Cisco is teaming up with Microsoft and expanding its Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) Solutions portfolio by offering Microsoft Azure Stack on Cisco UCS.

This is done via an integrated, validated system that enables organizations to deliver Microsoft Azure services from their on-premises data center.

Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager, Computing Systems Product Group at Cisco, says the two companies are coming together to offer a hybrid cloud solution built on the power of UCS and Microsoft Azure.

“Through our joint engineering efforts, application developers and IT managers will have a turnkey solution that is easy to deploy, manage and scale,” she explains.

Key benefts of Azure Stack on Cisco UCS include accelerated growth and innovation, high-performance networking and simplified management.

Mike Neil, corporate vice president, Azure Infrastructure - Management, Microsoft Corporation, says Microsoft and Cisco are proven innovators and trusted technology partners, giving customers the confidence their IT environments can be supported and secure.

“Microsoft Azure Stack provides services and application programming interfaces (APIs) compatible with the Azure public cloud, allowing developers to do their best work while giving them the agility to deploy their applications to public, private or hosted clouds,” he explains.

The Cisco Integrated System for Azure Stack reinforces Cisco's complete approach to cloud, which the company says offers customers the freedom to choose the best environments and consumption models for their traditional and cloud native applications.