Microsoft has leveraged its continuously expanding worldwide network of data centers to create Azure cloud, a platform for creating, deploying, and managing services and applications anywhere. Azure provides an ever-expanding array of tools and services designed to fulfill all your needs through one convenient, easy-to-manage Platform. Azure sums up the cloud competence to your existing network through its benefits, such as the Platform as a Service (PaaS) model. Either option provides secure, optimized, reliable access to your cloud-hosted data—one built on Microsoft’s proven architecture. Below are some capabilities Microsoft provides through Azure cloud and tips for determining if the Microsoft cloud is the correct choice for your organization.
What can Azure cloud do?
With more Azure services added daily, Microsoft’s cloud continues to grow. Including: Providing virtual services (Vent) and delivering applications or services to a global audience is possible with all the necessary elements (Vent):
Virtual machines
- Azure Virtual Machines are on-demand computing services or virtual machines offered by Microsoft Azure which falls under the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud category to get control over the environment to customize and optimize the development environment or hosting.
- Within minutes, you can create Microsoft or Linux virtual machines (VMs) from a wide selection of marketplace templates or your custom machine images.
- As if they were hosted in your own data center, your integrations and services will be hosted on these cloud-based virtual machines.
SQL databases
- Microsoft is enhancing its Azure SQL Database by adding various functionalities to make it more intelligent than it already is.
- Using Azure, you can create an unlimited number of SQL relational databases.
- As a result, you will save a lot of money on hardware, software, and in-house expertise.
Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS)
- Group policy, authentication, and everything else can be managed remotely with this service for Azure based on Windows Active Directory technology.
- Several clicks are all it takes to move an existing security structure to the cloud.
- Active Directory Domain Services (ADDS) are the vital functions in Active Directory that supervise users and computer authentication and allow system admins to organize the data into logical hierarchies.
Azure App Service
- With Azure cloud, creating and globally deploying web applications compatible with all popular web and mobile platforms is easy.
- Scalable, Reliable cloud access lets you respond quickly to your organization, saving money and time. With the introduction of Azure Web Application to the Azure Marketplace, it is easier than ever to manage the production, testing, managing, and deployment of web applications that expand as quickly as your business.
- Development is greatly accelerated by prebuilt APIs for popular cloud services like Office 365, Salesforce, and others.
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) is what Azure Application Service offers. Therefore, your business application and its data are only your responsibility.
Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)
- Microsoft Visual Studio (VSTS) is an Application Lifecycle Management system that resolves the entire project team to capture Requirements, Traditional /Agile Project Planning framework, Work Item handling, Version Control, Building, Deployment, and manual testing of a single platform.
- Azure allows developers to collaborate from anywhere worldwide, track code changes, and load and test applications. Whether a company is growing or building a service portfolio, Visual Studio team services simplify the development and delivery of services.
- Azure team tools are an add-on service in Visual Studio that allows for a complete application lifecycle management (ALM) solution.
Azure cloud storage service
- Azure storage is a cloud storage service for modern data storage scenarios reported in the Microsoft Azure documentation.
- Azure cloud storage supports various clients, such as .NET, Ruby, and Java for REST, and access from multiple Windows and Linux operating systems.
- Microsoft has a global infrastructure to provide safe and secure, highly accessible data storage. In Microsoft Azure, you can build flexible pricing through scalability and pay-as-you-go pricing that lets you store frequently accessed data at reduced costs.
Why are people trusting their workloads to the Microsoft Azure cloud?
On-premise data centers are said to be doomed. As mainframes and dial-up modems before them, self-hosted data centers are disappearing as cloud solutions become increasingly available and affordable. Several key players have emerged in the cloud service market, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM, and Apple’s ubiquitous iCloud, which stores hundreds of millions of smartphone users’ photo memories and song preferences, among other information. What makes companies like 3M, BMW, and GE move workloads to Microsoft Azure when so many different options exist? Here are just some of the reasons:
Flexibility
- You can dynamically scale up and down your data storage capacity with the Microsoft Azure cloud. The static data center would require provisioning, purchasing, and deploying updated hardware and operating systems before it could be equipped to meet IT demands.
- This modern feasibility makes Azure a tempting and optimized solution for organizations of any size.
- If developers anticipate an increase in traffic and data volume after deploying an application in the cloud, they can instantly increase their computing and storage resources.
Pay-As-you-Go service model (PAYG)
- Payment for cloud computing using a pay-as-you-go model (PAYG) is based on usage. Using only the necessary tools, the practice is similar to paying utility bills. Thanks to Azure’s massive Infrastructure and expertise, our annual IT budget can be slashed by head-turning percentages.
- The pay-as-you-go (PAYG) model has the advantage of reducing waste. The customer only pays for those services the organization uses, rather than those that might not be used.
- With Azure solutions, you can add and scale Infrastructure faster and more efficiently; they also make it cheaper. Routing systems, load balancers, and other devices can add up to thousands or even dollars in hardware costs. IT expertise is also required to operate this equipment, leading to significant payroll expenses.
Disaster recovery
- Sometimes the unthinkable becomes the very expeditious reality. Another advantage of Microsoft Azure lies in its high-speed and geographically decentralized Infrastructure, which creates several options for disaster recovery plans. Ensure that your critical data and application can run from redundant sites during the recovery periods that last minutes or hours, despite days. Lost time is lost business and capital, and with Azure, you can guarantee continuous delivery of services even when disaster strikes.
- Almost two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies choose Microsoft Azure solutions due to its extensive Infrastructure, consistency in application development, and influence on the global IT market. But the infinite scalability of Azure makes it just as suitable for personal use.
- It creates replicas of computer systems synchronized through a near-real-time data replication process. It provides application-consistent snapshots, ensuring data is usable after a failover.
Gain Full Visibility into Azure cloud with the Unified Logs and Metrics
- Making your network and applications work requires processing enormous amounts of data. Even though Azure comes with a native logging and analytics tool, this is not the case. Cloud data must be considered in terms of volume, velocity, and variety. Microsoft partner Sumo Logic makes managing that data simple.
- Sumo Logic consolidates logs and metrics across Microsoft environments, whether structured, unstructured, or semi-structured. You are notified when abnormalities and deviations from standard activity patterns are detected using statistical algorithms.
- Use Log Reduce, Log Compare, and Outlier Detection to detect operational and security issues sooner.
- You can comprehensively view your applications and data by importing real-time machine data and rendering it into interactive visualizations via Microsoft Azure Audit, Azure Web Apps, Windows Server Active Directory, Internet Information Services (IIS), and Windows Performance integrations.
- As well as the expensive hardware and hordes of local technicians, the on-premise data center may disappear. It will be relatively easy to invest in cloud capabilities such as Microsoft Azure to tackle tomorrow’s bold technology challenges.
Conclusion
Enterprises across the globe realize great success with business solutions powered by the Azure cloud. They preconceive how they do business with secure & scalable cloud-enabled enterprise applications. Around the world, 90% of Fortune 500 + companies use Microsoft Azure cloud to drive their business smoothly. Using deeply integrated and optimized Azure cloud services, an organization can quickly build, deploy, secure, and manage simple to complex applications. Azure supports various programming languages, operating systems, databases, and devices, allowing organizations to leverage tools and technologies they trust. Azure has rapidly enhanced its services and tools daily, making Azure Cloud better than any other cloud platform.
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