Enterprises rely on a hybrid technology approach to take advantage of their on-premises investment and, at the same time, utilize cloud innovation. As more business operations and applications expand to include edge devices and multiple clouds, hybrid capabilities must enable apps to run seamlessly across on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge devices, while providing consistent management and security across all distributed locations. Without coherence across these environments, cost and complexity grow exponentially. At Microsoft, we understand that hybrid cloud capabilities must evolve to enable innovation anywhere, while providing a seamless development, deployment and ongoing management experience.

Since its origin, Azure has been built to enable seamless hybrid capabilities – and we continue to deliver on our customers’ needs to enable purposeful innovation. Two years ago, we delivered Azure Stack to enable a consistent cloud model, deployable on-premises. Over the past year, we’ve extended Azure to provide DevOps for any environment and any cloud, we enabled cloud-powered security threat protection for any infrastructure, and we unlocked the ability to run Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services AI models anywhere. Today, we take a significant leap forward to enable customers to move from just hybrid cloud to truly deliver innovation anywhere with Azure.

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Today, we are announcing Azure Arc, a set of technologies that unlocks new hybrid scenarios for customers by bringing Azure services and management to any infrastructure. Azure Arc is available in preview starting today.

Extend Azure management and security to any infrastructure

Hundreds of millions of Azure resources are organized, governed and secured daily by customers using Azure management. Azure Arc extends these proven Azure management capabilities to Linux and Windows servers, as well as Kubernetes clusters on any infrastructure across on-premises, multi-cloud and edge. Customers can now have a consistent and unified approach to managing different environments using robust, established capabilities such as Azure Resource Manager, Microsoft Azure Cloud Shell, Azure portal, API, and Microsoft Azure Policy. With Azure Arc, developers can build containerized apps with the tools of their choice and IT teams can ensure that the apps are deployed, configured, and managed uniformly using GitOps-based configuration management. Finally, Azure Arc makes it easier to implement cloud security across environments with centralized role-based access control and security policies. Learn more about Azure Arc.

Run Azure data services anywhere

With Azure Arc, customers can now realize the benefits of cloud innovation, including always up-to-date data capabilities, deployment in seconds (rather than hours), and dynamic scalability on any infrastructure. Customers now have the flexibility to deploy Azure SQL Database and Azure Database for PostgreSQL Hyperscale where they need it, on any Kubernetes cluster. From the Azure portal, customers get a unified and consistent view of all their Azure data services running across on-premises and clouds and can apply consistent policy, security and governance of data across environments. Customers can get limitless scale by seamlessly spinning up additional Kubernetes clusters in Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) if they run out of capacity on-premises. Learn more about Azure data services anywhere.

“We are excited to see Microsoft bringing Azure data services and management to any infrastructure”, said Erik Vogel, Vice President for Customer Success, Hybrid Cloud Software and Services at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. “Through our partnership with Microsoft we hope to deliver a true as a Service experience across environments to help manage both the databases and the underlying infrastructure, and offer a consistent experience across on-premises and the cloud.”

Expanded Azure Stack offerings for any edge

Enterprises across 60 countries including Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited, KPMG Norway and Airbus Defense & Space are building hybrid solutions powered by Azure Stack Hub connected and disconnected from Azure. Today, we are expanding our Azure Stack portfolio to offer customers even more flexibility with the addition of Azure Stack Edge. Azure Stack Edge is a managed AI-enabled edge appliance that brings compute, storage and intelligence to any edge. Customers will be able to take advantage of new capabilities including Virtual Machine support, a GPU based form factor, high availability with multiple nodes, and multi-access edge compute (MEC). We are also introducing a new rugged series of Azure Stack Edge form-factors designed to provide cloud capabilities in the harshest environment conditions supporting scenarios such as tactical edge, humanitarian and emergency response efforts.