As a part of its continued effort to dethrone Amazon Web Services(AWS) as the leader in the cloud space, Microsoft announced Azure Arc at its Ignite Conference on Monday. Azure Arc will allow users to use the inbuilt management tools and data services offered by Azure on almost anything, whether that be their own data centers, or virtually any cloud service, even those by its main competitors AWS, and Google. This move brings Microsoft’s current hybrid cloud offering more closer in line with the recent announcements of Outposts by AWS and Anthos by Google.
“We are offering our customers the ability to take their services, untethered from Azure, and run them inside their own datacenter or in another cloud” - John Chirapurath, General Manager for Azure data, blockchain and artificial intelligence at Microsoft.
Why is Microsoft Doing This?
Microsoft has long held ambitions of beating Amazon in the general cloud market, as of 2019 market can roughly be broken down as follows: AWS has about 32% of the market, Microsoft Azure has approximately 17% and Google is in a distant third with 10% of the market. By making Azure more compatible with other services, Microsoft is hoping that more developers will be enticed to build on it and that more companies will use some aspects of Azure to fill specific business needs.
With what Microsoft is now calling Hybrid Cloud 2.0, Microsoft seems to be positioning itself at the heart of hybrid cloud solutions. Providing the connections between cloud computing platforms can make Microsoft an indispensable part of the cloud ecosystem, just as Office did in the past with word processing.
Arc’s new capabilities should help it appeal to the ever-growing list of companies that want hybrid cloud technology. In the future, a multi-cloud strategy will be the norm in the same way that enterprises use different apps today. Since using multiple cloud providers allows companies to choose the best solution for each task they have whilst always sticking to budgets.
What does this all mean?
Developers should have a much easier time building applications for the cloud, as they will be able to build it using the platform and language of their choice while still maintaining compatibility with all environments. Companies with legacy systems can simultaneously manage them and any new installations at the same time. In general, it should lead to cloud systems that are not only more responsive but also more customized to the specific needs of each customer.
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