Why Microsoft and VMware Are Joining Forces on Azure VMware Solution

Enterprise IT teams are under constant pressure to expand infrastructure faster than on-premises hardware allows. Azure VMware Solution (AVS) is Microsoft and VMware’s co-engineered answer to that pressure: a fully managed service that lets organizations run VMware workloads natively on Azure dedicated bare-metal infrastructure, without rewriting applications or retraining operations teams.

The solution is built by Microsoft and endorsed by VMware — a distinction that matters operationally. Customers retain the native VMware experience (vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T) while gaining direct access to Azure services such as Azure Monitor, Azure Security Center, Azure Backup, and ExpressRoute for private connectivity.

“The very name of this solution — Azure VMware Solution — reflects just how collaborative this effort is across engineering, sales, and marketing functions in both companies.”

Eric Lockard, Corporate Vice President, Azure Dedicated, Microsoft

What Azure VMware Solution Actually Delivers

At its core, AVS provisions VMware SDDC (Software-Defined Data Center) clusters on Azure bare-metal nodes. The key operational characteristics for engineering teams include:

• Native VMware stack: vSphere, vCenter, vSAN, and NSX-T run as they do on-premises. Existing runbooks, automation scripts, and monitoring integrations continue to work.
• Azure Portal integration: Provisioning, scaling, and lifecycle management are handled through the Azure Portal, CLI, or ARM templates — the same control plane used for every other Azure resource.
• Direct connectivity to Azure services: AVS private clouds connect to Azure Virtual Networks over a managed ExpressRoute, enabling low-latency access to PaaS services without traffic traversing the public internet.
• VMware HCX for migration: The VMware HCX service is included to simplify live migration and bulk migration of on-premises VMs to AVS with minimal downtime.
• Microsoft SLA and support: Microsoft operates and supports the underlying infrastructure, including hardware replacement and software patching of the VMware components.

How Microsoft Positions AVS for Different Customer Profiles

According to Lockard, AVS is deliberately designed to serve three distinct architectural postures rather than forcing a single migration path:

1. All-in on a single cloud with VMware compute: Customers who want to standardize entirely on Azure while preserving VMware as their compute abstraction layer.
2. Abstraction-first: Organizations that want to run on a consistent VMware platform to avoid cloud vendor lock-in at the workload level, while still consuming Azure networking and storage services.
3. Multi-cloud: Enterprises that know they will operate across multiple public clouds and want VMware’s consistent operational model to span them.

“We are laser-focused on making Azure the best cloud for VMware, and we engineered Azure VMware Solution with the expectation that customers can utilize it as just another flavor of Azure Compute.”

Eric Lockard, Microsoft

What Is Driving Cloud Demand: Common Enterprise Use Cases

Lockard identified several distinct drivers pushing enterprises toward cloud adoption, each reflecting a different business or operational concern:

• OpEx over CapEx: Organizations prefer consumption-based billing (daily or monthly) over large upfront hardware investments.
• Hardware offload: Eliminating the procurement, maintenance, and end-of-life management of physical servers and storage.
• Elastic capacity (“burstiness”): The ability to spin up additional compute for short-duration projects — batch processing, seasonal peaks, or model training — without permanent infrastructure commitment.
• Disaster recovery and failover: Using Azure as a DR target for VMware workloads without building and maintaining a secondary data center.
• Access to cloud-native capabilities: Augmenting existing VMware application estates with Azure-native services such as machine learning, IoT Hub, and data analytics pipelines.

The Broader Trend: Every Company Is a Software Company

Beyond specific use cases, Lockard pointed to a structural shift in how industries consume compute. Sectors traditionally seen as non-technology industries — pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, logistics, retail — are increasingly running their core competitive functions on software and data workloads.

“Pharmaceuticals — that’s a software business. It is all about taking massive amounts of sample data and analyzing it with AI to quickly model and identify the right drug compounds for safe and effective patient treatments. That application of massive computing is happening in every industry.”

Eric Lockard, Microsoft

For DevOps and platform engineering teams, this trend has a direct architectural implication: the application estate that needs to run on VMware today will increasingly need to be complemented by cloud-native data and ML services. AVS is Microsoft and VMware’s answer to bridging that gap without a disruptive rip-and-replace migration.

Key Takeaways for DevOps and Infrastructure Teams

• AVS lets you migrate VMware workloads to Azure without modifying VMs, retraining staff, or replacing existing automation.
• The service is operated and supported by Microsoft, reducing the operational burden on internal infrastructure teams.
• Azure-native services are available over private connectivity, enabling hybrid architectures that mix VMware compute with PaaS-layer capabilities.
• VMware HCX (included with AVS) provides a supported, low-disruption migration path from on-premises vSphere environments.
• The partnership’s co-engineering model means VMware certifications and support contracts remain valid for workloads running on AVS.

For teams evaluating cloud migration strategies, Azure VMware Solution represents a lower-risk on-ramp to Azure — preserving operational continuity while opening access to the broader Azure service ecosystem.

