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Chef and Microsoft to Bring Further Automation and Management Practices to the Enterprise

Lucas Welch | Posted on | announcements | DevOps | partners

New Agreement Empowers Enterprises to Automate Workloads Across On-Premises Data Centers and Microsoft Azure to Become Fast, Efficient, and Innovative Software-Driven Organizations

SEATTLE – Feb 23, 2015 – Today it was announced that Chef and Microsoft Azure have joined forces to provide global enterprises with the automation platform and DevOps practices that increase business velocity to meet customer demand in the digital age. This agreement builds on 12 months of engineering work to integrate Chef’s IT automation platform withthe Microsoft stack, helping customers rapidly move Windows and Linux workloads to Azure.

According to research firm IDC, DevOps will be adopted (in either practice or discipline) by 80 percent of Global 1000 organizations by 2019 (IDC MaturityScape Benchmark: DevOps in the United States, Dec. 2014).

Working together, Chef and Microsoft will provide enterprises with the tools, skills, and guidance to make IT innovation more rapid and frequent within Azure. By automating both compute resources and applications, Chef enables developers and operations to best collaborate on rapidly delivering high-quality software and services.

“IT is shifting from being an infrastructure provider to becoming the innovation engine for the new software economy. Key elements of the new, high-velocity IT include automation, cloud, and DevOps,” said Barry Crist, CEO, Chef. “Our partnership with Microsoft is about bringing these elements to enterprises in all industries and geographies. This is a big investment for both Chef and Microsoft, bringing to bear the expertise and resources to transform IT into an innovation engine using Microsoft technology.”

“Microsoft is excited to extend our work with Chef to help customers rapidly move their workloads into the Azure cloud,” said Jason Zander, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure. “Through this collaboration, we are not only enabling faster time to innovation in the cloud, but we are also underscoring Microsoft’s commitment to providing a first-class cloud experience for our customers regardless of whether they are using Windows or Linux.”

Key components of the collaboration include:

  • Engineering Collaboration: Chef and Microsoft will further enhance native automation experiences for Azure, Visual Studio, and Windows PowerShell DSC users. Microsoft Open Technologies has its own collection of Chef Cookbooks, providing rock-solid code for automating the provisioning and management of compute and storage instances in Azure. 2015 will bring additional deliverables across Windows, Azure, and Visual Studio with a focus on empowering customers to automate heterogeneous workloads and easily migrate them to Azure.
  • Sales Training and Customer Support: Chef will deliver hundreds of hours of DevOps education in Microsoft’s expansive ecosystem across industry events, digital channels, and community meetups. Chef will work with Microsoft to enable their field sales organization to support customers embracing automation, DevOps practices, and Microsoft Azure. Microsoft users interested in Chef and DevOps can already access a wealth of content, new online training tutorial on the Windows platform and a webinar series on Automating Azure with Chef.

New Webinar: Automating the Microsoft Stack with Chef

On March 19th, Microsoft’s Kundana Palagiri and Chef’s Steven Murawski and Michael Ducy will showcase the technical integrations between Chef and Azure. This webinar will demonstrate real-world use cases, providing attendees with a step-by-step guide to achieving the benefits of Chef within Microsoft environments. Register today.

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