Applications and data are at the heart of how organizations drive competitive value and improve efficiency. However, this digital transformation is resulting in an explosion of data. Enterprises have to figure out how to get a handle on this data – how to increase their storage capacity and keep their data safe and secure, without drastically increasing IT costs.MyPOV – Good point and in line with what we have been seeing and then saying for a while. All seven of the next generation application use cases that we track across the industries involved an explosion in data, resulting in challenges to both the database and storage tier.
Microsoft believes a hybrid cloud approach can offer unique ways to manage this data proliferation. We believe you should be able to take advantage of the best of the public cloud and the best of your on-premises technology. Hybrid solutions should enable mission critical, recent, or latency-sensitive data to remain on-premises, while backups and archival data can seamlessly move to low cost and nearly-limitless cloud storage. Applications and tools can access the data transparently, no matter where it is - so that it’s always available to you. And you can do it all without investing in new infrastructure, saving you time and money to focus on driving innovation.MyPOV – Good description of the strategy. It offers enterprises an outlet to not expand infrastructure on premises, but, instead, to skip the investment cycles while satisfying the additional demand and load by moving it to the cloud, here Azure. This may be a win-win for customers and vendors; customers cannot necessarily afford to re-architect for cloud but may want to take advantage of new use cases that need to be automated. For vendors like Microsoft, this creates a way to grow cloud revenues substantially.
MyPOV – Microsoft is executing a two-pronged approach. It brings its Azure technology stack to on premises with the Azure stack, and it allows customers to keep older Microsoft products operating on premises while extending them to the cloud. We see the latter here for SQL Server 2016 and StorSimple.
Microsoft is investing in building hybrid capabilities across our product portfolio to help you take advantage of all that hybrid has to offer, simply and cost effectively. Today, we are extending that commitment with new offerings in SQL Server 2016 and StorSimple that make it even easier for you to leverage a hybrid cloud model to put you in control of how you store and protect your applications and data.
Leverage the infinite capacity of Azure with SQL Server Database updates
This week we are introducing the SQL Server 2016 Release Candidate with new hybrid enhancements available in preview. These capabilities make it easier than ever for you to choose whether you store your data on-premises or in the cloud. These new features integrate hybrid capabilities into the market-leading Microsoft data platform product you use today, empowering you to leverage the cloud to extend capacity for your massive data growth, while ensuring your data is protected.MyPOV – We have given Microsoft a hard time around SQL Server scalability for a long time (looks like the longest time), but now there is a clear path to extend capacity…
SQL Server 2016 with SQL Server Stretch Database service, a new Azure companion service, enables you to dynamically stretch your on-premises warm and cold data to Azure for virtually endless compute capacity and storage. Now you can keep as much data as you need in the cloud, up to 60 terabytes per database in preview, without the high costs of traditional enterprise storage. The Stretch Database service makes remote query processing possible by providing compute and storage in a way that’s completely transparent to the application. SQL Server Stretch Database also works with Always Encrypted technology, which encrypts data before sending to Azure and the encryption key remains on-premises to give you added piece of mind that your data is protected no matter where it’s stored. SQL Server 2016 with the new Stretch Database service enable you to keep more data accessible for deep insights at significantly lower cost.MyPOV – We learn a new ‘Azure companion service,’ SQL Server Stretch Database, is the enabler on the Azure side. Enterprises will be happy to learn that they can move data to the cloud based on application scenarios and data temperature. It’s very good to see the support of an external (on-premises) local key, addressing the security/privacy challenge in the post- Snowden/ NSA/PRISM age.
Another new hybrid capability available in SQL Server 2016 is support for Transactional Replication toAzure SQL Database which expands on the existing option for replicating data to SQL Server in an Azure virtual machine (VM). With this feature you can now replicate data directly to Azure SQL Database and benefit from a fully managed database. This extends the options you have to back up your data to the cloud to ensure it’s protected in worst-case scenarios. You can also migrate data from SQL Server on-premises to Azure SQL Database – providing a simple mechanism to move data to the cloud without downtime to an on-premises database.MyPOV – SQL Server (to the days back of Sybase) always had very good replication capabilities; it’s good to see these capabilities now put to work for moving/replicating data from on premises to Azure – there, next generation applications can be built. Being able to go from SQL Sever in an Azure VM to an Azure SQL DB is a major step and way forward out of the (older) SQL Sever code (which we have seen as an issue for many years). Giving customers a scalable cloud-based DB outlet is a major step by Microsoft and a truly good move for customers.
