Microsoft Azure Stack and the Hybrid Cloud

hi I'm James Maguire and our topic today is cloud computing specifically the Microsoft Azure stack Appliance it's coming out later this year to talk about that I'm joined by Mike shes a general manager of product marketing for the cloud and Enterprise divisions at Microsoft hi Mike how you doing today hey James I'm doing great thanks for having me and I know you are there in Redmond of course which make perfect sense as you work at at Microsoft looks like it's a sunny day in Redmond one in million great coffee maybe not so much Sunshine yeah right um the value of the Azure stack correct me if I'm wrong is that it enables a a business to run a version of the Azure platform in their own data center on servers they own and control uh so it says it's kind of a mired hybrid hybrid Cloud approach you know marrying the uh the public and the private wh why why would businesses want want to do this and why did Microsoft decide to do this in the first place well absolutely and you're you're absolutely right in terms of what Azure stack is I think one of the things we're finding from customers is uh that they're all really interested in adopting cloud computing uh Gartner predicting that this year the the cloud computing Market's going to almost be$ 250 billion dollars and that's 209 billion in 2016 and so hybrid is really top of mind for our Enterprise customers uh the reason for that is they have existing applications and infrastructure uh that they need to keep going and keep moving as well as they need to op adopt the public Cloud to get the benefits that the cloud brings of agility and cost savings um and so uh what we've been doing for a number of years because of our deep experience in the Enterprise uh as well as uh all of our depth of investments in the public Cloud uh is we're trying to meet customers where they are uh they're wanting to move to the cloud but they also uh would like to in certain situations bring Cloud applications on premises and that's that's a fundamental element of where Azure stack fits uh is we're making it enable uh making it able for customers to deploy Azure Services the same services that were born in the cloud infrastructure as a service platform as a service um and enable them to run it in their own environments uh the reason why customers would want to do this is they may have situations like a connected or low bandwidth situations so think about a factory floor or even a cruise ship uh that might be uh that might be traveling across the ocean over a satellite link um they could build an application in the cloud for their broader organization um and then reuse that application in these remote sites or in their own environment effectively extending Azure right into their own environment and so what we've really seen is the excitement since we've started to and since we've announced Azure stack and it's really captured customers imagination for all these really neat use cases for how they could take the Innovation born in the cloud with Azure and bring it into their own environment it it sounds like it's it's strong point or one of his strongest points is going to be for legacy applications not so much you know something that's that's coded this particular year or is is it is it for the the Green Field application so to speak or is is it a stronger play for the the Enterprise the the Legacy applications the real value comes from in the area of application modernization so every customer today has a a set of Legacy applications but they're trying to modernize and in many cases bringing those to the cloud uh what Azure stack allows customers to do is modernize and build those applications in Cloud native patterns using modern Technologies like containers or microservices or platform as a service um and then run those applications on premises and so if you contrast that with uh other Cloud providers who really don't have a hybrid Cloud approach um this allows customers the flexibility to be able to run those new applications uh anywhere they want to based on their own unique requirements or business needs what about the uh the idea of there's there's in a sense a linked application between the applications running locally and of course in the Azure Cloud how do you ensure that the linked versions don't get out of sync or a patch on one end causes a problem on the other or in the the very unlikely event of an outage does that does that take down the other the other side or how would that work sure uh so one of the scenarios that we we talk a lot about is is building the same application but running it in multiple locations and so uh a customer could run the same application in Azure and then run it in one of their own Geographic data centers or maybe we don't have a data center so think about uh somewhere in Africa an organization running Azure stack there um so we have a connection um but they're not dependent on on one another and so uh if the if they had a power outage on in their Azure stack environment it wouldn't affect the public Azure uh Data Center and vice versa and so there there really isn't an interdependence now what we do want to do is help customers make sure that we're providing the latest Innovation from Azure into their Azure stack environment so as we need develop new features in the public Cloud we will periodically make those available so customer can deploy them when they think feel the time is right in their own environment and so we're probably going to do that two to three times a year and so we'll provide the ability for them to update their systems two to three times per year but none of those are dependent on uh the public Cloud availability or vice versa it it's almost um it's it's I guess you could view it as as a backup service as well I know this the the market you know Disaster Recovery is a service it's a whole another Market um it seems like it may partially address that or or is that not what's really going on here well you can certainly think about um Azure stack being extension of azure today we we have the broadest Global footprint of azure than