It has been three months since we closed on the acquisition of Avere Systems. Since that time, we’ve been hard at work integrating the Avere and Microsoft families, growing our presence in Pittsburgh and meeting with customers and partners at The National Association of Broadcasters Show.
It's been exciting to hear how Avere has helped businesses address a broad range of compute and data challenges, helping produce blockbuster movies and life-saving drug therapies faster than ever before with hybrid and public cloud options. I’ve also appreciated having the opportunity to address our customers questions and concerns and thought it might be helpful to share the most common ones with the broader Azure/Avere community:
- When will Avere be available on Microsoft Azure?
- We are on track to release Microsoft Avere vFXT to the Azure Marketplace later this year. With this technology Azure customers will be able to run compute-intensive applications completely on Azure or to take advantage of our scale on an as-needed basis.
- Will Microsoft continue to support the Avere FXT physical appliance?
- Yes, we will continue to invest in, upgrade and support the Microsoft Avere FXT physical appliance, which customers tell us is particularly important for their on-premise and hybrid environments.
- Will Microsoft continue to support Avere vFXT on other public cloud platforms?
- Yes, we will continue supporting current offerings after we ship Microsoft Avere vFXT on Microsoft Azure.
Avere was a strategic acquisition for Microsoft, with a great team and technology. Ron Bianchini, the co-founder and ex-CEO of Avere Systems, is an award-winning serial entrepreneur, former professor of computer engineering at Carnegie-Mellon University and now a distinguished engineer at Microsoft. And, Mike Kazar, co-founder and ex-CTO of Avere Systems, Microsoft Partner Software Engineer, and an acknowledged expert in network files systems, was named the recipient of the 2013 IEEE Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Systems Award for his outstanding contributions to information storage systems.
It’s exciting to have Ron, Mike and the whole Avere team onboard at Microsoft. You can learn more about Avere here and we’ll continue to update you on product availability, roll-out plans and more through the Azure blog.