Wanted to share some updates on the work Microsoft is doing in the open source space.

Open Compute Project

[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ack in January, we announced a contribution to the Open Compute Project.  Microsoft is sharing what they call their ‘Microsoft cloud server specification‘: the designs for the most advanced server hardware in Microsoft datacenters delivering global cloud services like Windows Azure, Office 365, Bing and others.

We are excited to participate in the OCP community and share our cloud innovation with the industry in order to foster more efficient datacenters and the adoption of cloud computing.

more details on that can be found here.

Port25

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nother interesting set of investments in open source comes from the Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. team.  It’s a group of people building bridges between Microsoft and non-Microsoft technologies…powering interoperability through open standards and open source.

Here are some of the projects they are working:

• MongoLab – MongoDB on Windows Azure
• Cloudant – CouchDB on Windows Azure
• SQL Server Connector for Hadoop

Tweets by @OpenAtMicrosoft

Two significant announcements were made last week that are worthy of a call out. They are a clear sign of the commitment and investment Microsoft is making in the cloud.

Microsoft Cloud Solutions Demonstrate Ability to Support Qualified GxP Applications

Microsoft becomes the only major combined IaaS, PaaS and SaaS public cloud provider to enable life sciences organizations to meet GxP qualification requirements, Helping Life Sciences Organizations Achieve and Maintain Compliance in the Cloud

Press Release: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jun13/06-24MSDIAPR.aspx

Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/lifesciences/archive/2013/06/24/compliance-in-the-cloud-and-why-you-should-care.aspx   

Microsoft/Oracle Enterprise Partnership

Microsoft Corp. and Oracle Corp. today announced a partnership that will enable customers to run Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and in Windows Azure. Customers will be able to deploy Oracle software — including Java, Oracle Database and Oracle WebLogic Server — on Windows Server Hyper-V or in Windows Azure and receive full
support from Oracle.

Press Release: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jun13/06-24WSNewsPR.aspx

Oracle Blog: https://blogs.oracle.com/cloud/entry/oracle_and_microsoft_join_forces