What is the Azure Stack promise?

I recently attended this year’s Microsoft Hybrid Cloud Airlift event and Azure Stack Early Adoption Initiative workshop. At both these events there were numerous queries from partners and customers alike about the list of Azure Capabilities on Azure Stack at initial release.

Microsoft have since released this capabilities list, along with the future Roadmap of Azure Stack. By looking at this list, it’s promising that this Hybrid Cloud platform will surely enable organisations to deliver Azure services from their own data centre.

What is the Azure Stack promise?

• Consistent application development: Maximise productivity by empowering developers to build and deploy applications the same way, whether they run on Azure or Azure Stack. Implement a common DevOps approach across Hybrid Cloud environments.
• Azure services available on-premises: Adopt Hybrid Cloud computing on your terms. Meet business and technical requirements, with the flexibility to choose the right combination of Cloud and on-premises deployment models
• Integrated delivery experience: Focus on optimising business applications and services, with integrated systems that are designed to deliver consistent Azure innovation in a predictable manner.

Note: In case If you are not aware, Microsoft have recently made an announcement about the general availability of Azure Stack with the first systems to begin shipping in September 2017 this year. You can learn more in my previous blog, Microsoft Azure Stack is ready for order.

This following list will be helpful if you are considering implementing Azure Stack in your own data centre.

Azure Capabilities on Azure Stack

The fine print

^{* Azure Service Fabric (delivered as a Service) will become available on Azure Stack in CY18 (see roadmap below)
**Azure Container Service (delivered as a Service) will become available on Azure Stack in C18 (see roadmap below)
*** We expect most single VM solutions with BYOL terms that use available services in Azure Stack to work without changes.
**** Timing subject to change, given third party dependency
^Optional services}

Azure Stack Roadmap

Azure Stack is designed to stay consistent with Azure through continuous innovation. As you can imagine, this is only a starting point. This will also grow as Microsoft keeps bringing continuous innovation to Azure Stack.

Microsoft will continuously deliver additional capabilities in regular updates. These updates will continue to expand customer choice of IaaS and PaaS technologies when developing applications, as well as improve manageability and grow the footprint of Azure Stack.