Microsoft Azure loves Open Source (OSS), Linux and GitHub!

At Microsoft, open source is a part of our day-to-day approach to cloud innovation. We're also constantly looking for ways to improve developer and user experiences with SDKs for open source languages and an open API.

Being a computer science graduate and enthusiast, I’ve lived most of my student life in open source world. There is a culture of using open source technologies in academia and institutions. I believe it’s mostly because of the cost and availability. Until about five years ago, the suggestion that you should run open source software on Azure would have been crazy talk to most people. Azure did not even support Linux virtual server instances before 2012, and until a few years ago, all indications suggested that Microsoft remained rabidly anti-open source.

Over the past few years, Microsoft has become the leading contributor in open source projects. With the acquisition of GitHub Microsoft has embraced the open source community and opened many services in Azure. Such as - open source database in Azure, Azure Kubernetes for your container services and orchestration as Container as-a Service, open source PaaS, and not most importantly Linux server instances. Cause Microsoft loves Linux!

Azure OSS helps your business in scalability, lower cost, faster time to market; get out of the business of running data-centers or being locked into costly data-center contracts; modernize aging apps and infrastructure.

Now in Microsoft, we can help you to

• Start building Node.js, Java, and Python apps with Azure App Service.
• Bring your favorite open source frameworks and container stacks to kick-start your apps.
• Deploy your Linux virtual machine in seconds using our command line tools.

We would be happy to organize workshops, hackathons and discussion sessions on Azure OSS and help you in the cloud journey with Open Source Technology and Microsoft Azure.

Below are the few technical points that would be helpful to have a quick overview on Azure OSS.

Our approach to Azure OSS

-         Linux on Azure. It provides flexibility to retain access to existing vendors/apps/workloads, experience lower costs, and benefit from innovative business models.

-         Innovate Apps and modernize Web Apps

-         Cloud-Native Apps with Kubernetes and end-to-end experience for Kubernetes and adding new container capabilities with Docker and serverless Kubernetes integration.

-         Development, deployment of web apps at any scale using .Net Core, Java, Docker, Node.js, etc.

-         Integrated programming model to respond to events and seamlessly connect with other services

-         Accelerated feature updates using built-in CI/CD

-         Cloud Native App Development and Modernization on Azure Cosmos DB

-         Azure Database for Open Source provides scalability, performance, mission-critical database such as backups, HA and the ability to scale performance with little/no downtime are built-in.

-         Comprehensive support for: Linux Distributions (RedHat, Suse, Ubuntu)

-         Support for all Open Source workloads: Cloudera, Pivotal, Kubernetes/OpenShift, Elastic, MongoDB etc.

-         Built-in intelligent services: rapid migration, security & DR for data & apps, Log Analytics & Monitoring, configuration, and governance

-         Breadth of compute options: Entry level VMs to HPC, SAP HANA to Graphics Intensive Workload

Some links for a quick look,

• Microsoft Open Source Azure: https://github.com/Azure
• Microsoft and GitHub: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/open-source/
• Microsoft Open Source Projects: https://opensource.microsoft.com/