Find and Share Open Source Images for Windows Azure with VM Depot

Posted by Kerry Godes
Senior Manager of Worldwide Marketing and Operations

Yesterday’s preview release of VM Depot for Windows Azure marked an exciting milestone for the openness of Microsoft’s cloud platform, giving customers another way to transition to the cloud on their terms.

VM Depot is a community-driven catalog of open source virtual machine images for Windows Azure, including preconfigured operating systems, applications, and development stacks. Find your favorite open source software and deploy it in minutes, or join the community, build a virtual machine image, and share it with others.

We’re fortunate to have a thriving ecosystem of partners supporting this preview release. A big thank you goes to the partners who have contributed images and packages, including Alt Linux, Bas ho, Bitnami and Hupstream.

“The launch of VM Depot demonstrates that Microsoft is serious about building out its cloud computing platform,” said Erica Brescia, CEO of BitRock, developers of Bitnami. “We are thrilled to be a part of this new marketplace, which simplifies deployment of the top open source applications to the enterprise-ready Windows Azure platform, taking Windows Azure to a whole new level.”

The preview launch of VM Depot is just the beginning. It is free to join and we’re looking forward to your input on how we can continue to build and improve the community experience. Take advantage of the “rate and comment” tools for sharing your feedback on VM Depot virtual machine images with us and the broader community.

For more about this news, please see the Port 25 blog and learn why Gianugo Rabellino “can’t stop smiling” about this new community resource. Let us know in the comments what open source images you hope to find or share with the VM Depot community.