Microsoft’s recognition as a Leader in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure marks the fourth consecutive year that Azure Local has earned this distinction, underscoring Microsoft’s continued commitment to helping organizations modernize and manage infrastructure across hybrid, edge, and multi-cloud environments.
As businesses increasingly seek greater flexibility, resilience, and data sovereignty, Azure Local provides a consistent Azure experience wherever applications and data reside. Combined with Azure Arc’s unified management and governance capabilities, Azure Local enables organizations to seamlessly operate on-premises, edge, and cloud resources through a single control plane.
Recent innovations, including support for fully disconnected operations, enhanced scalability through disaggregated storage architectures, and new sovereign AI capabilities, further strengthen Azure Local as a platform for building and operating modern distributed infrastructure.
Gartner cited the following as strengths for Azure Local:
- Unified single-product architecture: Unlike other public cloud providers that offer fragmented products for edge, data center and sovereign environments, Microsoft streamlines hybrid cloud with Azure Local as a single unified DHI platform.
- Market traction: Microsoft’s DHI solution continues to build significant momentum, with its installed base growing rapidly and evidence of increasing interest from Gartner clients.
- Flexible HCI and disaggregated architecture: Azure Local now supports both hyper-converged and disaggregated architecture. Customers can scale compute and storage independently and use existing enterprise storage to accommodate a range of needs, from small edge sites to large data center environments.
