Big Computing capabilities in the cloud have the power to transform many businesses and will be at the forefront of breakthrough experimentation and innovation in the decades to come.

Microsoft has announced the acquisition of Cycle Computing, which will help make it easier for Azure customers to use High Performance Computing (HPC) and other Big Computing capabilities in the cloud and help customers accelerate their movement to the cloud.

The cloud is quickly changing the world of Big Compute, giving customers the on-demand power and infrastructure necessary to run massive workloads at scale without the overhead. Azure has a massive global footprint and, more than any other major cloud provider. It also has powerful infrastructure, InfiniBand support for fast networking and state-of-the-art GPU capabilities. Combining the most specialized Big Compute infrastructure available in the public cloud with Cycle Computing’s technology and years of experience with the world’s largest supercomputers, has opened many new possibilities.

Cycle Computing makes optimizing Hybrid HPC workloads easier, and the process of bursting or migrating HPC clusters to the cloud more productive. It offers tools that help companies orchestrate and manage large-scale compute jobs across hybrid environments. Most importantly, by acquiring Cycle Computing, Microsoft can now leverage its expertise in extending and migrating Linux & Windows based HPC jobs to the cloud.

As customers continue to look for faster, more efficient ways to run their workloads, Cycle Computing’s depth and expertise around massively scalable applications make them a great fit for Microsoft’s larger objective.