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What is Windows Azure and what are its benefits?

Today, large companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, which have extensive experience in managing large data centers, offer their customers the ability to “rent” data. This is great news for companies that want to focus on their core business application and not worry about the underlying platform. Microsoft’s cloud platform offering is called Windows Azure.

Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s premier cloud platform, has contributed to significant revenue growth for Microsoft since its launch in 2010, coinciding with the company’s ongoing transition to the cloud market by forming strategic partnerships with leaders in the cloud like Salesforce.com. Not only does Azure have strong platform as a service (PaaS) capabilities, but the solution is currently the only major cloud platform that is a leader in infrastructure as a service (IaaS), as ranked by Gartner. Forbes recently predicted that Azure’s annual revenue would be close to $ 2.3 billion.

Azure is gaining traction as the cloud infrastructure of choice for many IT professionals. Here are some of the reasons these professionals are turning to Azure as their cloud platform of choice, and perhaps why your organization should consider doing so as well:

Cost savings and rapid scalability

With a model like Windows Azure, companies only have to pay for the resources their applications use. If a company needs to increase its number of users or its data storage, for example, Microsoft can simply adjust its rate, making it extremely convenient and scalable. With this “pay-as-you-go” approach, companies only pay for the amount of space they need, rather than having to pay for empty storage in the maximum amount that they may never use.

Reliability

In addition to cost savings and rapid scalability, another advantage of Windows Azure and the IaaS / PaaS model is reliability. Windows Azure services are delivered from cloud data centers that have multiple built-in redundancies. If one server fails, one company’s applications will automatically run on another server in the data center.

Easy updates

Microsoft Azure supports many different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including specific Microsoft and third-party software and systems. New web applications and updates can easily be added.

Tightly integrated with other Microsoft tools

For organizations that rely on Microsoft tools like SharePoint (which was recently ranked the # 1 platform for business collaboration), Office 365, and Outlook, it makes sense to invest in a cloud platform that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft products. Organizations can also use the same virtual machines in Azure that they use locally, such as Windows and Linux, further simplifying operations. Many industry experts expect Azure to see slow but steady adoption due to this ability to offer users a seamless, fully integrated package of services.

IaaS and PaaS

Azure has an attractive mix of IaaS (managed) and PaaS (unmanaged) services. IaaS allows companies to outsource their cloud computing infrastructure and pay only for what they use. PaaS allows companies to create their own web applications and / or software without having to purchase and maintain the underlying infrastructure. This enables organizations to customize their cloud software, like Office 365 for example, to meet their exact specifications and requirements. Because Azure is the industry leader in both categories, businesses can create, deploy, and manage applications faster and easier.

Strong BI and analytics support

Azure provides SQL and NoSQL managed data services and built-in support to drill down into data and discover key insights to improve business processes and decision making. Specifically, organizations can leverage their SQL Server in the cloud and can use HDInsight, Microsoft Azure’s Apache Hadoop-based cloud service, to build Hadoop clusters to analyze data more deeply.

Azure has a fully integrated delivery pipeline

Once you start to compare the benefits of Azure from a business perspective, you realize that there are many elements beyond mere storage.

From an architecture perspective, you really need a unified delivery pipeline – here is Azures:

  • Control source

  • Unit Exam

  • Integration testing

  • Delivery

  • Go live tools

While it can be argued that assigning specific workloads to different environments can sometimes be advantageous. There is great continuity and reduces the risk of integration failures when all tools are available under one umbrella.

It means that in the case of product updates or any other changes, Azure can guarantee [to a high degree] that your pipeline is designed accordingly, creating a compelling business case.

Disaster recovery in Azure

Since data is transferred globally, it is important that vendors have built-in disaster recovery and disaster recovery capabilities. They have regional and global failover options, hot and cold standby models, as well as continuous restart capabilities that work out of the box. These capabilities put them far beyond the simple, old-fashioned storage option. While this may not be a daily problem for a business, it is definitely something you can know for sure is happening in the background.

Let us know which Microsoft Azure business benefit was the most interesting below. If you want more information or need help, please contact us.

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