Better late than never, as they say. After Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo took the lead with Azure Stack developments, Microsoft was able to add a new player in the table: Cisco UCS as Integrated System for Azure Stack.

Update: Huawei and Avanade were added as hardware OEM vendors, for more information: “Azure Stack Welcomes Two New Hardware OEM Vendors“.

Update: Azure Stack has been released in GA (General Availability) with updated features, Azure Stack Development Kit free download and more: “Azure Stack Is Here! Development Kit (Single-Node) Free Download Available and More“.

“Cisco is accelerating hybrid cloud adoption by gearing up to offer Microsoft Azure Stack on Cisco UCS in Q3 2017“, declared Liz Centoni, senior vice president and general manager of the Cisco Computing Systems Product Group.

Cisco UCS, their server platform, is looking to generate some significant market share in a world clearly dominated by Dell EMC and HPE. Currently in the server market share, Cisco is battling for the third place between Lenovo and IBM; trying also to pick some momentum after last year’s announcement of entering the hyper converged space with HyperFlex systems.

Cisco is showing as the fourth and late(st) player in this game. In September 2016, in the Microsoft Ignite conference, Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo showcased their Azure Stack platforms to the public with the Technical Preview 2 (TP2) recently released.

Azure Stack, still confirmed to be released by mid-2017, is one of the biggest cards from Microsoft in the Hybrid Cloud offerings. The Redmond based company understands that allowing the customers to offer Azure in their own datacenters, which can be easily integrated with Azure in the public cloud, will generate the concurrent one-stop shop Microsoft wants for their cloud consumption.

Update: Azure Stack has been released in GA (General Availability) with updated features, Azure Stack Development Kit free download and more: “Azure Stack Is Here! Development Kit (Single-Node) Free Download Available and More“.

Currently Azure Stack is only available in POC mode, completely free (only one server installation, no support from Microsoft for production environments). Additionally, the product will only be released for production environments using one of the Integrated Systems: Dell EMC, HPE, Lenovo and now Cisco UCS. Azure Stack will be part as a pre-deployed component in that hardware, not requiring for customer to install it from scratch.

The good news is that the POC mode for Azure Stack will still be available after GA (General Availability), completely free and the alternative to install it on any hardware.

For detailed information about Azure Stack like requirements, step-by-step deployment, review on the Integrated Systems approach and more, check my previous blog post: Yada Yada Cloud: Azure Stack, what’s your story?