Microsoft delivers new hybrid cloud management innovation

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Customers today are embracing cloud at a rapid pace and many of them are turning to a hybrid cloud strategy. The journey to the cloud is unique for each customer as they choose the right mix of on-premises and cloud assets that works for them, which introduces complexity in IT management. Over the past few months, Microsoft has invested in bringing new management tools to customers, at cloud cadence.

Introduced at Ignite, the Microsoft Operations Management Suite, is a new hybrid management solution that extends the value of System Center and helps you manage your corporate workloads no matter where they run - Azure, AWS, Windows Server, Linux, VMware, or OpenStack. We also introduced new back-up and migration functionality in Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery.  Today we are enhancing our hybrid management portfolio further with a new OMS add-on for System Center, support for physical and VMware virtual machines in Azure Site Recovery, new capabilities in Azure Backup, and enhanced support for System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager.

Introducing Operations Management Suite add-on for System Center

We designed OMS to empower customers to do more with their System Center investments, and  just two months after the release of OMS, we are delivering the Operations Management Suite add-on for System Center.  The OMS add-on provides System Center customers access to the full suite of OMS solutions at one low cost. For every System Center Standard or Datacenter license you own with Software Assurance, you will be able to purchase a corresponding Microsoft Operations Management Suite add-on for access to allocated solutions that enable you to extend your datacenter, quickly enable hybrid cloud scenarios, and take advantage of cloud bursting, migration and dev/test scenarios.

To add further value, we are also providing an introductory promotional offer through December 31, 2015, which includes site recovery to Azure.  This promotion equates to a 40 percent discount over the regular price and a 57% discount over purchasing the standalone services.  You can learn more about Operations Management Suite and the new OMS add-on here.

Expanding Availability on Demand

Microsoft provides unrivaled integration of heterogeneous and hybrid cloud asset management with Azure in one unified solution, eliminating the need of managing multiple point solutions, and a mix of management portals and cloud providers. With enhancements to Azure Site Recovery, a key component of availability on demand, assets can now harness the power of Azure in just a few mouse clicks. Merely connect your datacenter to Azure with Azure Site Recovery, and your data and applications will be available in the cloud when needed.

  • Reduce complexity: Eliminate the need to build and maintain a secondary DR site and retire tape backup, housing long-term backup data in Azure.
  • Harness the power of Azure: Easily burst into the cloud and run on-premises workloads in Azure. With just a few quick clicks, OMS customers can migrate running Hyper-V, Physical and VMware workloads into Azure to leverage the economics and elasticity of the cloud.
  • Enhance development scenarios: Easily create multi-tier development environments – even replicate live production data to your dev/test environment to keep it in near real-time sync.

Enhancing Azure Backup

Microsoft has invested in new Azure Backup enhancements, designing it to be the premier go-to hybrid backup solution for SMB and enterprises alike.  It continues to deliver best-in-class support for File Servers, and through new capabilities to be made available to customers later this year, Azure Backup will support key Microsoft workloads such as SQL, Exchange, and SharePoint, also enabling customers to make a local copy of the data which is critical for faster restores. These updates, when available later this year will also include:

• New data protection technology for Azure Backup: A new downloadable backup agent based on DPM technology for Azure Backup will offer customers of all sizes advanced functionality to enable fast and efficient hybrid backup services as part of their Azure Backup investment.

• Azure Backup for IaaS VMs: Customers will also be able to access the IaaS VM backup feature with support for premium storage, multi-disk storage, and PowerShell automation that makes it the best in class backup for VMs running in Azure. 

• Azure-based management console: Azure Backup will feature a new console with rich management capabilities that complement OMS.

Extending System Center 2012 R2 DPM on-premises protection

System Center 2012 R2 Data Protection Manager provides enterprise grade back-up and data protection system traditionally targeted at Microsoft workloads.  In response to customer feedback and our commitment to continue to bring new capability to our System Center platform, DPM will now provide greater heterogeneous support with new host level, agentless backup of VMware VMs. Once a VMware VM is configured for protection, all workflows and backup targets (disk, cloud and tape) are supported at the same fidelity as Hyper-V VMs.

We look forward to hearing your feedback about our new hybrid management updates. Our goal is to continue to deliver management innovation at a cadence that matches today’s rapidly changing environment, so stay tuned for more updates over the coming months.