SAN FRANCISCO – Microsoft finally joined hyperscaler rivals Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google inside of VMware’s ambitiously titled Cloud Universal program, bringing the flexible purchasing model to Azure customers.

The link will allow Azure customers to purchase the combined Azure VMware platform through the VMware pricing program. This includes purchasing credits for VMware’s multicloud infrastructure and management toward deploying the Azure VMware product.

VMware initially launched Cloud Universal in early 2021. It was first tied to AWS, which has been VMware’s admitted preferred public cloud provider. It added Google Cloud Platform (GCP) support earlier this year.

The pricing model is designed to provide users with payment options. This includes the ability to purchase credits for branded multicloud infrastructure and management – Azure in this instance – and apply these credits once upfront, and then consume any of the eligible subscription services offered at any time during the contract.

VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram explained during a keynote at this week’s VMware Explore 2022 event that this flexibility allows Cloud Universal customers to “go crazy” in how they deploy and manage their cloud infrastructure.

“You can choose to have the flexibility to build your applications on-prem, move it to the cloud, build it on one cloud, run it on another cloud, go crazy,” Raghuram said, adding that the vendor will continue to update the platform to integrate other cloud partners.

Microsoft this week also updated the Azure VMware platform with integration into NetApp Files datastores, which allows for storage scaling past what a customer might have natively on VMware’s vSAN platform. It also pushed its Jetstream disaster recovery service and VMware vRealize Log Insight Cloud support for the platform to general availability.

The Azure VMware platform is now available in 24 Azure regions worldwide.

The two vendors initially unveiled their Azure VMware platform in mid-2020, which built on a previous alignment between Microsoft and VMware’s then parent company Dell Technologies. It allows users to migrate their existing on-premises VMware applications to Azure without needing to re-architect them first.

VMware initially tied the platform to AWS, before adding GCP support in early 2020.

Read all of SDxCentral’s VMware Explore 2022 coverage here.