Why Microsoft and VMware Are Joining Forces

Enterprise IT teams are under constant pressure to extend critical infrastructure to the cloud faster and with less disruption. To address this, Microsoft and VMware have collaborated to deliver a deeper iteration of Azure VMware Solution (AVS)—an offering engineered by Microsoft and endorsed by VMware that lets organisations move existing VMware-based workloads to Azure without re-architecting applications or retraining staff.

According to Eric Lockard, Corporate Vice President for Azure Dedicated at Microsoft, the partnership goes well beyond a licensing arrangement:

“Microsoft and VMware have emerged to become close partners determined to deliver a win-win for both companies and our shared customers. The very name of this solution—Azure VMware Solution—reflects just how collaborative this effort is across engineering, sales, and marketing functions in both companies.”

Eric Lockard, Corporate Vice President, Azure Dedicated, Microsoft

What Azure VMware Solution Actually Delivers

Azure VMware Solution is designed to feel like a natural extension of an existing on-premises VMware environment rather than a migration to an unfamiliar platform. Key characteristics of the solution include:

• Native VMware experience: Customers continue using familiar VMware tools—vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T, and HCX—without modification.
• Full Azure Portal integration: AVS is managed through the same Azure Portal used for all other Azure services, unifying operational visibility.
• Access to the Azure service catalogue: Once workloads run in AVS, teams can consume Azure-native services such as Azure Monitor, Azure Security Center, machine learning services, and IoT hubs alongside VMware compute.
• Flexible consumption models: Organisations can treat AVS as standard Azure compute, paying on a subscription basis and scaling capacity up or down without upfront hardware investment.

Lockard frames AVS as applicable to three distinct enterprise postures:

1. All-in on Azure: Organisations that want a single cloud while preserving their VMware compute platform.
2. Abstraction-layer approach: Teams that want to avoid perceived vendor constraints by running workloads on a consistent VMware layer regardless of the underlying cloud.
3. Multi-cloud strategy: Enterprises that intentionally spread workloads across multiple clouds, using VMware as the common operational fabric.

What Is Driving Enterprise Cloud Demand?

Lockard identifies a range of practical motivations pushing organisations toward the cloud, regardless of industry:

• OpEx over CapEx: The ability to pay by the day or month rather than investing in depreciating hardware.
• Elastic capacity (“burstiness”): Spinning up additional compute for a new project or seasonal demand spike without provisioning permanent infrastructure.
• Disaster recovery and backup: Using cloud as a failover target without maintaining a full secondary data centre.
• Hardware management offload: Freeing engineering teams from firmware updates, hardware replacement cycles, and data-centre operations.

The Deeper Trend: Every Company Is Becoming a Software Company

Beyond individual use cases, Lockard points to a more structural shift that he believes will sustain long-term cloud growth. In his view, differentiation in virtually every industry now depends on software and data analytics rather than physical assets or traditional processes alone.

“Every company is increasingly a software company. Pharmaceuticals—that’s a software business. It is all about taking massive amounts of sample data and analysing it with AI to quickly model and identify the right drug compounds for safe and effective patient treatments. That application of massive computing is happening in every industry, whether it’s optimisation of manufacturing or e-commerce.”

Eric Lockard, Corporate Vice President, Azure Dedicated, Microsoft

This framing has direct implications for how organisations should think about their VMware estates. Rather than viewing on-premises VMware infrastructure as a liability to be replaced, Lockard’s argument is that it becomes the foundation from which enterprises can layer on cloud-native capabilities—machine learning, IoT pipelines, real-time analytics—without disrupting the applications already running on it.

Key Takeaways for DevOps and Infrastructure Teams

• AVS lowers migration risk by letting teams move VMware VMs to Azure without converting them to native Azure VMs first—useful when application owners are risk-averse or timelines are tight.
• It is not a legacy crutch. The intent is that AVS workloads can progressively consume Azure-native services, enabling a gradual modernisation path rather than a hard cutover.
• The Microsoft/VMware endorsement model matters operationally: Support cases involving the underlying VMware stack are handled jointly, reducing the finger-pointing that can occur with third-party VMware cloud providers.
• Multi-cloud use cases are explicitly supported, meaning organisations already using VMware Cloud on AWS or on-premises VMware can extend to Azure without abandoning their existing operational model.

Looking Ahead

The partnership signals that both Microsoft and VMware see the hybrid and multi-cloud model as the dominant enterprise architecture for the foreseeable future. For DevOps and infrastructure engineers, the practical outcome is a more integrated toolchain: VMware’s operational familiarity combined with Azure’s breadth of managed services, all accessible through a single control plane.

Teams evaluating AVS should assess their current VMware licence agreements, Azure Reserved Instance pricing for dedicated hosts, and the specific Azure services they intend to consume alongside VMware compute—these factors will determine the total cost of ownership relative to alternatives such as refactoring to native Azure VMs or adopting containers.