Microsoft’s Cloud Vision continues to take shape and achieve recognition

By Scott Gosling, National Practice Manager – Microsoft Solutions

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide [i] has been released and Microsoft is once again being recognised as a leader for the second year running. This is a very significant result as they are the only vendor also recognised as a leader in 3 other cloud based Magic Quadrants:

• Application Platform as a Service [ii]
• Public Cloud Storage Services [iii]
• Server Virtualisation [iv]

When you also consider that Microsoft continues to invest billions of dollars a year to build out new infrastructure[v], it shows that their stated direction of cloud first, mobile first is absolutely on track.

One of the key strengths identified by Gartner is Microsoft’s proven reputation as an enterprise IT provider combined with its growing strengths as a cloud provider. They have developed a very cohesive offering unmatched in the market, which is great news for enterprise organisations that have already invested in the Microsoft ecosystem.

Their success with Office 365 and Azure along with the opening of local Australia Data Centres completes an infrastructure picture that caters for on-premises, private cloud, public cloud and hybrid cloud scenarios. This is an important point as it allows organisations to maintain existing on-premises solutions and slowly shift to the cloud as and when conditions dictate it, such as infrastructure refreshes.

The depth of integration between their solutions means that for many organisations (particularly those invested in Office 365 or Hyper-V), Azure will be a seamless extension of their existing on-premises solutions making it easier to shift towards hybrid cloud.

This is further enhanced when you consider ExpressRoute. With ExpressRoute you can create a private connection between Azure data centres and your existing infrastructure, bypassing the internet and offering more reliability, faster speeds, lower latencies and higher security. This allows you to securely add compute and storage capacity to your existing on-premises or data centre infrastructure.

Microsoft has shown how serious they are in this space with the cadence of their innovation and feature releases and definitely need to be in the consideration set for any enterprise cloud projects.

With Data^#3’s deep expertise in cloud solutions, we can advise you on how to make the right choices based on your existing environment and your plans for the future. Keep an eye out for an upcoming piece on the business benefits of Office 365.

[i] Gartner (2015), Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide, accessed June 2015 from http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-2G45TQU&ct=150519&st=sb

[ii] Gartner (2015), Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Platform as a Service, Worldwide, accessed June 2015 from http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-2C8JHBP&ct=150325&st=sb

[iii] Gartner (2015), Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Storage Services, accessed June 2015 from http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1WWSLMM&ct=140709&st=sb

[iv] Gartner (2015), Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure, accessed June 2015 from http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1WR6HLK&ct=140703&st=sb

[v] Microsoft (2015), Microsoft – the only vendor named a leader in Gartner Magic Quadrants for IaaS, Application PaaS, and Cloud Storage, accessed June 2015 from http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/05/22/microsoft-the-only-vendor-named-a-leader-in-gartner-magic-quadrants-for-iaas-application-paas-cloud-storage-and-hybrid/