IBM and Microsoft to Offer Greater Choice in the Hybrid Cloud

Cloud leaders collaborate to help clients and developers move to the cloud faster and seize new business opportunities

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Oct 22, 2014, 09:00 ET

ARMONK, N.Y. and REDMOND, Wash., Oct. 22, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft announced today that they are working together to provide their respective enterprise software on Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud. As adoption of hybrid cloud computing accelerates, this relationship will give clients, partners and developers more choice in the cloud, helping them drive new business opportunities, spur innovation and reduce costs.

Specifically, the newly announced relationship provides the following client benefits:

IBM and Microsoft will make key IBM middleware such as WebSphere Liberty, MQ, and DB2 available on Microsoft Azure.
Windows Server and SQL Server will be offered on IBM Cloud.
IBM and Microsoft are working together to deliver a Microsoft .NET runtime for IBM's Bluemix cloud development platform.
To support hybrid cloud deployments, IBM will expand support of its software running on Windows Server Hyper-V, and the companies plan to make IBM Pure Application Service available on Azure.

"Together we are creating new opportunities to drive innovation in hybrid cloud," said Robert LeBlanc, Senior Vice President, Software and Cloud Solutions Group, IBM. "This agreement reinforces IBM's strategy in providing open cloud technology for the enterprise. Clients will now gain unprecedented access to IBM's leading middleware and will have an even greater level of choice over the tools that they use to build and deploy their cloud environments."

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

IBM and Microsoft will make key products within IBM's enterprise-proven middleware software portfolio, including WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere MQ and DB2 database software, available in the Microsoft Azure Virtual Machines service for development and production deployment.

Microsoft and IBM are working together to provide .NET runtimes, along with relevant tooling, in IBM Bluemix, IBM's open cloud platform-as-a-service. This could open the door for millions of .NET developers to build applications at scale for clients on IBM's cloud platform. The companies will begin with a limited preview offering of .NET operating within Bluemix.

The companies will enable customers to bring their own software licenses to the IBM and Microsoft clouds, helping customers avoid extra cost. Microsoft will also offer IBM middleware software licenses, such as WebSphere Liberty, MQ and DB2, to Azure customers with pay-per-use pricing.

The companies also plan to make IBM Pure Application Service available on both Microsoft Azure and IBM SoftLayer for automated deployment, configuration and license management in a hybrid cloud environment.

IBM SoftLayer currently provides and supports a wide range of Microsoft software, including Windows Server, Hyper-V, WebMatrix, Windows Firewall, SQL Server and others.

About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT") is the worldwide leader in software, services, devices and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

About IBM Cloud Computing
IBM is a global leader in cloud with a broad portfolio of open cloud solutions to enable clients for the hybrid cloud era with integration, control over data and expertise. Since the $2 billion acquisition of SoftLayer, IBM has continued to make significant investments in building out a comprehensive cloud portfolio including $1.2 billion to expand its global footprint to 40 data centers and $1 billion investment to establish Bluemix, a cloud platform-as-a-service on Cloud Foundry, to help millions of developers. IBM Cloud has helped more than 30,000 clients around the world. Today, IBM has 100+ cloud SaaS solutions, thousands of experts with deep industry knowledge helping clients transform and a growing global network of data centers. Since 2007, IBM has invested more than $7 billion in 17 acquisitions to accelerate its cloud initiatives. IBM holds 1,560 cloud patents focused on driving innovation. In fact, IBM for the 21st consecutive year topped the annual list of US patent leaders. IBM processes more the 5.5M client transactions daily through IBM's public cloud. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud. Follow us on Twitter at @IBMcloud and on our blog at www.thoughtsoncloud.com. Join the conversation #ibmcloud.

For more information, press only:
Rapid Response Team, Waggener Edstrom Communications for Microsoft, (503) 443-7070, [email protected]

Media Contact:

Mike Azzi
IBM Communications
914-766-1561
[email protected]

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SOURCE IBM