Helping customers advance their digital workspace strategy, Dell Technologies and Microsoft Corp. at the Dell Technologies World held at Las Vegas, announced the expansion of their partnership to address a wider range of customer needs and help accelerate digital transformations. Through this collaboration, the companies will deliver a fully native, supported, and certified VMware cloud infrastructure on Microsoft Azure. Additionally, joint Microsoft 365 and VMware Workspace ONE customers will be able to manage Office 365 across devices via cloud-based integration with Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory. VMware will also extend the capabilities of Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop leveraging VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure.

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft said on his opening keynote address, “At Microsoft, we’re focused on empowering customers in their digital transformation journey, through partnerships that enable them to take advantage of the Microsoft cloud, using the technologies they already have. Together with Dell Technologies and VMware, we are providing our mutual customers with an integrated cloud experience and digital workplace solutions to open up new opportunities and meet their evolving needs.”

Michael Dell, Chairman and CEO, Dell Technologies in his address said, “With this announcement Dell Technologies and Microsoft are working to simplify our customers’ entire technology environment. Our goal is to provide a single view from edge to core to cloud – an integrated platform for our customers’ digital future.”

The cloud has become fundamental to enabling organizations to move faster toward their business goals. With the cloud’s scalability, enhanced security, productivity, cost savings and more, companies are capitalizing on the many benefits. These benefits are enabling organizations to better tap into the potential of technologies like artificial intelligence and Internet of Things. Through this collaboration, the companies aim to accelerate customer transformations with even more open, flexible and scalable solutions.

Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware commented, “Customers are excited to see us expand our collaboration with Microsoft. These innovative cloud and client offerings will deliver customers even more value, provide more flexibility to accelerate their hybrid multi-cloud and multi-device journey, and accelerate the digital transformation of their business.”

Azure VMware Solutions are built on VMware Cloud Foundation - a comprehensive offering of software defined compute, storage, networking and management – deployed in Azure. With these solutions, customers can capitalize on VMware’s broadly deployed and trusted cloud infrastructure while experiencing the power of Microsoft Azure. The new Azure VMware Solutions will provide a seamless VMware experience on Microsoft Azure.

Azure VMware Solutions give customers the power to seamlessly migrate, extend and run existing VMware workloads from on-premises environments to Azure without the need to re-architect applications or retool operations. Customers will be able to build, run, manage, and secure new and existing applications across VMware environments and Microsoft Azure while extending a single model for operations based on established tools, skills and processes as part of a hybrid cloud strategy. Some of the more popular customer scenarios Azure VMware Solutions will support are app migration and datacenter expansion, disaster recovery and business continuity and modern application development.

Azure VMware Solutions enable organizations to tap into Azure’s scale, security and fast provisioning cycles to innovate and modernize applications while also improving performance. By integrating with native Azure services, customers can easily infuse advanced capabilities like AI, Machine Learning, and IoT into their applications enabling new, intelligent experiences.

Azure VMware Solutions are first-party services from Microsoft developed in collaboration with VMware Cloud Verified partners CloudSimple and Virtustream (a Dell Technologies company).

Clay Johnson, executive vice president and enterprise chief information officer, Walmart shared, "At Walmart, we’re focused on making it easy, fast, friendly and fun to shop with us no matter where you are - whether online, in our stores or through our pick-up services. We’re excited about the role technology plays in this and how it can help us deliver new services faster. Cloud and Client innovations are an important part of this and a key enabler of our digital transformation.

The partnership being announced today between Microsoft, Dell and VMware in Cloud and Client innovations will allow them to better bring their best solutions to customers like us. We look forward to continuing to work with Microsoft, Dell and VMware to accelerate our digital transformation.”

With this agreement, mutual Microsoft 365 and VMware Workspace ONE customers will be able to get the most out of their digital workspace across device platforms while maximizing existing and future investments. Specifically, customers will be able to use Workspace ONE to manage and secure the powerful productivity features of Office 365 across devices via cloud-based integration with Microsoft Intune and Azure Active Directory.

Through the new Dell Technologies Unified Workspace offerings, customers can further accelerate their Windows 10 digital transformation journey by leveraging the integration of Microsoft Windows Autopilot and Dell Device Provisioning and Deployment Services, like Dell ProDeploy – all enabled by the integration of Microsoft 365, Workspace ONE, and Dell Provisioning Services.

In addition, Microsoft recently announced Windows Virtual Desktop, the only service that delivers a multi-session Windows 10 experience, optimizations for Office 365 ProPlus, and support for Windows Server Remote Desktop Services (RDS) desktops and apps. As a part of this agreement, VMware will extend the capabilities of Microsoft Windows Virtual Desktop to enable customers to further accelerate their cloud initiatives, leveraging VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure. Initial capabilities are expected to be available as a tech preview by the end of calendar year 2019.

Microsoft and VMware are also exploring initiatives to drive further integration between VMware infrastructure and Azure such as integration of VMware NSX with Azure Networking and integration of specific Azure services with VMware management solutions. They will also be exploring bringing specific Azure services to the VMware on-premises customers. Through this collaboration, the companies aim to give customers a more seamless experience across VMware and Azure environments.