Microsoft is bringing Cosmos DB to Azure Stack and Azure Sphere
Microsoft hasn't shared many real-world statistics on the uptake of its Azure Stack hybrid-cloud platform. Nor has it shared much lately about the long-term roadmap for the product. (The nearer-term Azure Stack features are tracked as part of the overall Azure roadmap on Microsoft's website here.)
Earlier this month, however, Judson Altoff, Executive Vice President of Microsoft's Worldwide Commercial Business, did provide a bit of color about what's happening with Azure Stack during an appearance at the Citi Global Technology Conference.
Azure Stack comes in the form an appliance built to run on specific server hardware. It provides customers with many of the pieces of Microsoft's Azure public-cloud platform in a form they can run inside their own or partners' on-premises datacenters. Microsoft is positioning Azure Stack -- along with its Azure Sphere secure microcontroller platform -- as key pieces of its "intelligent cloud, intelligent edge" strategy.
"We're super-pleased with Azure Stack right now. We're taking orders at the threshold of our ability to deliver at this point," Altoff told Citi conference attendees.
Microsoft's first three server partners -- Dell EMC, HPE and Lenovo -- began taking orders for Azure Stack last July.
"We're also pleased with where we're going with Azure Sphere," Altoff said. Think about this notion of the edge to the cloud, especially with the onset of 5G coming. I mean you can really basically put compute everywhere, from the furthest edge, through to midpoints in aggregate, all the way to the public cloud."
Altoff also shared another tidbit that I'm thinking could be one of Microsoft's planned reveals for its Ignite conference for IT pros next week.
He told Citi attendees that Cosmos DB, Microsoft's "planet-scale" NoSQL database "will eventually be able to run in every Azure Stack and Azure Sphere any incarnation."
Customers will "be able to decide ... where you want your data to be and how to reason over it. And you basically conquer sort of the speed of light issues that any other singular instance cloud platform database would have."
I asked Microsoft officials when Cosmos DB would be available on Azure Stack and Azure Sphere and was told by a spokesperson the company wasn't ready to share timing information. There is an Azure Stack roadmap session on the docket for Ignite next week, however. And there are a lot of other Azure Stack sessions at the show, as well.