Microsoft strongly believes organizations benefit from using public cloud services mixed with their on premise infrastructure. Connecting on premise with public clouds will give organizations much more efficiency, cost reduction, scalability and agility compared to making use of just an on premise infrastructure. Steve Ballmer, former CEO of Microsoft, called it the power of AND.

Microsoft translated their vision on hybrid cloud computing into a marketing campaign in which they mention the Microsoft Cloud OS.

Microsoft Cloud OS is not a product. It is a vision, strategy that is delivered by services and products. The most important ones are:

These solutions are either running on premise, in Azure data centers, or in data centers run by service providers. The combination of those solutions is the power of AND. The three locations where IT services can be running is a very important part of the vision.

On-premises infrastructures enable control by the IT department. Microsoft Azure enables the cost-effective usage of an unlimited capacity. Service providers offer public cloud services so that customers have a choice of which provider to use, thereby preventing a vendor lock in. Service providers also provide customer intimacy.

So, IaaS services like that of Azure will not be offered by Microsoft exclusively. Any service provider will be able to deliver IaaS with the Azure look and feel and features in their data center. This allows customers to switch from Microsoft Azure to another service provider without changes in the application, data, management, knowledge, and procedures.

Vendor lock-in is pretty much taken away by this. The solution that enables this, that is, Microsoft Azure Pack, will be discussed in the next chapter.