In the digital age, businesses increasingly rely on technology to drive growth, efficiency, and innovation. The right IT partner can be the difference between seamless...
The quick guide to Microsoft Azure
The last couple of years has seen cloud computing advance at a remarkable pace. Unlike a decade ago, fewer organisations are using on-premises servers for their daily operations, with the cloud now hosting most personal and considerable professional data.
Most businesses operating partly or fully in the cloud are likely to be using Azure, AWS or Google. For years, AWS has been the frontrunner, dominating cloud computing market share globally. However, the tides are beginning to turn, with Microsoft beginning to close the gap with their land-and-expand approach from a foundation of Microsoft 365, articulating the value of integration with applications already in use and encouraging cloud migration – with a simple singular vendor approach.
Technology is expensive, and by consolidating vendors and solutions, businesses can access significant cost savings, with Microsoft’s business solutions offering affordable and access step benefits at small incremental per-license costs.
Here’s our quick guide, sharing everything you need to know (including our free checklist to see if your business is ready to implement it…)
What is Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure features an ever-expanding set of cloud services to help your organisation meet your business challenges. Its integrated cloud-computing services include analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage, and web apps.
With these services, IT developers have the freedom to build, manage, and deploy applications and solutions on a massive, global network using their preferred tools, applications, and frameworks: all this leads to moving faster, achieving more and saving money.
If you are looking at moving local servers and services to the cloud, Azure can also help with this. Azure also incorporates a full set of disaster recovery options for your business, giving you peace of mind in a full disaster scenario.
What you don’t know about Azure
Many consider it simply as a place to migrate existing applications or build new ones. But Microsoft Azure is much more than that. In fact, it boasts over 200 individual solutions.
Azure solutions that your businesses can implement include:
- Azure Fabric: breaking down business silos and providing rich, decision-ready analytics that foster a culture of innovation.
- Azure AI Vision: a suite of tools and services, which allow businesses to integrate advanced visual intelligence into their own applications.
- Azure Virtual Desktop: a full Windows experience on any device, managed centrally by your IT team or third-party partner. With AVD, you can guarantee all uses have the same secure experience irrespective of device or location.
- Azure Backup: Azure’s answer to the automatic backup of data and applications, including those stored on-premises and in the cloud. With centralised monitoring and management, you’ll never lose data again.
- Azure Site Recovery: complete protection in the event of an outage. Your workloads are replicated in real-time to a secondary location, allowing you to continue on business as usual around-the-clock. Supports cloud and on-premises infrastructure.
- Azure SQL Database: a fully managed PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) database engine, which handles simple and complex functions – from upgrading and patching to backup and monitoring. A power database management solution.
- Azure AI Foundry Models: a catalogue of over 11,000 AI models developed by leading AI providers and open-sources communities.
Are you ready to move to Microsoft Azure?
Whether you’re still relying on aging servers or considering moving legacy systems into Microsoft Azure or Microsoft 365, we’ve created a quick cloud readiness checklist to help you assess and understand your starting point – and what’s possible.
