Azure Mythbusters: Azure Isn’t For Open Source

The text "Azure Mythbusters", to the left of an illustration of Bit the Raccoon.

In this edition of Azure Mythbusters, we’re taking a look at the “Azure Isn’t For Open Source” myth. There are three main reasons why some people believe this is the case:

Microsoft only supports Windows

It is true that when Azure was first created, it was called Windows Azure. Microsoft eventually rebranded it to Microsoft Azure because they wanted people to know that it isn’t just about Windows. When the cloud was first created, there was a lot of IaaS, Infrastructure as a Service workloads, so that’s what people thought about it. Azure has truly grown a lot since then.

Microsoft Azure is not for developers

The first thing to mention here is that Azure is an enabler. We want it to be an enabler, so all organisations can run their workloads on the cloud. So first thing’s first – let’s talk about code. If you work in Node, Ruby, Python or Go, you can bring it onto our cloud – we fully support it. We also want to enable workloads that are open source, so we have different flavours of Azure for different flavours of Linux. Docker and Kubernetes? All available in Azure, today.

Azure doesn’t support Linux OS or open source software

For the third point, be sure to watch the full video below:

In this first instalment of Azure Mythbusters season three, April Edwards takes a look at how Azure is for more than just Windows. For more information on using Azure with open source software, check out these useful resources: