The Information claims to have word on the next big hybrid cloud partnership-- Microsoft and VMware, with an agreement reportedly bringing the VMware virtualised compute infrastructure on the Azure cloud.

According to the report, the partnership with Microsoft will be similar to the one VMware already has with AWS. Once bitter rivals, VMware decided to embrace Amazon in 2016, in an an agreement allowing organisations to take advantage of the AWS cloud while still making use of investments in VMware server virtualisation technology.

The Information does not detail what the Microsoft-VMware partnership involves, but it will be safe to assume it will be similar to the AWS-VMware equivalent. It might even be able to address the deadline for Windows 2008, whose support end date currently stands at January 2020. A lot of companies still run datacentres on Windows Server 2008, and a VMware partnership might allow for easier migration efforts.

Neither Microsoft nor VMware has commented on the story as yet.

Go Microsoft and VMware Working on Cloud Partnership (The Information, subscription required)