[This article was contributed by the SQL Azure team.]

Steve Ballmer made big news yesterday at the company’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference with the announcement for the Windows Azure Platform Appliance. Here is what the media is saying:

Microsoft Lures Giant Partners With Windows Azure Appliance

Microsoft this week is taking Windows Azure to the next level, and its taking some of its largest partners along for the ride. – CNN

New Windows Azure Platform Focusing the Cloud on Businesses and Consumers

The announcement is significant, as it carries several implications for what Microsoft is looking to do competitively. – SilconANGLE

Realizing the Promise of Cloud Computing with Microsoft

The appliance is the same Windows Azure platform run at Microsoft, and includes Windows Azure and SQL Azure on Microsoft-specified hardware. – TechNet

Big News! eBay and Microsoft Announce Cloud Computing Partnership

This partnership follows a successful pilot deployment by eBay of Microsoft’s public Windows Azure platform, which offers eBay the flexibility to deploy certain applications on a public cloud while maintaining the reliability and availability of eBay.com – CloudTweaks

Microsoft launches Azure private cloud in a box

These appliances are big preconfigured containers with between hundreds and thousands of servers running the Windows Azure platform. – ZDNet

Microsoft Unveils ‘Turnkey’ Cloud Appliance

HP’s pact with Microsoft extends a $250 million infrastructure-to-application partnership the companies announced earlier this year. –InformationWeek

Coming This Fall: Windows Azure Cloud Appliances

Muglia did say the new appliance is based on Windows Azure and SQL Azure with hardware specified by Microsoft, allowing service providers to either offer their own hosted Azure-based services or provision the appliances initially to large data center customers [that are already] on-premise. – ApplicationDeveloperTrends

Muglia offers details on Microsoft Azure Appliance

The appliance name may be a bit misleading though — Microsoft’s Azure Appliance is not your standard single server appliance. The appliance configuration is best geared for internal deployments of around 1,000 servers. – SFGate

Windows Azure Appliance. On-Premises Cloud Computing Finally Arrived

Microsoft has invested significant engineering resources to ensure that the hardware required by the appliance is optimized to enable service availability, automated management and power, cooling and operational efficiency across tens of thousands of servers. – AzureJournal

Coming This Fall: Windows Azure Cloud Appliances

Muglia said the cloud has forced Microsoft to reinvent itself and will require its partners to do the same. It’s a change that is inevitable, it is a change that allows us all to deliver new value, it’s a change that thankfully is not happening overnight, and it is a change we will embrace together,” he said – Redmond Magazine

Summary

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