Microsoft expands hybrid cloud solution StorSimple for smaller enterprises

Microsoft has taken a bit of a different approach to offering cloud solutions for enterprise. Hybrid cloud solutions, where some storage is held in the cloud, but leaving some critical data stored on premises, means that Microsoft cloud users can control their data while gaining some of the cost and access improvements offered by cloud solutions. StorSimple is one of those offerings, allowing enterprises to take advantage of economical cloud storage for inactive data, but keeping critical data on-prem.
Now, Microsoft is expanding StorSimple to make it easier for companies to take advantage of the hybrid cloud, and extends it to smaller enterprises.  Microsoft’s StorSimple Virtual Array allows customers to run StorSimple in Hyper-V or VMWare virtual machines, cutting hardware costs and making it easier to deploy in small enterprises with minimal IT staffs.
Another new StorSimple update introduces “StorSimple 8000 Series Update 2” (you go with the naming, Microsoft! Steve Ballmer would be so proud!), which provide local volumes, either in hardware or virtualization, so that some local high demand workloads can take place without introducing any Azure or cloud based latencies. For hardware requirements, Microsoft is also introducing the StorSimple Cloud Appliance, updated to use SSD for its local storage tier, updating performance.
You can learn more about StorSimple from its Microsoft website.