The long awaited Microsoft Azure Stack is within touching distance, with the company announcing that it’s ready to order.
The announcement, made at Microsoft’s Inspire event, means that the Azure Stack software has been delivered to its hardware partners, so that the certification process for their integrated systems can take place.
What all this means is that the first systems can begin shipping in September, if all goes to plan, and customers can start ordering integrated systems from Dell EMC, HPE, and Lenovo.
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Pricing for the pay-as-you-use and capacity-based models has also been released, which can be seen in the image below.
The Azure Stack is one of the most hotly anticipated new pieces of tech of the year, given that it is expected to help boost the company’s footing in the cloud market, become direct competition to OpenStack, and maybe even help it catch up with Amazon Web Services.
Microsoft’s vision has been for a hybrid cloud focused business world, and this technology plays directly into that strategy.
The product has been in a year of technical previews and rumoured long before that. But now Microsoft’s partners will finally be able to start shipping it.
The systems will initially be available in 46 countries and are designed for multi-server production deployments, but Microsoft’s been through this kind of song and dance before so it knows it has to provide a lot of help along the way.
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The help it’s providing this time around is with the Azure Stack Development Kit, a free development kit that’ll include tools such as Azure Portal, Azure Service, DevOps tools, and Marketplace content access.
In addition to the Azure Stack announcement, Microsoft is also launching a new digital solution hub with KPMG as part of an ongoing partnership.
The two companies will establish the Global Digital Solution Hub, which will use Microsoft Azure’s intelligent cloud services and AI technology with KPMG business experience in order to help companies to transform their business.
