>> Well, greetings and thank you for joining us today.
I'm Jeff Woolsey, and I'm
a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft.
It's a pleasure to be here to talk about
a brief overview of the Azure Stack portfolio.
So as many customers have told us,
digital transformation is top of mind to companies,
really, of companies of all sizes.
To enable digital transformation,
organizations are modernizing datacenters.
They're building new applications in
the Cloud through deploying smart IoT devices,
and really as a result,
IT environments are continuously
evolving with different requirements,
with different types of applications often running on
different types of hardware across distributed locations,
including on-premises in the Cloud,
multi-Cloud at the Edge, you name it.
When we talk about these challenges, well,
IT departments really face
lots of different types of key challenges.
For example, how to seamlessly govern and
secure IT resources regardless of where they're running?
How do you bring Cloud innovation to existing infrastructure?
How do you modernize your local datacenter with
new Cloud infrastructure and bring the best
of both worlds to bear?
How do you extend your compute and
your AI to the Edge to unlock new business value?
Well, at Microsoft, we've long
understood this reality our customers are facing.
We are trying to basically build
this portfolio that allows you to do all
of these things and bring all of these together.
In fact, Microsoft Azure has been designed from
the beginning to help customers meet these types of challenges.
It comes down to the fact that customers have
told us literally for many,
many years that they want customers want hybrid.
Let's talk about what some of
those top reasons are for choosing hybrid.
Number 1, they want to be able to operate in
remote locations with intermittent connectivity.
I need to be able to run an applications anywhere.
Sometimes it's on a ship in the middle of the ocean.
Sometimes I need to actually be physically disconnected.
Sometimes people tell us they
need hybrid because they need to meet
specific regulatory and policy requirements around
data sovereignty and governance, totally understand.
At the same time, they also want to speed up
their time to results by processing data close to the source.
So can we do these physically by bringing these closer
together and by taking advantage again of the best of both worlds,
on-premise as in Cloud and bringing these together?
Can I also maintain that tight integration?
It's not only the application,
but it's identity, it's security,
it's governance, it's policy.
It's about really having a true end-to-end comprehensive view
of Cloud.
Really, this bears in what
we have found in terms of customers and their responses.
Sixty nine percent of enterprises have a hybrid Cloud strategy,
84 percent of organizations have a multi-Cloud strategy,
and 75 percent of enterprise-generated data
will be created and processed outside a traditional datacenters.
So again, we understand that hybrid is key,
it's critical, and it's part of the Microsoft portfolio.
In fact, the Azure Stack portfolio includes three offerings that
extend Azure services and capabilities across datacenters,
remote offices, Cloud, Edge locations, you name it.
The Azure Stack family offers three different solutions.
First of all, you have Azure Stack HCI.
This is optimized for running virtualized applications
on-premises and provides easy access to hybrid services.
Then of course, we have Azure Stack Edge.
This is an Azure-managed appliance that brings compute,
storage, and intelligence to the Edge.
Then finally, we have Azure Stack Hub.
Now this is truly an integrated system that provides
a rich set of Azure services on-premises.
Since its launch over two years ago,
Azure Stack Hub is available in more than 60 countries.
It's a proven technology,
and we're providing true Azure Cloud resources
on-prem in both connected and disconnected environments,
which is critical to many customers.
So let's start with
Azure Stack HCI and when to use Azure Stack HCI.
There's actually a lot of different use cases for Azure Stack HCI.
For example, branch office and Edge.
Very often, customers tell us, "Look,
I've got a centralized datacenter,
but I also have lots of retail locations."
Maybe I have dozens or even hundreds or
even thousands of these. Guess what?
In each one of these locations,
my network connectivity can vary wildly,
and I also want to make sure that I have
a great solution that allows me to
support my customers in remote environments.
Azure Stack HCI is great for that.
In fact, we can scale all the way down to two nodes,
still give you high availability and run your applications,
but even down to two nodes for those remote locations.
Of course, if you want to run scale up
mission-critical workloads like high-performance SQL Server,
there is no better solution than Azure Stack HCI,
which delivers the highest performance,
the lowest possible latency,
and is the best solution for
running your high performance SQL Server.
Of course, if you want to run
scale-out storage, we've got you covered,
and if you want to run trusted your traditional virtualization,
absolutely you can do that.
Because it's running traditional virtualization, guess what?
We can run any Windows or Linux VM.
So anything you have out there running Windows Server 2012,
2016, even 2008 R2,
if you're running Windows desktops like Windows 10,
or if you're running Linux,
for example, CentOS, Red Hat,
Debian, Ubuntu, you name it,
we've got your covered.
So whenever you need to run in terms of a traditional VM,
we've got your covered with Azure Stack HCI.
Then of course, we can extend it to
enable these new hybrid scenarios.
For example, if you want to extend your on-premises into Azure,
you can do that through business continuity and disaster recovery,
through Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery.
You can also do this by extending
your on-premises capacity for storage,
for networking compute with Azure File Sync,
with the ability to create Azure VMs right from on-premises,
the ability to actually extend
your on-premises network right into Azure,
so that it literally looks like an extension of your datacenter.
You can also use hybrid as a way to
also centrally managed from Azure.
So a lot of people have told us as they adopt
more Azure services and they get more used to managing in Azure,
they realize, wait a minute,
wouldn't it be great if I could use
this Azure Security Center that I'm
already using to manage my applications in the Cloud,
to be able to manage my applications running on-premises as well?
