VARs to cash in as IBM and Microsoft cosy up in the cloud

Duo to offer respective offerings on each other's cloud platforms

IBM and Microsoft have claimed their channel partners are among those set to cash in on a new deal they have struck to host each other's offerings on their respective cloud platforms.

From today, IBM Cloud will be home to some Microsoft enterprise software, and the latter's Azure platform will host a range of Big Blue's wares too.

The tech giant duo claim the move will help their channel partners, developers and clients drive new business opportunities, spur innovation and reduce costs, as well as give them more choice and flexibility.

As part of the deal, IBM middleware such as WebSphere Liberty, MQ and DB2 will be available on Microsoft Azure, and Windows Server and SQL Server will be offered on IBM Cloud.

IBM is also set to expand support of its software running Windows Server Hyper-V and IBM's Pure Application Service will be available on Azure.

Microsoft's cloud and enterprise boss Scott Guthrie said the new partnership will help enterprises reap the benefits of cloud.

"Microsoft is committed to helping enterprise customers realise the tremendous benefits of cloud computing across their own systems, partner clouds and Microsoft Azure," he said.

"With this agreement more customers will be able to take advantage of the hyper-scale, enterprise performance and hybrid capabilities of Azure."