On-Premises Azure

Software packages that provide infrastructure similar to or equivalent to Microsoft-hosted Azure (public Azure) have been offered by the company, allowing organizations and third-party hosting providers to deploy and manage their own multitenant private clouds. Microsoft has released several offerings to deliver Azure infrastructure code to customers, including a limited-customer very-large-scale appliance program (no longer offered) that provided customers with software and hardware to run Azure. More recently, Azure Pack has delivered some Azure functionality for on-premises deployment, but the upcoming Azure Stack promises to duplicate Microsoft-hosted Azure in more respects than any previous offering. (For release date information, see the illustration “On-Premises Azure Dates“.)

Azure Pack

Windows Azure Pack, free to Windows Server and System Center customers, allows organizations and service providers to host Azure services in their own data centers. These services provide similar functionality and compatibility with public 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 public Azure services. Service providers could use Azure Pack to deliver Azure services with customizations or in regions not served by Microsoft. However, Azure Pack only delivers a subset of Azure’s capabilities, and Azure Stack, a newer offering of on-premises Azure software, will likely supplant future Microsoft investments in improving Azure Pack.