Microsoft’s Windows Server 2016 is now generally available and rolling out to customers. Presales for Server 2016 started on October 1, and Microsoft has always said customers will get access to the actual bits in mid-October. Now that it’s mid-October and the leaves are falling, the company is delivering on its promise.
Additionally, System Center 2016, Microsoft’s data center management solution for deploying and managing servers and workstations, is now also available to everyone.
Microsoft is using today’s launch to highlight its hybrid cloud efforts and how Windows Server 2016 enables enterprises to run their applications both in their own data centers and in public clouds (including, of course, its own Azure cloud computing platform).
Microsoft Senior Director of Product Marketing Mark Jewett also highlighted Server 2016’s role in Microsoft’s hybrid strategy when I spoke to him about this release. “Hybrid cloud isn’t just about being connected, it’s about being consistent,” he explained. The company views Windows Server 2016 as a single product in its overall hybrid strategy, which also includes Office 365 and its desktop productivity apps, Dynamics 365 and its desktop counterpart, and SQL Server and the SQL database service. ‘Azure.
With Azure Stack, Microsoft will soon offer a solution for companies that want to run core Azure services (compute, storage, networking) in their own data centers. Jewett tells me that the company is already seeing strong interest in Azure Stack, even though it’s only in its technical preview phase at the moment.
Jewett also highlighted how Microsoft’s product portfolio can enable consistent management of identities, security procedures, and DevOps processes in these hybrid scenarios.
It should be noted that Windows Server 2016 will also feature built-in container support and come with commercial support for the Docker engine.
AWS, Microsoft’s biggest competitor in the public cloud space, currently doesn’t have much of a hybrid strategy, but Amazon’s cloud service is expected to announce a deal tomorrow with VMware that will allow VMware customers to raise and move their virtual machines more easily. in Amazon’s public cloud. Given that tomorrow’s AWS announcement is a bit of an open secret, it’s probably no surprise that Microsoft is trying to get ahead of Amazon’s announcement tomorrow by focusing on Windows Server 2016’s ability to enable these new hybrid cloud scenarios.
Comments are closed.