any public cloud provider we we have announced 38 Global regions throughout the world that's more than AWS and Google combined um and and in addition you could think about a customer having their own region in their own data center of azure stack and so it certainly can be viewed as an extension of availability might be one benefit but even just extending into new geographies or into scenarios where customers either from regulatory or data sovereignty reasons may not be able to move a particular application to the public Cloud what about the the pricing model does does the stack uh does does the Azure stack influence pricing at all how how does that go yeah again one of the the fundamental tenants that we're really trying to make Azure stack uh just be Azure and so uh even from a pricing perspective and so just like cloud is pay as you go so is azure stack and so a customer would procure the hardware from one of our Hardware Partners HP Dell Lenovo and later Cisco um but from a software perspective um you don't pay any upfront fees for the software uh you only pay uh based on the usage of the services that run on it so whether that be virtual machines or Azure application Services uh so just like the cloud you have that e economic model that is very much a consumption based model and we're extending that into Azure stack as well so it's a very innovative business model that you really don't see very often in on premises software and I know you mentioned the hardware it will require Hardware from either Dell HP or Lenovo I mean what what is the reason behind requiring the hardware and and and will it at some point run on on a white box software server yeah what what we've originally what we're doing is having HP Dell Lenovo and Cisco build these Integrated Systems and and as you probably know the Integrated Systems or converged uh systems Market is growing tremendously it's becoming the preferred way that organizations buy Hardware Solutions because it's been prevalidated and pre-tested and so it really speeds the time to Value um and just like in the cloud where where Cloud providers like Microsoft or Google uh or Amazon have a pretty standardized short list of hardware specs that we use we felt it was best from a customer experience perspective and a reliability and performance standpoint to make sure that we engineered the software and the hardware together to make sure that we had the best possible experience for customers and and so when do you expect as your stack to be available I'm sure the people have asked you all the time they we're going to make some news today you're going to say the exact date I'm thinking today people were very excited about it you know we just got past the third technical preview about a month ago uh and we're marching toward the general availability they'll be starting uh mid mid this calendar year and so our Hardware Partners uh will start to release their Integrated Systems uh uh beginning in the middle of this calendar year I'm gonna I'm gonna look at my calendar those months to me that says July augusti is if I if I if I look at my I I'm pretty familiar with the calendar so I'm thinking mid year you're kind of saying July augus is we're kind of right in the middle of 2017 that's right yes um so looking ahead me what what what do you think of as as the future for a your stack I mean it's uh you know what will it look like you know one three five years out and you know what will be people be talking about when they talk about a jur stack or actually as as your cloud in general I mean if even even beyond the stack Appliance absolutely and again like I I think what we're trying to do is is address customers hybrid Cloud needs all up and so when we talk to customers and we recently did a survey of about 2500 of our it pros and it decision makers customers worldwide and they feel that that hybrid Cloud for them is 80% of them in fact said that hybrid cloud is a durable model for them for the foreseeable future and now while the mix of applications might change from on premises to public Cloud the need for having the combination of the two is highly durable um and so we see certainly public Cloud accelerating faster than any deployment model and then customers having the flexibility to leverage those Cloud skills with building and delivering applications on premises will continue to be really highly in demand uh for the foreseeable future so so Microsoft clearly sees hybrid as a dominant model going forward absolutely and we're hearing that from our customers in fact we in many ways believe that that hybrid could be the Tipping Point between where the real leaders in public Cloud uh differentiate uh and we certainly uh having being focused on hybrid from the beginning we have about a seven-year Head Start in hybrid cloud and are building these hybrid capabilities across all of our products Azure Stack's one great example and it really does bring that to light but we focus on uh not just Azure stack but we've got areas in the ter in terms of integrated management and security identity management data platform these are all really important areas where we're investing in hybrid Cloud capabilities so that customers can uh adopt the public Cloud as fast as they want but then also have the choice of when to keep things on premises you know Mike I think you said it it's a lot of good stuff is there anything you want to add about uh say the future of the Azure cloud or or or what it might be look like uh you know a few years from now well I think the the main thing is that you know customers are really now seeing the real benefits of public cloud and we see hybrid as an accelerator to that uh not not deploying hybrid instead of public cloud and so we feel that we're uh meeting customers where they are and we can really help them on that Journey as they're kind of working toward digital transformation Mike I think you said it thank you very much I appreciate your expertise and I'll send you the link we can we can all tweet it thank you very much thanks James really appreciate it

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