Microsoft Corp. and Red Hat Inc. are joining forces to make it easier for companies to adopt containers, the portable software wrappers for applications so they can run in multiple computers in the cloud.

The collaboration, which was made public today, expands upon the partnership that the two tech giants had struck in 2015 to turn their long-running rivalry into productive co-opetition. The first leg saw Microsoft make Red Hat Enterprise Linux available on its Azure public cloud alongside Windows Server. Now, support for Windows Server Containers will be added to Red Hat’s strategically important OpenShift application platform.

The latter offering enables companies to create an environment where their engineers can build and run containerized applications with relative ease. OpenShift provides connectors for popular coding tools to ease development, while a complementary deployment tool makes it possible to launch a new workload with a few clicks. From there, the platform employs the popular Kubernetes framework to orchestrate the containers that make up each application.

OpenShift has so far only supported Linux environments. The addition of Microsoft’s container flavor into the mix will enable companies to manage their Linux and Windows containers through the same console.

That’s significant because many, if not most, large enterprises rely on multiple server operating systems. Enabling centralized container management should enhance the appeal of OpenShift while improving Microsoft’s position with the same stroke. Specifically, giving Windows Server customers access to new automation features will put the platform in a better position against Linux, which is currently the default choice for container projects.

A similar motivation lies behind the other major highlight of today’s partnership. Microsoft will work with Red Hat to bring OpenShift Dedicated, a fully managed edition of the toolkit, to Azure. The offering has previously only been offered for Amazon Web Services Inc. and Google’s rivaling public clouds.

The OpenShift integrations are expected to roll out next year. In the shorter term, Microsoft plans to make its popular SQL Server database available on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and bring latter platform to Azure Stack systems. Launched last month, the appliance series enables companies to run Azure services in their private data centers.

The partnership with Red Hat is part of a broader plan by Microsoft that has also seen it collaborate with other key members of the Linux ecosystem. In July, for instance, the company added Ubuntu to the Windows Store.

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