The cloud is changing the world, offering enterprises, independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers alike endless scale, speed and agility in a cost-effective way. I’ve been talking with customers about “why cloud” for years. Recently there has been a shift in these conversations, as the benefits have become undeniable. Now, for customers everywhere, the new question is “how cloud.”

“How cloud” comes down to customers embracing the cloud on their terms. This shows up in two primary challenges that exemplify the importance of our partnership with Red Hat.

Businesses continue to grapple with the challenge of bringing together existing on-premises investments with a cloud environment for greater speed, scale and cost benefits. Hybrid cloud has emerged as a way to solve this. Customers require flexibility and choice in their cloud investments across platforms, tools and languages. Simply put, they want to ensure that they can use what they already know and use today to take full advantage of what the cloud has to offer.

The partnership we are announcing today with Red Hat extends our commitment to offer unmatched choice and flexibility in an enterprise-grade cloud experience across the hybrid cloud. With more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 using Microsoft’s cloud, for us to team with the leader in enterprise Linux allows even more businesses to move to the cloud on their terms. By working with Red Hat, we will address common enterprise, ISV and developer needs for building, deploying and managing applications on Red Hat software across private and public clouds, including the following:

Red Hat solutions available natively to Microsoft Azure customers, including Red Hat Enterprise Linux applications and workloads as well as Red Hat application platform offerings. Available in the coming weeks, this includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well as the JBoss middleware platform.

Integrated enterprise-grade support spanning hybrid environments , with Red Hat and Microsoft co-locating support personnel to deliver an end-to-end enterprise support experience for Red Hat offerings on Microsoft Azure that is deeper and richer than any other public cloud offering. This experience will enable enterprises to move their production Red Hat solutions to the public cloud with confidence. Co-locating support will be available in the next few weeks.

, with Red Hat and Microsoft co-locating support personnel to deliver an end-to-end enterprise support experience for Red Hat offerings on Microsoft Azure that is deeper and richer than any other public cloud offering. This experience will enable enterprises to move their production Red Hat solutions to the public cloud with confidence. Co-locating support will be available in the next few weeks. Collaboration on .NET for a new generation of application development capabilities , providing access to .NET technologies across Red Hat offerings, including OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which will be available within the next few weeks.

, providing access to .NET technologies across Red Hat offerings, including OpenShift and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, which will be available within the next few weeks. Unified workload management across hybrid cloud deployments, including integration between Red Hat CloudForms and Microsoft Azure and System Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux on both Hyper-V and Microsoft Azure. Support for managing Azure workloads from Red Hat CloudForms is expected to be added in the next few months.

Later today I’ll be joining Paul Cormier, Red Hat’s president of Products and Technologies, on a webcast to talk more about the partnership and answer your questions. You can check it out here at 11 a.m. ET/8 a.m. PT to learn more about how flexibility and choice have united Microsoft and Red Hat to meet customers where they are on their cloud journey. For full details on the partnership, you can also read the press release and the Red Hat Blog.

Tags: Cloud Computing, Microsoft Azure, Red Hat, Scott Guthrie