Microsoft looks to boost HPC with Avere Systems acquisition

Microsoft has announced its intention to acquire Avere Systems to boost its high-performance computing (HPC) efforts, specifically in the media and entertainment world.

Explaining that businesses are increasingly looking for ways to use HPC, Redmond said the technology is applicable to various industries - from creating movie special effects to cancer research.

"By bringing together Avere's storage expertise with the power of Microsoft's cloud, customers will benefit from industry-leading innovations that enable the largest, most complex high-performance workloads to run in Microsoft Azure," said Jason Zander, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure.

"We are excited to welcome Avere to Microsoft, and look forward to the impact their technology and the team will have on Azure and the customer experience."

Avere's file system and caching technologies will help Microsoft's customers run high-intensity workloads that are capable of concurrent processing of millions of datapoints, the firms said.

"Avere and Microsoft both recognise that there are many ways for Enterprises to leverage data centre resources and the cloud," Ron Bianchini, president and CEO of Avere Systems, said. "Our shared vision is to continue our focus on all of Avere's use cases - in the datacentre, in the cloud and in hybrid cloud storage and cloud bursting environments. Tighter integration with Azure will result in a much more seamless experience for our customers."

Another important thing to note is that the acquisition will further boost Microsoft's hybrid offerings, allowing businesses to use the cloud while keeping their data on-premise.

Customers taking advantage of the tie-up will soon be able to use Avere's data centre storage software and hardware on Azure. However, Avere said its existing customers can also benefit from the tighter integration too.

Neither company has revealed exactly when the deal will close, nor have they explained what will happen to Avere's staff.