Azure Pack Brings Azure On-Premises and to Hosters

Windows Azure Pack, free to Windows Server and System Center customers, allows organizations and service providers to host Windows Azure services in their own data centers. These services provide similar functionality and compatibility with Microsoft-hosted Windows Azure services, such as virtual machines (VMs) and Web site hosting. Azure Pack can help organizations build self-service private clouds that offer Azure services and simplify the deployment of hybrid systems that use on-premises and Microsoft-hosted Azure services. Service providers could use Azure Pack to deliver Azure services with customizations or in regions not served by Microsoft. However, Azure Pack currently only delivers a subset of Azure’s capabilities.

Azure Capabilities Without Azure

The Microsoft-hosted Windows Azure application and data storage platform has been commercially available for about four years. Azure capabilities have been frequently expanded and now include both Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) components such as VM hosting, where the customer takes responsibility for managing a system’s OS, and Platform as a Service (PaaS) components, such as a Web site hosting service, where Microsoft manages the underlying OS.