HPE’s Cloud Alliance With Microsoft Azure Speaks Volumes About Future Direction

This week, newly off-the-ground Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) revealed that it will partner with Microsoft to dish out Azure cloud services to its customers.

The move follows the HP’s decision earlier this year to kill off its Helion public cloud service come January 31 2016 – effectively because it just wasn’t in any way successful.

Preferred

During HP’s quarterly earnings call with investors, CEO Meg Whitman said Azure will be HPE’s “preferred” public cloud provider. We’ll know more details when HPE’s Discover conference rolls into London next week.

Why Whitman decided Azure would be the best fit, rather than say Amazon Web Services, is obvious.

“Microsoft shares our view of a hybrid IT approach for enterprises,” Whitman said.

Unlike IBM with its own cloud offering, HPE will flog appliances ready to go with Azure.

“Microsoft Azure will become a preferred public cloud partner. HPE will serve as a preferred provider of Microsoft infrastructure and services for its hybrid cloud offerings. Overall, the move to a hybrid cloud environment presents a significant growth opportunity for us and you can expect to hear more about our approach in the coming months,” she said.

HPE sees hybrid cloud as its future bread and butter, and by no longer having to compete with Azure, the joining of forces will likely pay off. The move is also a blow to AWS.

HPE has a number of strong, juicy customers who will now almost certainly be ready to use Azure. Whilst Azure’s revenue and presence comes nowhere close to AWS’, the two rather attractive names of Microsoft And HPE will likely woo enterprise customers who are still looking to find their feet in the public and hybrid cloud shift.

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