Microsoft acquires cloud firm Cycle Computing
Vendor looking to poach clients from AWS and Google, says analyst
Microsoft has acquired cloud firm Cycle Computing in a move which it claims will make it easier for its customers to utilise high-performance computing in the cloud.
Formed in 2012, Cycle Computing leverages cloud resources to make big computing possible in the cloud on a large scale.
It's software is compatible with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform.
In a blog post, Azure corporate vice president Jason Zander said: "Combining the most specialised big compute infrastructure available in the public cloud with Cycle Computing's technology and years of experience with the world's largest supercomputers, we open up many new possibilities.
"Most importantly, Cycle Computing will help customers accelerate their movement to the cloud, and make it easy to take advantage of the most performant and compliant infrastructure available in the public cloud today.
As customers continue to look for faster, more efficient ways to run their workloads, Cycle Computing's depth and expertise around massively scalable applications make them a great fit to join our Microsoft team."
The move has been seen as something of a coup for Microsoft in its war with the other cloud providers, with Cycle Computing known to be an influential Amazon Web Services partner.
Georgina O'Toole, chief analyst at TechMarketView, said: "The view that this acquisition represents a coup for Microsoft is not even wholly based on Cycle's big compute and high-performance computing (HPC) capabilities.
"Although that's clearly a big element, Microsoft was already a Cycle Computing partner so was already utilising its orchestration software. It's more about the fact that Microsoft has acquired the opportunity to poach some customers from AWS and Google.
"This acquisition will help accelerate that progress by increasing its attractiveness for HPC projects, which are increasingly prevalent outside the scientific and research communities. There are, of course, other products on the market that do the same job as Cycle.