(Pictured above: Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Dell Technologies’ Michael Dell and VMware’s Pat Gelsinger take the stage at Dell Technologies World, April 29.)

DELL TECHNOLOGIES WORLD — Expanding their long-term partnership, Dell Technologies and Microsoft on Monday announced collaboration that will deliver a fully native, supported and certified VMware cloud infrastructure on Microsoft Azure.

Additionally, the two companies announced that Microsoft 365 and VMware Workspace ONE customers will be able to manage Office 365 across devices via cloud-based integration with Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory. VMware will also extend the capabilities of Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop leveraging VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure.

Satya Nadella, CEO at Microsoft, Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, and Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, made the announcement at Monday’s keynote at Dell Technologies World, being held in Las Vegas April 29 – May 2. More than 15,000 customer and partners are in attendance.

“I’m thrilled to announce the availability of Azure VMware solutions that brings all of the VMware capability natively to Azure and Azure customers, so that every customer has the infrastructure — the best of VMware and the best of Azure,” Nadella told the keynote attendees.

Nadella talked about how across every industry and every workload, digital technology is central to innovation. He pointed to great infrastructure as the fuel. “And, the flexibility at which people can get at the infrastructure – the compute, networking capabilities and storage that’s needed in order to drive their businesses forward,” he said.

“Customers want this hybrid solution, the ability to truly say, something is here and something is there and have the ability to connect them all together. It truly is a hybrid, multicloud world,” said Gelsinger. 

Azure VMware Solutions are built on VMware Cloud Foundation — a comprehensive offering of software defined compute, storage, networking and management — deployed in Azure.  With these solutions, customers can capitalize on VMware’s broadly deployed and trusted cloud infrastructure while experiencing the power of Microsoft Azure.

Azure VMware Solutions give customers the power to seamlessly migrate, extend and run existing VMware workloads from on-premises environments to Azure without the need to rearchitect applications or retool operations.  Customers will be able to build, run, manage and secure new and existing applications across VMware environments and Microsoft Azure while extending a single model for operations based on established tools, skills and processes as part of a hybrid cloud strategy.

Some examples of how Azure VMware Solutions will be applicable to businesses: to support app migration and data center expansion, disaster recovery and business continuity and modern application development.

Azure VMware Solutions enable organizations to tap into Azure’s scale, security and fast provisioning cycles to innovate and modernize applications while also improving performance. By integrating with native Azure services, customers can easily infuse advanced capabilities like…

…AI, machine learning and IoT into their applications enabling new, intelligent experiences.

Azure VMware Solutions are first-party services from Microsoft developed in collaboration with VMware Cloud Verified partners CloudSimple and Virtustream.

Calling Microsoft 365 the essential tools for communication, collaboration, security and compliance, Nadella noted that being able to partner on Microsoft Office 365 more broadly on VMware and Dell, “We can take what we’ve done historically to the next frontier.”

With this agreement, mutual Microsoft 365 and VMware Workspace ONE customers will be able to maximize their digital workspace across device platforms while augmenting existing and future investments. Specifically, customers will be able to use Workspace ONE to manage and secure the productivity features of Office 365 across devices via cloud-based integration with Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory.

Through the new Dell Technologies Unified Workspace offerings, customers can further accelerate their Windows 10 digital transformation journey by leveraging the integration of Microsoft Windows Autopilot and Dell Device Provisioning and Deployment Services, like Dell ProDeploy — all enabled by the integration of Microsoft 365, Workspace ONE and Dell Provisioning Services.

In addition, Microsoft recently announced Windows Virtual Desktop, the only service that delivers a multi-session Windows 10 experience, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps. As a part of this agreement, VMware will extend the capabilities of Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop to enable customers to further accelerate their cloud initiatives, leveraging VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. Initial capabilities are expected to be available as a tech preview by the end of calendar year 2019.

This is just the beginning of Microsoft and VMware integration. The vendors said that they’re exploring other initiatives such as integration of VMware NSX with Azure Networking and integration of specific Azure services with VMware management solutions. Additionally, the two companies are exploring bringing specific Azure services to the VMware on-premises customers. These integration initiatives are designed to provide business customers with a more seamless experience across VMware and Azure environments.