At its Ignite 2019 conference, Microsoft announced the release of Azure Arc, a tool designed to allow developers to deploy Azure programs to Amazon and Google clouds.

Since Satya Nadella took over as CEO in 2014, Microsoft has taken a completely different approach to competitors. Rather than viewing other companies as the enemy and doing everything possible to keep users locked into the Windows ecosystem, the company has focused on making the best software possible and deploying it as widely as possible.

This approach has led to a renewed focus on Office for the Mac, industry-leading versions of the productivity suite for iOS and Android, not to mention the company reaching out to Linux developers for help in porting Edge. Now, as the cloud wars heat up, it appears Microsoft is taking that same all-embracing approach to competing cloud platforms. Azure Arc will not only help companies deploy their Azure programs, but also help them manage them regardless of where they are run from.

“Azure Arc enables Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure for unified management, governance and control across clouds, datacenters and edge. They look and feel just like Azure resources, and they provide unified auditing, compliance, and role-based access control across multiple environments and at scale.

“As a result, customers can modernize any infrastructure with cloud management and security protection. With cloud practices that work anywhere, Microsoft is delivering these resources, from cloud to datacenter to edge, and enabling cloud security anywhere.

“Millions of Azure resources are managed, governed, and secured daily by thousands of customers. With Azure Arc, customers can now take advantage of Azure’s robust cloud management experience for their own servers (Linux and Windows Server) and Kubernetes clusters by extending Azure management across environments. Customers can seamlessly inventory, organize, and govern their own resources at-scale through a consistent and unified experience through the Azure Portal.”

On the heels of news that Microsoft beat out Amazon for a lucrative defense contract, the Azure Arc announcement is further evidence the company is firing on all cylinders in its execution of Nadella’s strategy.