This blog was contributed by Natalia Mackevicius, Director, Azure Stack

Since the launch of Microsoft Azure Stack, we have been excited to see how customers and partners are unlocking new possibilities with hybrid cloud environments. At the same time, we have been working hard on incorporating customer feedback into the product roadmap. Today, we are excited to share with you some updates.

In mid-2018, Azure Stack will integrate with the Azure Government cloud, enabling connections to Azure Government identity, subscription, registration, billing, backup/DR, and Azure Marketplace.

Azure has always been hybrid by design, based on our decades of experience with enterprise customer requirements and challenges. A hybrid cloud helps organizations address requirements around regulations, connectivity, and latency, which is why many government agencies turn to a hybrid approach as the bedrock of their IT modernization strategy. Hybrid cloud allows government customers to seamlessly use and move between public cloud environments and their own infrastructure.

Azure Stack unlocks a wide range of hybrid cloud use cases for government customers:

Tactical edge solutions: Azure Stack is an extension of Azure, and government customers can leverage these powerful hybrid capabilities to bring core and advanced cloud services to the edge, whether it’s field office, tank or aircraft. With Azure Stack, it becomes possible to process data in the field without worrying about latency or internet connectivity, and then run aggregated analytics in Azure Government to get the most precise predictions and anomaly detections. In each of the scenarios, a hybrid cloud extends from enterprise to the tactical edge, which can be connected or offline or disconnected environments.

Intelligence gathering and analysis at the edge becomes possible with Azure Stack for real world scenarios like forward-deployed tactical units and platforms (i.e. afloat and other transport vehicles) using satellite or other transient means of communications.

Solutions for meeting regulatory requirements: Government customers can develop and deploy applications in Azure Government, with full flexibility to deploy on-premises using Azure Stack to meet specific data compliance, regulatory or policy requirements—using a common set of tools for developing, deploying and managing data and applications.

Government customers can use a combination of Azure Stack and Azure Government to support the full-spectrum of unclassified and classified data and special access programs and to support various data export policies, or seamlessly move between government cloud and on-premises environments. Azure Stack has been assessed for FedRAMP Moderate. For more information on the compliance assessments, please visit here.

One example where Azure Stack can help meet regulatory requirements is when government entities like embassies or military bases in foreign countries may not be able to use local cloud services for data or applications due to the data sovereignty laws.

Solutions for modernization requirements: Government customers can now modernize their on-premises legacy applications that are not ready for the public cloud due to cyber defense or any other requirements. Azure Stack brings a core set of Azure services – containers, Web apps, Serverless computing –  and microservices architecture on-premises to update and extend legacy applications.

Over time, such applications can be moved to Azure without making any change in code, DevOps tools, processes, or people skills. All this, while you focus on delivering services instead of deploying and maintaining the infrastructure or training.

What’s more, we have been working closely with our partners to deliver robust solutions.

“Cisco has data center solutions in most government agencies. As part of our overall, multi-cloud strategy we are excited about our partnership with Microsoft to offer Azure Stack as a converged infrastructure solution for government,” said Nick Michaelides, VP of U.S. Public Sector for Federal at Cisco.

“Dell EMC continues to work closely with government agencies and the public sector, helping them to transform the way they work to benefit the people they serve. With hybrid cloud being a key component to IT transformation, the Dell EMC Cloud for Microsoft Azure Stack offers a turnkey hybrid cloud solution that reduces risk and time to mission value, backed by Dell EMC services and support.” – Steve Harris, Senior Vice President, Federal Sales, Dell EMC

“The integration of Azure Stack with Azure Government, means that government customers now have the flexibility to move seamlessly between on-premises and public environments,” said Paul Miller, Vice President of Marketing, HPE Software-Defined and Cloud Group. “This will expand HPE’s partnership with Microsoft to deliver to these customers hybrid cloud solutions that include on- and off-premises Azure services with built-in security, integrated management, and pay-as-you-consume pricing. To help customers further understand this solution, HPE is featuring its HPE ProLiant for Microsoft Azure Stack at the Tech Summit exhibit with Microsoft.”

Learn more about Azure Stack and download Azure Stack Development Kit, a single server deployment that’s designed for trial and proof of concept purposes.

Learn more about Azure Stack integrated systems from our hardware partners.