Macquarie Cloud debuts Australia-first hybrid offering

Macquarie Cloud Services has teamed up with Microsoft and Dell Technologies on Macquarie Flex, a hybrid cloud offering that makes it easier to migrate workloads between public and private clouds.

Billed as a first for Australia, Macquarie Flex – based on Microsoft Azure Stack HCI (hyper-converged infrastructure) and Dell’s Apex Cloud Platform for Microsoft Azure – is aimed at customers with an Azure-led strategy that want greater reach and flexibility, said Naran McClung, head of Azure at Macquarie Cloud Services.

McClung explained that Macquarie Flex caters to any workload that’s not suited to run natively on Azure. These include workloads that present compliance issues if run in a public cloud, retailing systems that require lower latency or that must be able to operate when disconnected from the outside world, and manufacturing and operational technology systems.

Macquarie Flex can be deployed on the customer’s premises or in Macquarie’s datacentres, and comes with 24x7 mission-critical support.

“Cost is not going to be a reason to not adopt the platform,” said McClung, adding that services on Macquarie Flex are cheaper than the cheapest equivalent on Azure – including reserved instances – and “the greater the scale, the greater the cost advantage”.

While Macquarie Flex offers an expansive set of Azure services, including virtual machines, databases, Kubernetes and virtual desktops, McClung said “it’s not the same service catalogue”, lacking, for example, certain microservices.

He summarised it as being suitable for infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and some platform-as-a-service (PaaS) workloads, noting that it caters to the requirements of organisations in the company’s sales pipeline.

Phil Barlow, Microsoft’s director of partner technologies, said Flex allows Macquarie to more deeply serve its customers by providing a single platform or service wherever their workloads are, adding that it is the first end-to-end offering from a managed service provider in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ).

Macquarie’s lower prices have not been part of the discussion between the two companies, he said. Rather, it is about serving customers with workloads that cannot be moved to the cloud at this time for reasons such as latency.

While there’s wide interest in the service, particular attention is coming from organisations that use virtual desktops, want to extend Azure into geographical regions that aren’t already served by Microsoft, or are covered by the requirements of the Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) Act.

McClung said while previously “hybrid cloud was just words”, Macquarie Flex takes disparate environments and puts a single operational layer across them. For example, virtual machines running on Flex appear in the Azure portal and can be managed as if they were running in the Azure cloud.

But “Flex doesn’t replace Azure – far from it,” McClung observed. And if workloads need to be moved from Flex to Azure or vice versa, Macquarie takes care of that as part of the service, with no additional charges. Indeed, the name Flex reflects this ability to place workloads anywhere without having to worry about bills for services.

However, at least one workload has to run on Azure, as Macquarie Flex has to connect to Azure at least once every 30 days.

One of the big advantages of Apex is that the software stack is updated on a four-hour cycle. “Dell does that best,” McClung said, pointing to the importance of promptly applying security-related updates.

Barlow said Microsoft also treats Apex systems like its own when it comes to updates, noting that having everything in lockstep provides customers with peace of mind.

Furthermore, Macquarie brings its Microsoft security expertise to bear across the hybrid environment. “That’s a standout for me,” said Barlow, as Macquarie can apply the same single security framework and set of services wherever clients choose to run their workloads.