Dell sees blue skies for Windows Azure appliance

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 14 July 2010 15:07

Business IT - Technology

Dell has announced plans to develop a Windows Azure appliance for enterprise-scale customers.

As part of a strategic partnership with Microsoft, Dell will develop a Windows Azure appliance aimed at large enterprise, public and hosting customers that wish to deploy Azure in their own data centres. No timeframe was revealed.

The company's services arm is set to use Microsoft's initial release of Azure appliances to host public and private clouds for its customers.

Dell has been working with Microsoft to build out and power Windows Azure platform since its launch, company officials said, and this experience will be used to ensure that the Dell-powered Windows Azure appliance is optimised for power and space to save ongoing operating costs, as well as the performance of high-scale cloud services.

"With the Microsoft partnership and the Windows Azure platform appliance, Dell is expanding its cloud services capabilities to help customers reduce their total costs and increase their ability to succeed," said Peter Altabef, president, Dell Services.

"The addition of the Dell-powered Windows Azure platform appliance marks an important expansion of Dell's leadership as a top provider of cloud computing infrastructure," he added.

Bob Muglia, president, of Microsoft's server and tools operation said "Microsoft and Dell have been building, implementing and operating massive cloud operations for years. Now we are extending our longstanding partnership to help usher in the new era of cloud computing, by giving customers and partners the ability to deploy Windows Azure platform in their data centres."