When Microsoft launched Azure as a cloud-based version of its Windows Server operating system, it didn’t make it exclusively Windows. It also included Linux support, and in just a few years, the number of Linux instances now outnumbers Windows instances.
It’s nice to see Microsoft finally shed that not-invented-here attitude that was so toxic for so long, but the company’s latest move is really surprising.
Microsoft has partnered with a company called Skytap to offer IBM Power9 instances on its Azure cloud service to run Power-based systems inside of the Azure cloud, which will be offered as Azure virtual machines (VM) along with the Xeon and Epyc server instances that it already offers.