What is Azure?

Growth can't happen if you don't have the infrastructure to accommodate it. This means you will have to continue adding hardware to your on-premises data center or you may want to consider alternative options. One of the most popular options today is a third-party data center hosted in the cloud.

But why would you want to migrate your internal data center to a third-party host? There are several very important reasons:

• Scalability With your on-premises data center, the only way to scale is by adding more hardware. By employing a cloud-based data center, you enjoy unlimited scalability, so your business can grow as much as needed.
• Security Most cloud-based hosts are owned by incredibly large and powerful companies with budgets that far exceed yours. This equates to these companies being able to funnel more money into security. And since these third-party companies store data from countless companies, it is in their best interest to maintain maximum security.
• Cost-effective It's much cheaper to pay for extra storage, compute or bandwidth than having to shell out for hardware to keep up with demand. Plus, your electric bill will thank you for moving your data center out of the building.
• Space You may be a startup without the budget to pay the rent for a building large enough to house a data center large enough to meet the growing demands placed on your business. A cloud-based data center is ideal for such situations.
• Uptime This is especially true in areas where electricity may be an issue (such as power outages and blackouts in hard-hit areas during adverse weather conditions). If your company is serious about data center uptime, a reliable cloud host like Azure is as sure a bet as you'll find.

Now that you know why, and where? Which outsourcing company might best suit your needs? One such hosting service is Microsoft Azure.

A disruptive platform

In 2005, Ray Ozzie sent an internal memo to Microsoft that spoke of the vision of building a disruptive platform used to replicate systems like Windows, .NET application services, and MS Office via the Internet. Initially, Steve Balmer (CEO of Microsoft at the time) was not a fan of the software-as-a-service paradigm, for fear that it would harm the company's bottom line (which consisted mainly of Windows and MS Office).

Eventually, though, Balmer was convinced and said that Microsoft was “ betting our company ” on the cloud. At that time (2010) 70% of Microsoft employees worked on cloud-related projects and, according to Balmer, this number would reach 90% the following year.

Satya Nadella then took over as Microsoft's new CEO and rallied the company around a mobile/cloud-first strategy. On February 1, 2010, Microsoft Azure became available.

What services does Azure offer?

Microsoft Azure cloud services are divided into categories such as:

• Analytics Provides distributed, real-time analytics of big data, data lakes, machine learning, business intelligence, IoT streams, and data warehousing.
• Blockchain Offers the ability to join an existing blockchain consortium or create your own.
• Calculate Services that allow users to deploy and manage virtual machines, containers, and batch jobs. Compute resources can be configured with public or private IP addresses.
• Containers Enable companies to create, register and orchestrate containers at scale.
• Databases Provides database instances for SQL, PostgreSQL, as well as Azure SQL Data Warehouse, which supports caching and hybrid database integration.
• Development Makes it possible for your developers to share code, test applications, and track issues. This feature supports a wide range of programming languages ​​such as JavaScript, Python, .NET, and Node.js.
• DevOps Provides all the necessary project and collaboration tools that make DevOps possible.
• Identity Ensures that only authorized users can access your Azure services and protects encryption keys and other sensitive information.
• Integration Provides server backups, website recovery, and the ability to connect private and public clouds.
• Internet of Things Provides the platform needed to capture, monitor and analyze IoT data.
• Management and governance Includes a variety of services such as backup, recovery, compliance, automation, scheduling and monitoring.
• Media and Content Delivery Network (CDN) Provides on-demand streaming, digital rights protection, encoding, and media playback/indexing.
• Mobile Helps developers create cloud and SPAs (single page applications) for mobile devices.
• Network Includes virtual networks, dedicated connections, gateways, traffic management and diagnostics services, load balancing, DNS hosting and protection against DDoS attacks.
• Store Provides scalable, cloud-based storage for structured and unstructured data.
• Networking Enables developers to deploy web-based applications as well as powerful search, content delivery, and API management tools.

Clearly, Microsoft Azure could serve as your company's one-stop shop for all the data center/cloud host needs you may have. And with data centers around the world, Azure can serve any business on any continent, in any country.

The cost of Azure

Azure uses a pay-as-you-go model for pricing, which means you'll only be charged for what you use. That doesn't mean it's exactly simple to calculate. The cost of Azure is based on several factors.

Because of the complication of costing, Microsoft has developed tools that can help you ensure you stay within budget, called Azure Cost Management and Billing . Once you start using Azure, you should seriously consider using these tools to help you stay in control of your cloud/data center hosting budget.

Conclusion

Your business will grow, and when that happens, you will need to be able to scale to meet demands. If your current data center solution can't handle your growth, your best bet may be to move it to a third-party cloud-hosted provider like Microsoft Azure. With this service, your business can enjoy unlimited growth without downtime, interruptions or budget-busting bills.