HPE GreenLake now supports Microsoft Azure Stack HCI and SQL Server.

The announcement of the new integration came just ahead of the company’s annual HPE Discover conference, held virtually for the second time in a row, where GreenLake is expected to take centre stage.

According to the company, the expansion of GreenLake to include support for Azure Stack HCI and SQL Server will enable customers to take advantage of a cloud-like experience for their applications and workloads even as they remain in a private environment, such as their own data centre.

This is no small amount of customers, either; according to research from IDC, some 70% of critical production applications remain outside the public cloud, in a secure single-tenant environment and at the edge.

In addition to providing a cloud-like experience, HPE said customers will benefit from a cloud-like operating model as well, as GreenLake is a consumption-based service.

This is not the company’s first foray into working with Microsoft Azure via GreenLake, which has been able to support public cloud deployments on Azure, as well as private cloud infrastructure via Azure Stack, since 2018. However, it’s the first time the relationship has focused on hyperconverged infrastructure in particular.

Speaking about the new offerings, Keith White, GM of HPE Greenlake cloud services, said: “The world is becoming hybrid and that’s why we are so excited about this collaboration with Microsoft, especially as we see significant growth in the Hyperconverged Infrastructure area. 

“By combining Microsoft Azure Stack HCI with offerings like the HPE GreenLake edge-to-cloud platform, customers benefit from a unified, automated experience. The solution means customers can determine their own right mix of hybrid cloud and workload placement, with flexibility but also control. We continue to deepen our collaboration with Microsoft to develop comprehensive solutions that help customers transform to modern cloud-driven organisations.” “