Microsoft’s target with the cloud is to be able to support public, private and hybrid deployments. In order to strengthen its position on-premises it has extended its Azure Stack.
The idea behind the updates is to give organisations that are choosing hybrid cloud environments plenty of flexibility.
In Azure Stack Technical Preview 3 (TP3) the company has added functionality such as being able to deploy with ADFS for disconnected scenarios, start using Azure Virtual Machine Scale Sets for scale out workloads and customers will also be able to use Azure D-Series VM sizes.
The updates don’t end there, as users will now also be able to syndicate content from the Azure Marketplace to make available in Azure Stack, deploy and create templates with Temp Disks that are consistent with Azure, and there’s also been improvements to Infrastructure as a Service and Platform as a Service functionality.
According to the company, the Azure Stack enables three unique hybrid cloud scenarios
for those companies that are looking to build new apps or renovate existing ones across both cloud and on-prem environments.
The first scenario comes about by providing consistency between Azure and Azure Stack, which means that organisations can more easily move from one project to another
Content from our partners
There there’s Azure services available on-premises. This part sees Azure IaaS and PaaS arrive on-prem in order to allow for a hybrid cloud approach.
The third scenario is Microsoft saying that it can update in a more predictable and non-disruptive manner, due to the systems being integrated.
Microsoft also took the opportunity to reveal a little about its roadmap. Down the road Microsoft will be adding Azure Functions, VM Extension syndication and multi-tenancy, while new worloads such as Blockchain, Cloud Foundry, and Mesos templates will also be added.
There’s also good news for those that are waiting for general availability, because TP3 will be the final planned major Technical Preview before everyone can get their hands on it. Final release is expected mid-2017.
Read more: Sorry we’re late, AWS cloud disappeared – Top sites knocked offline in huge Amazon Web Services outage
The forward momentum with the Azure Stack comes at a good time for Microsoft, given that AWS just had a major outage and those that were hit by it might just be looking for a bit more on-premises security.
