With new cloud-native, open-source startups offering cutting-edge IT services and architecture these days, it’s easy to start seeing legacy companies as old news. But we wouldn’t be where we are in technology today without the legacy companies, and the marriage of the time-tested standards with the new open-source world holds exciting potential. At least according to Hashir Abdi, principal software engineering manager at Microsoft.

Abdi said that Microsoft is committed to offering new OpenStack solutions together with the products that Microsoft is best known for without tying them to one or the other.

“If they want to migrate workloads from OpenStack to Azure [a Microsoft product], then our public cloud and our development resources are there, and we look forward to working with the community on any sort of cloud bursting or anything to Azure,” he said.

Microsoft tries to integrate into the open-source world

Abdi told Stu Miniman (@stu) and Brian Gracely (@bgracely), cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, that having worked mostly with opens-source technologies in the past, he was surprised when Microsoft decided to hire him.

“My background is primarily in startups,” he said. “Most of the software that I used before I joined Microsoft was open source.”

Abdi said that Microsoft is making a big effort to integrate into the open-source world, so it is hiring open-source experts like him to help. “They said, ‘Well, that’s precisely why we would like you to join up and help us.'”

Abdi added that Microsoft is developing integration drivers using cloud-based solutions. “Things are happening in a big way at Microsoft around open source.”

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of OpenStack Summit — Austin. And make sure to weigh in during theCUBE’s live coverage at the event by joining in on CrowdChat.

https://youtu.be/svKpSFTkKYg

Photo by SiliconANGLE