ARMONK: IBM and Microsoft declared that they are working together to provide their respective enterprise software on Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud. Actually hybrid cloud will give clients, partners and developers more choice in the cloud, helping them drive new business opportunities, spur innovation and reduce costs.
“We are creating new opportunities to drive innovation in hybrid cloud,” said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, Software and Cloud Solutions Group, IBM. “This agreement reinforces IBM’s strategy in providing open cloud technology for the enterprise. Clients will now gain unprecedented access to IBM’s leading middleware and will have an even greater level of choice over the tools that they use to build and deploy their cloud environments.”
“Microsoft is committed to helping enterprise customers realize the tremendous benefits of cloud computing across their own systems, partner clouds and Microsoft Azure,” said Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Cloud and Enterprise, Microsoft. “With this agreement more customers will be able to take advantage of the hyper-scale, enterprise performance and hybrid capabilities of Azure.” IBM and Microsoft will make key products within IBM’s enterprise-proven middleware software portfolio, including Web Sphere Application Server, Web Sphere MQ and DB2 database software, available in the Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines service for development and production deployment.
Microsoft and IBM are working together to provide .NET runtimes, along with relevant tooling, in IBM Blue mix, IBM’s open cloud platform-as-a-service. This could open the door for millions of .NET developers to build applications at scale for clients on IBM’s cloud platform. The companies will begin with a limited preview offering of .NET operating within Blue mix. The companies will enable customers to bring their own software licenses to the IBM and Microsoft clouds, helping customers avoid extra cost. Microsoft will also offer IBM middleware software licenses, such as Web Sphere Liberty, MQ and DB2, to Azure customers with pay-per-use pricing.
The companies also plan to make IBM Pure Application Service available on both Microsoft Azure and IBM Soft Layer for automated deployment, configuration and license management in a hybrid cloud environment. IBM Soft Layer currently provides and supports a wide range of Microsoft software, including Windows Server, Hyper-V, Web Matrix, Windows Firewall, SQL Server and others.
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) Founded in 1975 is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential. While IBM is a global leader in cloud with a broad portfolio of open cloud solutions to enable clients for the hybrid cloud era with integration, control over data and expertise.
