IBM and Microsoft Partner on Enterprise-Focused Hybrid Cloud Solutions

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This article originally appeared at The WHIR

Microsoft and IBM announced a partnership that will make key IBM middleware including WebSphere Liberty, MQ, and DB2 available on Microsoft Azure, and, in turn, IBM Cloud will support Windows Server and SQL Server.

According to the Wednesday announcement, IBM and Microsoft are also working together to deliver a Microsoft .NET runtime for Bluemix, the cloud development platform IBM launched earlier this year.

To support hybrid cloud deployments, IBM will also expand its support of software running on the Hyper-V hypervisor, and enable Azure users to leverage IBM PureApplication, a Softlayer utility that helps extend applications applications across and between on-premise and off-premise environments.

Interoperability among different cloud solutions has been a major theme this week for Microsoft, which just announced that Azure supports CoreOS, a container-based Linux operating system, along with the many Linux distributions already supported. The company also said that around 20 percent of VMs running on Azure are running Linux (an operating system Steve Ballmer once called a “cancer” Ars Technica reminded us).

IBM Software and Cloud Solutions Group SVP Robert LeBlanc stated that the collaboration between IBM and Microsoft will help “drive innovation in hybrid cloud,” and reinforce “IBM’s strategy in providing open cloud technology for the enterprise.”

Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise executive vice president Scott Guthrie said in a statement, “Microsoft is committed to helping enterprise customers realize the tremendous benefits of cloud computing across their own systems, partner clouds and Microsoft Azure. With this agreement more customers will be able to take advantage of the hyper-scale, enterprise performance and hybrid capabilities of Azure.”

This article originally appeared at: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/ibm-microsoft-partner-enterprise-focused-hybrid-cloud-solutions