In November 2015, Red Hat and Microsoft made history in bringing the world’s leading enterprise Linux platform, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, to Azure, Microsoft’s powerful global cloud. Not only did this make Red Hat Enterprise Linux available to a host of organizations using Azure, but it also allowed for the delivery of Red Hat’s extensive portfolio of open technologies to be available on Microsoft Azure, including the industry’s most comprehensive enterprise Kubernetes platform, Red Hat OpenShift.

Today, we’re pleased to announce that this partnership has been extended through at least 2024, bringing confidence to our mutual customers that the benefits of Red Hat solutions on Azure will continue for many more years. Additionally, this extension enables Red Hat and Microsoft to continue our work in bringing services, third-party collaborations and co-developed products such as Red Hat OpenShift on Azure to our mutual customers, including Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, Vorwerk and Lufthansa Technik.

What does this extension mean for organizations already using Red Hat products on Microsoft Azure? It means that your production workloads, development environments and proofs-of-concept can continue uninterrupted, supported by both Red Hat and Microsoft expertise for the foreseeable future.

For customers considering public or hybrid cloud computing deployments that incorporate Red Hat and Microsoft, you stand to gain:

• The native availability of Red Hat solutions on Microsoft Azure

• Integrated enterprise-grade support spanning hybrid environments, from the datacenter to Azure

• Continued alignment on additional hybrid platforms such as Azure Stack

• Closer integration between the Red Hat and Microsoft technologies and ecosystems including Developer Toolchains, Databases, and Container Platforms

Beyond our collaboration in the hybrid cloud, Red Hat and Microsoft have also been working together extensively in open source communities, notably in bringing flagship Microsoft technologies like SQL Server and .NET to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Red Hat OpenShift. This work will continue as part of this extended partnership, as we both seek to drive additional innovations for the greater Linux community.

In the nearly four years since our landmark announcement, Red Hat and Microsoft have seen immense value delivered to our customers, from co-support of hybrid cloud deployments to waves of upstream innovation for expanded Linux capabilities. We’re pleased to continue this great work in the years ahead and look forward to helping enterprises harness the power of open enterprise technologies across the hybrid cloud.

Paul Cormier is president, Products and Technologies at Red Hat.