WWT's Director of Data Center Comments on Dell EMC, Microsoft Partnership for Azure On-Prem
CRN posted on May 4, 2017:
Dell EMC on Thursday introduced a partnership with Microsoft under which channel partners will be able to build on-premises Microsoft Azure clouds using Dell EMC technology.
The new offering, called Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack, is a turnkey platform for building a hybrid cloud offering with the same look, feel, and technology as the Microsoft Azure public cloud, said Peter Cutts, senior vice president of hybrid cloud platforms at Dell EMC.
"We're leveraging three years of experience with delivering hybrid clouds including the ability to deliver the right services for on-premises and hybrid clouds," Cutts told CRN.
The Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack is a net-new offering from Dell EMC, particularly in how it differs from the company's Enterprise Hybrid Cloud, or EHC, Cutts said.
Customers deploying the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud need to add their own domain name space automation, firewall automation, backup and recovery capabilities, and other technologies that together form a private or hybrid cloud, he said.
"With Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack, we're putting it together as an integrated offering," he said. "It's a completely Azure-based offering. We don't leverage the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud."
The new offering is also different from the Azure Pack, which Dell started shipping in 2015. The Azure Pack is not API-compatible with the Microsoft Azure public cloud, Cutts said.
The Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack targets solution providers and customers who use Microsoft technology, Cutts said. It will be a stand-alone offering combining Dell EMC hyper-converged infrastructure technology with Azure, he said.
The new offering scales from four nodes, which can work with up to about 100 Azure D1 virtual machines, to 12 nodes, or about 600 Azure D1 virtual machines, Cutts said. For larger deployments, customers can purchase multiple scale outs beyond that, he said.