Well, that's exactly what we've enabled.
With Azure Security Center,
you can actually protect your applications running
on-premises and those running in the Cloud.
So you have one way to manage all of that.
You can also do that with Azure Monitor,
Azure Update Management, and our recently announced Azure Arc.
Azure Arc provides a consistent way to manage
and provide governance and policy
for your Linux and Windows servers,
for your Kubernetes running on-premises,
as well as your data services.
So you can see Microsoft has really thought about
this truly from an end-to-end perspective.
It's not just one scenario.
It's a rich set of scenarios that you
can choose and determine which one is right for you,
or in many cases, which ones are right for you.
Many times, customers are actually adopting
many of these different types of hybrid scenarios.
If you want to know more about the Azure Stack HCI solutions,
just go to the Azure Stack HCI catalog at aka.ms/azurestackhci.
We'll see a rich online catalog,
and you can choose from what type of
solution will fit your organization's needs.
Next, we have Azure Stack Edge.
Azure Stack Edge is an Azure-managed appliance.
So this is something that's actually
managed directly from the Cloud.
This brings compute, storage,
and intelligence to the Edge.
It's an AI edge computing device
with network data transfer capabilities.
Azure Stack Edge is also Hardware as a Service.
So Microsoft actually shifts you a Cloud-managed device.
It has built-in FPGA,
or Field Programmable Gate
Arrays for those people that want to know what that stands for.
That enables accelerated AI inferencing and
has all the capabilities of a network storage array.
So very powerful Azure-managed appliance.
Now, what's really cool about this is
many Azure services offer containerized Edge versions.
So you can actually take advantage of
these running on Azure Stack Edge.
You can see here we've got lots of rich services
including Azure Cognitive Services,
Azure Machine Learning, Stream Analytics,
Azure Functions, SQL Database Edge,
Event Grid, and more.
If this is not enough, guess what?
You can also write your own or deploy
your own third-party software in a Linux Container.
So we've totally got to covered here for
running those containerized Edge solutions as well.
Then from a Cloud management standpoint,
with Azure Stack Edge,
you just order from the Azure portal and
pay as you go on a standard Azure bill,
just like any other Azure service.
Again, this is Hardware as a Service.
So there's no minimum period and there's no hardware to purchase.
So with Azure Stack Edge,
you control the device configuration,
you control access, and even what
workloads are running on the device from the Cloud.
So if you need to update
your device with new appliance OS version,
new containerized applications, no problem,
that's just a Push button in the Azure portal.
Finally, Azure Stack Edge is a resource in Azure
that plugs into the standard Azure management tools and APIs.
So Cloud deployments done through standard Azure tools for
deployment workloads are now
happening at the Edge with Azure Stack Edge.
Finally, we get to Azure Stack Hub.
Azure Stack Hub, as I mentioned earlier,
this is a complete Cloud-integrated solution.
First of all, this is completely autonomous.
So if you want to run this connected or
completely disconnected, you can.
Trust me, this is something we've run into
many customers that go, "Wow, you're talking.
I'm getting Azure capabilities,
but in a completely disconnected environments."
We've talked to folks at run cruise ships or in
very remote locations where networking on
a satellite feed is practically nonexistent.
The other beautiful thing is you can
get consistent application deployment.
So as your developers are writing
new apps and deploying them to Azure,
they can also target Azure Stack Hub, and guess what?
You have common application model tools,
APIs with Azure because it's all consistent.
So it's great for connected or disconnected.
It's great for regulatory and data sovereignty concerns,
as well as for application modernization because you're writing
true Azure ARM applications that are Cloud-native.
What's also great is here's some examples of
some tactical Edge solutions which are key scenarios as well.
So again, if you have limited or restricted
conductivity like submarines, aircrafts,
planes, cruise ships, you name it,
where you need efficient field operations,
where you literally need to throw this in the back of a truck,
if you're dealing with disaster relief or you're dealing
with areas where you're
providing relief and just the most bare of scenarios,
where literally you just got power in a generator, guess what?
You can just throw this in the back of the truck,
head out there, and Azure Stack Hub
is ready for you in those scenarios.
Also IoT applications for deploying,
provisioning, tracking, and managing application.
So there's a lot of different tactical Edge solutions.
In case you're wondering, we have
lots of Azure Stack Hub customers.
This is just sampling just a few of
them that are leveraging the benefits of Azure Stack Hub,
whether because its regulatory issues,
disconnected environments, data sovereignty,
but here are just a few.
So again, when it comes to modernizing with Azure Stack,
again, it's a portfolio.
It's not a single product.
It's not a single solution because we want to provide an
end-to-end portfolio products to fit
what your organization needs when it comes to
Cloud modernization and applications
and providing you the right solution for your organization.
That's the Azure Stack family,
that's the Azure Stack HCI, Edge, and Hub.
With the Azure Stack family,
you can extend Azure services and capabilities into
your environments of your choice from
the datacenter to the Edge and remote offices.
So if you want to learn more about the Azure Stack family,
here are a number of links for the Azure Stack homepage,
for Azure Stack HCI,
Azure Stack Edge Hub.
If you want, I even did a deeper dive on this topic,
the Azure Stack family deep dive,
where I go into these even
further and talk even more specific use cases.
So I really appreciate your time and thank you for joining.