Helion cloud soon gone, HPE aligns with Microsoft Azure

Both HPE and Microsoft are struggling to keep up with the Amazon AWS juggernaut. HP tried to run its own Helion public cloud then decided to kill Helion in January 2016,

During HP’s quarterly earnings call with investors, CEO Meg Whitman said Azure will be HPE’s “preferred” public cloud provider.  

"Microsoft Azure will become a preferred public cloud partner. HPE will serve as a preferred provider of Microsoft infrastructure and services for its hybrid cloud offerings. Overall, the move to a hybrid cloud environment presents a significant growth opportunity for us and you can expect to hear more about our approach in the coming months,” she said.

For Microsoft, pairing up with HPE could be a win. Azure's hybrid design doesn't force users to make a total commitment -- workloads can be run locally, remotely, or in a mix of the two, and with as little or as much data and work held in the cloud as desired. Yet as the whole industry is moving toward open source an ecosystem that is predominantly based on proprietary Microsoft technologies would at a disadvantage.