Why Choose Microsoft Azure as Your Cloud Platform?
What is Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform providing over 200 online computing services ranging from networking with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) protection and load balancers to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.
To access these resources, users need a Microsoft account, a valid Azure subscription, and an internet connection and web browser to access the Azure portal.
Azure operated on a pay-as-you-go model, ensuring you only pay for the services you use, as you use them; should you need to scale your application up or down, the price you pay will be amended to reflect this.
For newcomers to the platform, a trial period gives you £150 credit to spend in your first month, as well as 12-month access to several Azure services and access to 25 products which remain free after the trial has ended
Cloud computing models: a brief overview
There are three main service models when working with cloud computing: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). These three models are the three levels of responsibility between the cloud provider and you, as the cloud tenant (see below image).
Figure 1: Cloud Models
Here, everything in blue is managed by you, the user, while everything in green is managed by Microsoft, the provider.
With these three service models come three deployment models: public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud, each with its own benefits.
On the whole, using a cloud computing platform alleviates the cost of running and maintaining a data centre. Think of cloud computing as renting the hardware from the provider – here, you do not have to worry about the costs that come with running a data centre, from physical security to electricity for both running the hardware and cooling, as well as the hardware maintenance.
Why choose Microsoft Azure?
- With numerous cloud platforms available, why choose Azure? Here, we explore some of the advantages of opting for Microsoft’s cloud offering.
Microsoft integration
- The main advantage of Azure is the integration with other Microsoft tools and software, from Office 365 and Dynamics 365 to SharePoint and OneDrive. By integrating multiple platforms from the same provider, a common data model is used, resulting in a consistent user experience with standard information security.
- If, for some reason, you should need to introduce a different data source, this is something Azure can take care of.
Data sharing
- As a hybrid cloud, data can be passed from an on-premise SQL database, SaaS solution such as Dynamics 365 Online or similar, to a service such as Azure Data Factory, where the data can be manipulated to a common data type before passing it on through the cloud pipeline.
- Data can then be visualised through one of the many analytics services, for example Power BI, stored in one of the many storage solutions, or even passed to one of the AI services, such as Azure Anomaly Detector to quickly identify an issue.
High-level security
- Microsoft Azure boasts unified security and advanced threat management. The platform meets the international standards of ISO 27018 and is fully compliant with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Backup and disaster recovery
- Microsoft Azure can back-up anything from on-premise files and folders using the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services (MARS) agent, to entire virtual machines (VMs). This can be determined by options such as length of retention for the data, and multiple storage options such as locally redundant storage, geo-redundant storage, and zone-redundant storage.
- Visit Microsoft’s website to find out more about Azure’s backup and disaster recovery.
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