Microsoft and HP’s partnership (called Frontline) was been ‘upgraded’ to jointly make and distribute Windows based server stacks.

There have been numerous recent partnership announcements (VMWare, Cisco & EMC for one – calling themselves the ‘Virtual Computing Environment Coalition’ – google vblocks for more info).

There are no configuration details as yet but it looks like it’ll be based on Proliant servers, procurve switches and Storageworks arrays and SANs – It appears an SQL server based stack will be the first frontline release.

There will be around 11,000 people working on the project from the two companies which is a huge investment from both companies.

Keep an eye on their Frontline alliance page: http://www.microsoft.com/business/enterprise/partners/hp_alliance/default.mspx