has validated ANY's I/Ps through a rigorous series of testing culminating in a partnership with ANY than why has MSFT not tendered an offer to buy ANY? Your post below states that there are sign offs involved in utilizing the MSFT logo and I agree. The mere fact that MSFT has validated ANY would send the share price in a more positive direction with other big names sitting up and taking notice.
That being said, I find it incredulous that a juggernaut in the industry such as MSFT has not captured ANY for themselves. A buyout should now be the next and final chapter in ANY's boardroom business now that validation has been successful by as you state "the largest software Co in the world". Let us hope that in the coming new year there will be several serious suitors willing to buy ANY. This will hopefully create a feeding frenzy now that numerous large players are aware of ANY's capabilities being validated.
.... So let's combine that with the FACT, that Microsoft has to sign off on all PRs or marketing material where they are mentioned or their logo is used...along withe the remote notion the largest software Co in the world would know how to evaluate the truth in whether GW can containerise applications.
As one of our former presidents once said in court, it depends on what the definition of "is" is. I find the term "containerization" unclear when compared to the prevailing definition.
Like many here, I'm not a tech expert, but for example:
Containerization vs. Virtualization via Traditional Hypervisors
The foundation for containerization lies in the LinuX Containers (LXC) format, which is a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. As a result, containerization only works in Linux environments and can only run Linux applications.
This is in contrast with traditional hypervisors like VMware's ESXi, Xen or KVM, wherein applications can run on Windows or any other operating system that supports the hypervisor. Another key difference with containerization as opposed to traditional hypervisors is that containers share the Linux kernel used by the operating system running the host machine, which means any other containers running on the host machine will also be using the same Linux kernel.
Besides, it appears Microsoft is working on its own containerization technology:
Docker Not the Only Containerization Option
Docker may have been the first to bring attention to containerization, but it's no longer the only container system option. CoreOS recently released a streamlined alternative to Docker called Rocket.
And Canonical, developers of the Ubuntu Linux-based operating system, has announced the LXD containerization engine for Ubuntu, which will also be integrated with OpenStack.
Microsoft is working on its own containerization technology called Drawbridge, which will likely be featured in Windows Server and Azure in the future. And Spoon is another Windows alternative that will enabled containerized applications to be run on any Windows machine that has Spoon installed, regardless of the underlying infrastructure.
Where does that leave GW with Drawbridge and others? Where is the competitive advantage in play? I tried searching in the past to no avail.