Two major players in the tech industry, Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, announced on Tuesday that they are working on a partnership in the cloud platform market. HP will provide new hardware products for Microsoft to integrate into its Azure cloud platform.

In a statement released by HP, the company said, "Bringing together industry leading HPE ProLiant technology and Microsoft Azure innovation, the jointly engineered solution brings Azure services to customers' datacenters, empowering users to choose where and how they want to leverage the cloud. An Azure management portal enables business users to self-deploy Windows and Linux workloads, while ensuring IT ha central oversight."

Like Us on Facebook

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is yet to confirm whether it will sell hardware aside from selling the Microsoft cloud product to its customers. What is clear from the partnership is that HP will give up its interest in the cloud business and essentially focus as a partner to Microsoft.

HP's decision to partner with Microsoft followed the company's announcement that it will retire its Helion public cloud on Jan. 31. It is still unclear whether Hewlett Packard Enterprise will only deal with Azure or it has plans to incorporate other cloud service like Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services, according to Computer World.

Many tech experts have noted that HP's decision to partner with Microsoft is an excellent choice. Microsoft may not be the leader in the cloud market - that honor goes to Amazon Web Services - but the company has enterprise credibility.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is not the first third-party company to partner with Microsoft in terms of providing hardware for a hybrid cloud platform. In November, Dell and Microsoft announced the joint project called Microsoft Cloud Platform System Standard for Dell hardware. The project is a scaled version of the Microsoft Cloud Platform System Premium for Dell hardware which was announced in 2014. Prior to Dell's partnership with Microsoft, the former was building its own public cloud infrastructure but ultimately scrapped its plans, according to Venture Beat.

TagsHP, Microsoft HPE, Microsoft HP, Microsoft Azure, Hewlett Packard, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Cloud Platform, cloud business