Optimizing Hybrid Infrastructure with Microsoft

Microsoft’s Products for Hybrid Infrastructure

Microsoft has introduced enhancements in a number of cloud-to-edge technologies, including Azure Arc, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Azure Stack HCI, in response to customers’ requests for cloud capabilities and agility in edge environments. Gartner unveiled their Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure (DHI) Magic Quadrant this year.

Offerings that deliver cloud-native infrastructure attributes that can be deployed and operated where the client wishes are referred to as DHI by Gartner. Software and/or hardware integration with a single control plane are offered. Distributed hybrid infrastructure offers the basis for distributed application deployment while maintaining a cloud-defined or cloud-inspired methodology. Microsoft are happy to announce that Microsoft has been ranked as a Leader in this new area by Gartner.

All types of organizations keep moving forward with their digital transformation journeys in order to profit from the delivery of cloud-connected experiences in a variety of deployment scenarios, regardless of their size. One of the difficulties that companies are currently reporting in their digital transformation journeys is the ability to dependable provide cloud-connected experiences across a globally scattered footprint that encompasses their places of residence, employment, and decision-making.

Adopted solutions must be easy to use, safe, and observable so that you can make decisions locally and in real-time using aggregated data, even in retail locations without technical support or factories dispersed across continents.

With Azure Arc, Microsoft Azure offers a portfolio of services, tools, and infrastructure that enables you to access cloud capabilities and agility wherever you need them. You can use Azure services like Azure Machine Learning, Azure Kubernetes Services, and App services all with a set of complete hybrid and multicloud solutions within a single control plane to deploy apps in a data center or at the edge.

Azure Arc-enabled and hybrid by design, Azure Stack HCI offers a comprehensive curated infrastructure stack for customers seeking an end-to-end Azure experience at the edge. Microsoft is dedicated to assisting all enterprises in centralizing control across various deployment scenarios and sites and expediting their digital transformation as a Leader in this new category.

Simplify processes and be creative wherever

A carefully chosen selection of Azure technologies, including as Azure Kubernetes Service, SQL managed instance, PostgreSQL, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure Stack HCI, all enabled by Azure Arc, helps many of our customers, like Carnival, COOP, and SKF, optimize their global operations. Retail establishments, ships, factory floors, distribution centers, and other locations can now use cloud-native capabilities thanks to these technologies, which make it easier to extend cloud computing beyond the confines of the data center and out to the edge.

This provides you with a dependable platform for operations and management that can operate services fully both on-site at distant locations and from a central location. Customers may innovate anywhere with this combination of technologies since it is more safe, seamless, and comprehensive.

Utilizing these cutting-edge Azure technologies has several advantages, as demonstrated by:

• Diminished carbon footprint
• Increased level of security in all contexts
• Simplifying management in general
• Enhanced performance

These customers’ quotes demonstrate the benefits in real life.

Microsoft can now administer the computing platform at 100 sites with the same amount of work that was required to handle it at one. Without the GitOps process and Azure Arc technology, it would not be possible. Mats Iremark, Lead Hybrid Cloud Solution Architect, SKF Group

“Microsoft firmly believe that Azure Stack HCI, with IoT and IoT Edge, which Microsoft using on ships to transmit data in real time from shipside cloud to the Azure cloud platform, can support that with digital agility, which now affects safety.” Franco Caraffi, Global Maritime and Environmental Compliance, IT Operation Director, Carnival Corporation

“Compared to the C7000 blades Microsoft were using, their Azure Stack HCI deployment has generated savings of around £400,000 a year on power and cooling alone.” Scott Robertson, Co-op Group’s Principal Enterprise Architect at Foundation Technology

“Compared to Microsoft  old Hyper-V based workloads, they have gained about a 30 percent performance improvement with Azure Stack HCI so far.” Scott Robertson, Co-op Group’s Principal Enterprise Architect at Foundation Technology

Gartner Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure, Tony Harvey, Julia Palmer, David Wright, and Jeffrey Hewitt, September 27, 2023.

It is important to consider this graphic in the context of the complete research document it was published with, as it was produced by Gartner, Inc. Microsoft can make the Gartner document available upon request.

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