Microsoft expands Azure Stack's footprint

Microsoft is full steam ahead with the expansion of its Azure Stack service footprint across the globe. Microsoft has been collaborating with their partners to help customers navigate their business needs. Azure Stack – an in-a-box-and-on-premises Azure subset – has doubled the number of locales since its launch in July 2017, effectively extending Azure's reach with minimal capital expenditure. Customer demand and supportability has helped Azure Stack to get listed for availability in 92 nations.

The newly-enabled countries include many Eastern European nations, stretching into former Soviet countries, a few fill-ins in the EU region and the African region, along with China.

As service providers can run Azure Stack, expanding its reach means Microsoft has found a way to bring Azure to the world without also having to build out its own bit barn network. Microsoft promotes Azure Stack as a fine way for service providers to offer cloud to their customers, while also taking advantage of their own links to the Azure Cloud to offer value-adds. Extending Azure Stack support to nations without their own Azure regions therefore extends the availability of Azure services and leaves partners doing the racking and stacking.

Apart from expansion, another major announcement includes Azure IaaS VM disaster recovery; a preview of Azure Backup for SQL; and VM Run command support for Bash and PowerShell scripts. Not only is Azure Stack being rolled out to the rest of the world, but it also comes with a few updates on board such as Machine Learning (ML servers are now available, the development of Azure IoT Hub, Hybrid DevOps, and a unified Azure ecosystem).