Microsoft announced that the integration of Azure Stack with Azure Government cloud will be possible by mid – 2018, enabling government clients to run the cloud technology in their own datacenters.
Azure Stack is an extension of Microsoft’s hybrid cloud approach that brings agility of public cloud to on-premises environments. It helps organizations to meet the requirements related to regulations, connectivity and latency, and enables customers to seamlessly move between public cloud environments and their own infrastructure.
Government agencies use hybrid cloud as the foundation of their IT modernization strategy. The integration of Azure Stack with Azure Government cloud will enable government customers to leverage benefits of hybrid cloud, and bring basic as well as advanced cloud solutions to the tactical edge which can be offline, connected, or disconnected, such as tank, aircraft, field office, etc.
Azure Stack makes it possible for government agencies to process data in the field without worrying about internet connectivity and latency. Further, the analytics in Azure Government can be used to get detailed and accurate predictions.
“Government customers can now modernize their on-premises legacy applications that are not ready for the public cloud due to cyber defense or any other requirements. Azure Stack brings a core set of Azure services – containers, Web apps, Serverless computing – and microservices architecture on-premises to update and extend legacy applications,” wrote Natalia Mackevicius, Director, Azure Stack in a blog post.
The integrated services will enable connections to Azure Government identity, subscription, registration, billing, as well as backup and disaster recovery. These can help federal cabinet agencies, government entities like military bases or embassies in foreign countries, Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps.
“Quite literally we’ve designed Azure Stack with the scenario of a submarine in mind,” Tom Keane, Microsoft Azure’s head of global infrastructure, told Reuters.
At the Microsoft Government Tech Summit in Washington D.C., Microsoft announced expansion of Azure Government’s support with two new Azure Government Secret regions for data classified as Secret.
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Furthermore, Microsoft added new PaaS services, Azure Site Recovery, Backup, and Azure App Service to its DoD (Department of Defense) Impact Level 5 Provisional Authorization.
