Looking to learn more about Microsoft Azure, including how your company could benefit from it and best utilize its service offerings? Then you’re in the right place!
What is Microsoft Azure?Azure is a cloud computing platform that can provide everything a business needs to run all or part of its computing operations virtually—including servers, storage, databases, networking, analytics and more.
Is Microsoft Azure for you? Businesses small or large, all find value in using the public cloud, and many of them are choosing Azure. In fact, Azure is used by 85% of Fortune 500 companies. It also appeals to many small and medium-sized businesses. One reason for this is that it helps SMBs avoid huge capital outlays for equipment; it also removes the burden of upgrades and maintenance, as smaller organizations may not have in-house experts readily available to provide support. As Azure is highly customizable it provides increased flexibility that businesses simply wouldn’t have with a traditional on-premise datacenter.
Microsoft Azure Features & Benefits
Disaster Recovery With Azure, your business gains a strong disaster recovery solution—one that also comes with a more affordable price tag than those associated with traditional computing environments. With Azure, you get access to
- Multiple datacentres for data storage – Which allows you to position a cloud service to different locations around the world.
- Azure Site Recovery – A service that helps ensure your critical business applications stay online during an outage or disruption by replicating those workloads from a primary site to a secondary location.
- Azure Traffic Manager – Which automates network routing to different locations (predetermined by you) in case of a region-specific failure.
- 3x data replication – Which means all the data you store in Azure is copied thrice, either to a single or a secondary datacenter.
ElasticityAzure has tools built-in, that monitors and investigates your utilization of cloud resources, which can help you determine benefits from decreasing or adjusting your computing environment. And if a change is warranted, you can make it in seconds.
Development ToolsAzure, is the perfect place for development! Since you’re only paying for the resources you need (known as utility computing), developers can easily build out all possible scenarios and run through testing without having to purchase new equipment. Not only that, but developers also gain immediate access to a variety of templates, services, and solutions, helping reduce the time it takes to bring new innovations to market.
Cost EfficiencyOne of the greatest benefits of Azure is its cost-efficiency. Three primary reasons why Azure is so practical when it comes to cost:
- You won’t have to make the large initial investment associated with building an on-premise or remote datacenter. With Cloud computing you need not buy additional software for development or increased workloads down the road. You won’t need to purchase replacement hardware (as most computing hardware has an average lifecycle of 2-3 years).
- You’ll avoid the costs associated with service calls and warranty renewals.
- You won’t have to pay for any resources which you don’t use, as Azure bills per second used, rounded down to the last minute.
Easy Access to ResourcesAzure’s cloud computing service gives IT departments access to a huge number of resources they wouldn’t normally have with an on-premises datacenter. For instance, many future-oriented companies are looking to apply machine learning and automation to their data analysis for better decision-making. Using Azure, you can effortlessly include those capabilities into your systems—no data science expertise or costly resources needed.