new customers daily to Azure, Nadella said, and now stores 30 trillion objects.

Nadella also took several minutes to emphasize Microsoft's cloud agnosticism, especially when it comes to Linux. "I want to drill this home," he said. "Microsoft loves Linux!" He added that 20 percent of Azure is already Linux.

"This isn't news, but what's noteworthy is that they articulated it," Brust said. "This has been a Nadella/Guthrie thing since Scott was in Jason [Zander]'s job and Satya was in Scott's job. They've been pushing very hard on the agnosticism of the cloud, and they weren't necessarily in the majority there for a long time, but they kept pushing. And I think it has led to a turning point for Azure. I travel in a lot of non-Microsoft circles these days. Nine months ago, nobody had heard of Azure. Suddenly, it's now part of the conversation."

Microsoft is expanding its recently announced partnership with Docker, Guthrie said, to provide Azure support for CoreOS, the container-optimized Linux distribution. The company already supports CentOS, Oracle Linux and SUSE.

"We think this container-based approach helps dramatically with the creation of next-generation applications and enables them to be deployed more efficiently," Guthrie said.

Microsoft also unveiled the new Azure G-series virtual machines (VMs). The G-series VMs are powered by Intel Xeon processors and will be the largest VMs available in public cloud, providing twice the memory of the largest Amazon cloud machine, Guthrie said.

The company also announced a new Azure marketplace of VMs, apps and services to help ISVs and startups to monetize their businesses. Cloudera and Hortonworks are among the vendors represented in the new marketplace, Guthrie said.