Simplifying hybrid storage with Azure StorSimple Virtual Array
Azure StorSimple is another great example of how Microsoft has increased the hybrid capabilities of its products. Designed to help you increase storage capacity and data availability without investing in new infrastructure, StorSimple offers economical cloud storage or on-premises storage so you can choose where to store your data.MyPOV – Microsoft had a precursor of the Azure stack on the storage side with the (relatively) newer StorSimple offering. Good to see that the on-premises and cloud StorSimple are now coming together.
MyPOV – Wait, now it reads more like Microsoft is bringing capabilities of StorSimple from Azure to on premises via virtual machines. That makes management easier for customers who have a number of VMs to manage already. Supporting not only Hyper-V but also VMware ESXi gives customers familiar choices. So a small component of the Azure cloud stack (though Microsoft does not stake it explicitly, so I am speculating a bit here) is coming to on premises.
Today we are extending the StorSimple offering with StorSimple Virtual Array, a version of StorSimple offered in a virtual machine form, now generally available. The VM enables additional scenarios, in particular environments with minimal IT infrastructure and management, for customers to take advantage of StorSimple. The virtual array is built on the success of existing StorSimple technology, which uses a hybrid cloud storage approach for on-demand capacity scaling in the cloud and cloud-based data protection and disaster recovery. The hybrid approach centers around your choice to store the most used data on the virtual array and optionally tier older data to Azure. The virtual array can be run as a virtual machine on your Hyper-V or VMware ESXi hypervisors and can be configured as a File Server (NAS) or as an iSCSI server. It also provides the ability to back up your data to Azure.
Both SQL Server 2016 and StorSimple enhancements are available for you to try out today. We hope that you’ll test drive these exciting new offerings and let us know what you think.
MyPOV – Sand boxes, pilots, test drives – always a good way to get customers on board and learn about scale.
Overall MyPOV
We are seeing an overall industry-wide move by the established IT giants to hybrid. Last week, it was IBM partnering with VMware (see here); this week Cisco acquired CliqR (see here); and Oracle offers to move mainframe storage out of the mainframe and/or to the cloud (see here). As mentioned above, Microsoft announced the Azure stack for on premises (see here), and now important storage and database offerings are ‘stretched’ (pun intended) to the cloud.It’s a win-win for vendors and customers as customers can avoid discretional investment on premises. Move the investment to building new (cloud based), next generation applications, and vendors can also repurpose R&D investment and grow cloud revenue.
Closer to Microsoft’s announcement, customers need to look at the potential license and operational implications. We are sure Microsoft will get the pricing right, but the operational cost of ‘bursting’ or replicating to the cloud can be expensive, starting on the networking side.
But overall a good move by Microsoft. We will be watching for adoption and further developments – stay tuned.
More about Microsoft:
- News Analysis - Welcoming the Xamarin team to Microsoft - read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft announcements at Convergence Barcelona - Office365. Dynamics CRM and Power Apps
- News Analysis - Microsoft expands Azure Data Lake to unleash big data productivity - Good move - time to catch up - read here
- News Analysis - Microsoft and Salesforce Strengthen Strategic Partnership at Dreamforce 2015 - Good for joint customers - read here
- News Analyis - NetSuite announced Cloud Alliance with Microsoft - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Build - Microsoft really wants to make developers' lives easier - read here
- First Hand with Microsoft Hololens - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft TechEd - Top 3 Enterprise takeaways - read here
- First Take - Microsoft discovers data ambience and delivers an organic approach to in memory database - read here
- Event Report - Microsoft Build - Azure grows and blossoms - enough for enterprises (yet)? Read here.
- Event Report - Microsoft Build Day 1 Keynote - Top Enterprise Takeaways - read here.
- Microsoft gets even more serious about devices - acquire Nokia - read here.
- Microsoft does not need one new CEO - but six - read here.
- Microsoft makes the cloud a platform play - Or: Azure and her 7 friends - read here.
- How the Cloud can make the unlikeliest bedfellows - read here.
- How hard is multi-channel CRM in 2013? - Read here.
- How hard is it to install Office 365? Or: The harsh reality of customer support - read here.
Find more coverage on the Constellation Research website here and checkout my magazine on Flipboard and my YouTube channel here.