Cloud computing brings significant benefits over self-hosted virtualized solutions but sometimes data simply cannot leave an organization¡¯s premises, usually for latency or regulatory reasons. For European companies, the current political climate also raises more concerns about placing data in the hands of US-based entities. With , Microsoft adds an interesting offering as a middle ground between full-featured public clouds and simple on-premises virtualization: a slimmed-down version of the software that runs Microsoft¡¯s Azure Global cloud is combined with a rack of preconfigured commodity hardware from the usual suspects like HP and Lenovo, providing an organization with the core Azure experience on premises. By default, support is split between Microsoft and the hardware vendors (and they promise to cooperate), but system integrators can offer complete Azure Stack solutions, too.
