Expanded Red Hat availability on Microsoft Azure

Since we announced our landmark hybrid cloud partnership with Microsoft last November, a lot has happened. Here’s a quick recap of milestones we’ve hit in the last 10+ months:

• Nov. 5, 2015 - Microsoft and Red Hat announced a partnership to deliver new standard for enterprise cloud experiences

• Nov. 11, 2015 - Red Hat Cloud Access becomes available for Microsoft Azure, enabling customers to move eligible, Red Hat subscriptions for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat JBoss Middleware, Red Hat Gluster Storage, and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform from their datacenter to Azure.

• Dec. 8, 2015 - Red Hat introduced Red Hat CloudForms 4, extending the hybrid cloud management platform’s reach to Microsoft Azure.

• Feb. 15, 2016 - Red Hat and Microsoft announced the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-demand in the Azure Marketplace, pairing the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform with one of the globe’s largest public cloud platforms.

• May 26, 2016 - Red Hat announced the availability of Ansible 2.1, including support for Microsoft Windows environments.

• June 24, 2016 - .NET Core becomes available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform via certified containers, and is supported by Red Hat via the integrated hybrid support partnership between Microsoft and Red Hat. This introduced feature full, enterprise-grade support for .NET on Linux, opening up platform choice for enterprises seeking to use .NET on a flexible Linux and container-based environments.

• June 26, 2016 - During DevNation and Red Hat Summit 2016, Codenvy, Microsoft and Red Hat announced the adoption of a language server protocol project representing a collaborative effort to provide a common way to integrate programming languages across code editors and integrated development environments (IDEs).

• July 27, 2016 - We introduced Red Hat Cloud Access for Microsoft Azure Government, enabling Red Hat customers to use eligible Red Hat subscriptions consistently across their deployments, including Azure Government, and benefit from same security, control, and management as our other Red Hat subscriptions. With the news, Red Hat CloudForms customers can also manage Azure Government resources at no additional cost.

Today, we’re happy to build on that momentum with the following news:

• Availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA® on Microsoft Azure - Enterprises seeking to use the public cloud to support their big data initiatives can also use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA and the broader SAP Data and Database Management portfolio, including SAP HANA on Microsoft Azure, using dedicated, bare metal services. Customers can also use Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA on Azure virtual machines, using Red Hat Cloud Access to import an image.

Announced in June 2014 as the foundation of an enhanced collaboration between Red Hat and SAP, Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA offers an open, scalable, integrated and highly available platform featuring the industry-leading reliability, quality, and stability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA helps organizations make smarter, faster decisions; accelerate business processes; and enable consistency of operations across the business through standardization on the Red Hat platform, which powers mission-critical systems in more than 90 percent of the global Fortune 500.

• On-demand availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux in a pay-as-you-go model on Azure Government - As U.S. federal government agencies work to meet the government’s “Cloud First” mandate, the government’s adoption of the cloud has grown. Microsoft reports that its Microsoft Cloud for Government, which includes Azure Government, now has approximately 5.2 million users. As government customers move to the cloud, we have heard from many who want a fully supported version of Linux together with the agility that Azure Government offers them.

With today’s news, federal, state and local, and education customers can use Red Hat Enterprise Linux on-demand in the Azure Marketplace for government customers, extending the reach of the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform in the cloud. As a result, government customers can use Azure Government’s secure region for their cloud workloads, but with the security features they depend on from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux images are certified by Red Hat and have undergone extensive testing and verification as part of our Certified Cloud and Service Provider program, of which Microsoft is a premier member. This means that customers can receive the security features and reliability that they expect from Red Hat’s flagship Linux platform delivered with the scale and flexibility of the Azure Government public cloud. For our integrated software vendor (ISV) partners, they can now build and deploy Red Hat Enterprise Linux-certified applications for Azure Government, enabling more robust choice for their customers, backed by an enterprise-grade, supported open source platform.

• Availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Azure Germany - On Sept. 21, Microsoft launched Microsoft Cloud Germany. Microsoft Cloud Germany offers a separate instance of Microsoft Azure delivered from German datacenters via a German data trustee to maintain data sovereignty, and comply with the country’s laws and regulations, and various international standards.

Today, Red Hat Cloud Access is available for Azure Germany, bringing the benefits of our hybrid cloud collaboration to German customers and partners. With Red Hat Cloud Access, customers can easily move subscriptions from their datacenter to a Red Hat Certified Public Cloud and Service Provider, in this case, Microsoft and Azure Germany. Customers can keep the benefits of their Red Hat subscriptions and their direct relationships with Red Hat, including access to product experts and our award-winning Red Hat Global Support Services team. Red Hat solutions available for Azure Germany via Red Hat Cloud Access include Red Hat Enterprise Linux (including Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP applications and Red Hat Enterprise Linux for SAP HANA), Red Hat JBoss Middleware, Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, and Red Hat Gluster Storage.

• Availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux Developer Edition on Azure Stack Technology Preview 2 - As Microsoft announced today, they are making Azure Stack available through a new technology preview, which enables customers to use Azure in their datacenter or in a managed service provider’s environment. Red Hat customers can now use their developer products on Azure Stack for testing. Full production support is expected to be announced at a later date.

This week, we’re at Microsoft Ignite, where we’ll be talking about these announcements and the hybrid cloud momentum we’ve experienced over the course of the last 10+ months working with Microsoft. Come by to see us at booth #539 if you are at the conference.