May 18, 2017 06:47 AM EDT By Emily Schultz, UniversityHerald Reporter

It's the buzz of the IT world. Microsoft Azure is about to get some big boost and this time from a world-class company. The cloud infrastructure and virtualization giant VMware this week announced an expanded support for VMware Horizon Cloud to include the Microsoft Azure cloud platform.

The Palo Alto-based virtualization giant has just inked a major public cloud partnership that includes support for cloud users that want to run their business applications and desktops in Microsoft Azure. The virtualization company plans to deliver its VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure to help cloud customers move to Windows 10 and bring the company's virtual desktops and applications to the growing cloud platform,   VMware.reported.

Microsoft Azure, which now available in 38 regions globally, is currently used by over 90 percent of the Fortune top 500 companies. And it still keeps on growing, gaining 120,000 new customers per month, Microsoft said.

In a recent VMware's press release, VMware senior vice president and general manager Sumit Dhawan said that the addition of VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure will enable the virtualization giant to provide its customers with several options for virtual desktops and applications along with the added flexibility to move between different cloud platforms. Another major value-add of the VMware Horizon Cloud on Microsoft Azure is the ease and flexibility it gives to customers when it comes to managing virtualization infrastructure from a single management window.

As for the service availability, VMware said it will start offering customers the option to host their virtual desktops and business applications in the Microsoft Azure sometime in the second half of this year. For more about the pricing and additional details, check out the Microsoft Azure website.

In addition to the VMware's expanded support for Microsoft Azure, Microsoft has also made a major announcement that will allow customers to run the largest SAP HANA workloads on Microsoft Azure. The software giant has been working hard to make its Azure platform the best cloud platform for SAP HANA workloads. And today, it's making a big announcement on the company's Azure website.

Other major announcements include the addition of SAP Cloud Platform, a platform-as-a-service offering, to the Microsoft Azure cloud. Additionally, Microsoft is also adding the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud, SAP's secure managed cloud service, to its cloud computing service.

And finally, Microsoft has also announced that the integration of SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication Services with the software giant's Azure Active Directory. The cloud integration, according to Microsoft, will allow customers to implement web-based, single-sign-on capabilities across all SAP solutions that integrate and work with SAP Cloud Platform Identity Authentication Services.

For more about the SAP HANA offerings and Azure cloud support, check out the Microsoft Azure website.

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