A lot of organizations have resources spread across multiple datacenters and other public clouds -- all managed by different management tool sets. Azure Arc bridges these distributed environments across on-premises, edge, and multi-cloud into a unified central management plane in Azure. The resources need not be migrated or moved to a common directory service to be managed, they simply stay where they are. This means that users can now manage and operate all their existing and new IT resources consistently and at-scale, wherever they reside, from Azure. After they are under Azure Arc management, resources such as Windows and Linux servers, SQL server instances, and Kubernetes clusters can be organized, governed, and secured centrally at scale. This also includes running Azure services anywhere on the infrastructure to benefit from the cloud.

To unpack this a bit more, Azure Arc-enabled infrastructure enables you to connect your resources, which live outside of Azure today, and operate them as if they were native Azure resources, using the same management tools and services that Azure provides.

With Azure Arc-enabled services, you have the flexibility to deploy fully managed Azure services anywhere – on-premises or in other public clouds -- so you can take advantage of cloud benefits everywhere, such as scalability, fast deployment, and always up-to-date cloud innovation. Importantly, you can initiate and manage these deployments right from the Azure Portal. Arc enabled infrastructure makes it possible to manage the multi-cloud data center and edge devices under a single plane of glass.