Azure Arc Partners Update
Published May 25 2021 08:00 AM 1,714 Views
Microsoft

Azure Arc enabled Servers and Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes are among the core infrastructure pillars that light up hybrid scenarios for customers. With both being generally available, partners have an opportunity to build solutions that they otherwise would not have been able to.

 

There are 4 distinct solutions areas we see as opportunities for partners to build solutions in:

  • Unified Operations and Management
  • Cloud Native apps with persistent storage
  • Data Modernization
  • Modernize Datacenter

There is a detailed blog post already written that discusses these opportunities in detail linked here.

 

This blog will provide an update on the solutions that partners have seen resonate within customers across segment and also discuss solutions areas where partner capacity is required. We will also discuss the next few major events to keep an eye out for regarding all things Azure and hybrid.

 

Hybrid Governance and Compliance Opportunity:

Let us start by talking about compliance and governance partner solutions. Compliance and governance requirements are areas that most customers have to solve for regardless of where they are in their cloud journey. Even if a customer has migrated most of the workload into Azure and only a small footprint resides on-premises the need to adhere to industry regulatory compliance and security needs remains. The scope of compliance and security requirements is not limited to resources deployed on Azure, but instead they include resources across competitive clouds and on-premises resources.

 

This introduces a need for partner solutions that specifically targets customers' most challenging governance scenarios in Public Sector, Healthcare & FSI – but will benefit all mainstream customers on the governance needs. This is also true across segments from enterprise customers all the way to SMC and even SMB customers. To get started take a look at this blog which discusses hybrid and multi-cloud strategy within the Cloud Adoption Framework.

 

Application Modernization on-premises:

Most customers are familiar with the strategy of moving workloads into the cloud with first lifting and shifting applications and then modernizing that application for the Azure platform. This strategy includes using Azure suite of PaaS application services such as Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure Container Registry, Azure Monitor along with a whole suite of Cloud Native technologies. There is also a great collection of partner solutions to help customers wanting to go on the cloud journey.

 

However, we know 90% of customers have a hybrid strategy for many reasons including regulatory and data sovereignty requirements, latency/technical hurdles and the need to manage legacy systems among others. What happens to the workloads that are left on-premises? How do customers leverage cloud native technologies to help evolve those apps? This is an area where partner solutions are needed and introduces partners with an opportunity to differentiate existing solutions they may have already built around Azure cloud technologies mentioned above.

 

Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes enables you to attach any CNCF-conformant Kubernetes cluster to Azure for management. Once the Kubernetes cluster is onboarded to Azure, a customer can manage applications across clusters from the Azure resource manager API. To get started on take a look at this blog that outlines the Azure Arc enabled Kubernetes technology that is now generally available for partners to build solutions around.

 

Next Up:

Do not miss the following blogs published for Build 2021:

 

The next major events coming up are Azure Hybrid and Multicloud Digital Event and Microsoft's premier partner event Inspire. Look out for both these events as there will be great partner content and announcements coming.

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‎May 24 2021 02:32 PM
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