Microsoft has joined the MariaDB Foundation as a platinum sponsor, helping promote the technology and support continuity and collaboration among the open source community.
Azure was also created to promote open source environments and this latest announcement will continue to do that, offering customers the ability to run the apps they want to, including MySQL and MariaDB databases on their Linux and Windows hosts, according to Microsoft.
"Joining the MariaDB Foundation as a Platinum member is a natural next step in Microsoft's open source journey," said Rohan Kumar, general manager for Database Systems at Microsoft.
"In addition to Microsoft Azure's strong support for open source technologies, developers can use their favourite database as a fully managed service on Microsoft Azure that will soon include MariaDB."
The MariaDB Foundation added that Microsoft's involvement as a platinum sponsor means it can continue to innovate and help MariaDB become the primary MYSQL database choice in Linux distributions. It will also help Microsoft learn about the technology and the MariaDB Foundation said it will support the company in this mission.
"We have already already seen an influx of patches from Microsoft that improves MariaDB's compatibility on Windows. This further helps drive MariaDB adoption on all possible platforms," added Otto Keklinen, CEO of the MariaDB Foundation.
Microsoft told attendees at its Connect developer conference it will soon offer a preview of Azure Database for MariaDB, which will be fully-managed and cloud-hosted.
At the same conference in 2016, Microsoft announced it would be joining the Linux Foundation.
