Report: Microsoft and VMware are working on software to ease porting apps built on VMware's virtualization tech to Azure as part of a broader partnership
Tom Krazit / GeekWire :
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has spent years courting VMware's installed base rather than trying to displace it: the companies first partnered on desktop virtualization and Windows 10 rollout under Project A2 in 2015, and by this report they are reportedly building dedicated porting software to move apps built on VMware's virtualization stack onto Azure as part of a broader partnership.
The strategic backdrop is VMware's existing cloud alliance with Amazon — the 2016 deal bringing VMware infrastructure software to AWS, later extended to European customers — which gave AWS a privileged path to VMware-centric enterprises. A Microsoft-VMware porting toolset is the countermove, and the follow-on [[a:941158|Microsoft-Dell partnership letting Azure customers run VMware software to manage their IT operations]] shows the alliance hardening into product within months.
First-order effects
- Enterprises with large VMware estates gain an officially supported migration path from their virtualization stack to Azure, lowering the cost and risk of moving those workloads off private data centers.
Second-order effects
- AWS loses the exclusivity of being the only major public cloud with a native VMware offering, forcing it to defend its VMware Cloud franchise while Microsoft pairs Azure with Dell hardware and VMware management software.
Third-order effects
- If hypervisor compatibility becomes table stakes across clouds, competition shifts from whose virtualization technology wins to whose migration tooling and management layer wins — with VMware able to monetize its base on multiple clouds rather than anchor customers to any one.
The trend: Cloud providers are competing for the VMware installed base through coexistence partnerships and porting tools rather than rip-and-replace technology.