With more than 1 million views of our fireside chats, we’re inspired by the tremendous opportunity to connect those within the community—customers, partners, and technology enthusiasts everywhere. Whether you engage in the live ask-the-experts sessions, watch the deep-dive skilling videos, or join us for fireside chats—the Azure team and I are delighted and humbled by your participation and enthusiasm for Inside Azure for IT. 

In our third episode, we talk about some of our Linux and open source-related partnerships, product innovation, and initiatives, plus how that helps customers and communities. To those who think of Azure as “mostly Windows cloud,” it may be surprising to learn that more than 60 percent of Azure customer compute cores are Linux-based, and that Linux virtual machine (VM) cores are growing faster than those based on Windows.

My own career has mirrored Microsoft’s evolution of how we think about, contribute to, and consume Linux and open source. For example, I’ve gone from being solely focused on Windows and Windows Server, to learning how to contribute upstream to make Linux run great on Hyper-V, to now, where open source and Linux are core to the development of Azure.

In this episode, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes peek at Microsoft’s approach, and how we've brought together customers, partners, and communities to innovate and collaborate across open-source technologies.

Innovate with Open Source and Linux on Azure

The episode is divided into three separate segments so you can watch them individually on-demand at your convenience.

Part one: Microsoft and Red Hat on simplifying cloud adoption with joint innovation on Azure with Linux

In this segment, you’ll hear from Red Hat about partnering with Microsoft and how it helps customers with their cloud modernization and migration journey. Mike Evans, VP, Technical Business Development, and Xavier Lecauchois, Sr. Director Ansible Cloud Services, from Red Hat join me to chat about the strategy and the latest innovation, the Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform on Azure. Watch: Simplifying cloud adoption with joint innovation on Azure with Linux.

Part two: Brendan Burns and Krishna Ganugapati on safeguarding workloads with Mariner—Microsoft’s internal Linux distro

Delivering reliable Azure services to customers faster is the driving force behind the creation of Mariner, Microsoft’s own Linux distro. Join me, as I chat with Krishna Ganugapati, VP of Software Engineering, Edge OS, and Brendan Burns, CVP, Azure Cloud Native on why the Azure team created Mariner and how it’s benefiting customers and Microsoft engineers. Watch: Safeguarding workloads with Mariner—Microsoft Azure’s own internal Linux distro.

Part three: Microsoft's Sarah Novotny on working together with open source communities to drive innovation

Open source connects developers around the world, providing ways to collaborate and innovate collectively. Join Sarah Novotny, Director of Open-source Strategy for Azure as we chat about running open-source technologies in the cloud, how the relationship between IT and developers enables open-source innovation, Microsoft’s leadership and contributions to help secure open-source software, and her unique background in the open-source community. Watch: Developing in the open and working together to drive innovation.

Stay current with Inside Azure for IT

Beyond this latest episode, there are many more technical and cloud-skilling resources available through Inside Azure for IT. Learn more about empowering an adaptive IT environment with best practices and resources designed to enable productivity, digital transformation, and innovation. Take advantage of technical training videos and learn about implementing these scenarios.

• Register for Azure Open Source Day to watch live on February 15, 2022, 9:00 AM to 10:30 AM Pacific Time or on-demand later.
• Get started by learning about Linux on Azure.
• See our schedule for Ask the product experts live.
• Watch part one: Microsoft and Red Hat on simplifying cloud adoption with joint innovation on Azure with Linux.
• Watch part two: Brendan Burns and Krishna Ganugapati on safeguarding workloads with Mariner—Microsoft Azure’s own internal Linux distro.
• Watch part three: Microsoft’s Sarah Novotny on developing in the open and working together to drive innovation.