Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft's Worldwide Commercial Business, speaks with reporters and analysts before the Ignite conference in Atlanta. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)
Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business, speaks with reporters and analysts before the Ignite conference in Atlanta. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

At its annual Ignite technology conference in Atlanta today, Microsoft announced the availability next month of System Center 2016 and Windows Server 2016, which the company said includes native support for containers through an expanded partnership with Docker. The company also announced a new version of System Center and several Azure-related developments.

“We are increasing our partnership with Docker, the container technology inherent in Windows Server 2016, which allows for embracing any technology built in the Docker environment to run natively in Windows Server 2016, as well as in Azure,” said Judson Althoff, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business organization, during a media briefing in advance of this morning’s public announcements at the conference.

Microsoft Azure chief Scott Guthrie. (GeekWire File Photo)
Microsoft Azure chief Scott Guthrie. (GeekWire File Photo)

Despite a movement to the cloud, Windows Server remains an important product. Azure chief Scott Guthrie, who is delivering the Ignite keynote this morning, earlier this month said that Windows Server “is a mature market, for sure, but there’s still a lot of innovations we’re able to provide.”

System Center 2016, a data center-management tool, “gets the advancements of new security capabilities and broader administrative capabilities,” Althoff said.

In addition, Microsoft is preparing to release the second technical preview of Azure Stack, software designed to let customers run Azure inside their own data centers. “We’ve had a very successful run with our first technical preview and are broadening it,” Althoff said. Technical Preview 1 of Azure Stack, released in July, disappointed many developers because it runs only on Microsoft-selected hardware, which means existing data-center hardware might have to be jettisoned to use it — an unwelcome and expensive proposition.

In addition, Althoff said Microsoft is announcing “the foundation of what we call the AI supercomputer. We’re announcing technology called field-programmable gate arrays. This allows you to effectively soft-program hardware to dramatically scale the network and network throughput. This is technology that will bring a strategic performance to Azure that is superior to anything else available.”

FPGAs are is an integrated circuits designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturing – hence “field-programmable.” The technology dates back to the 1980s. Wired has an inside look at the Microsoft initiative, which dates back at least six years.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.