You may be wondering what Microsoft Azure is and why it owes its popularity as one of the preferred services for companies to start their processes. Digital transformation. In accordance with an IDC study; companies embracing digital transformation are more profitable than those that do not and Azure offers possibilities that others do not.
Many of these companies have been forced to accelerate their investment in cloud services due to the demands posed by the pandemic such as remote work. In fact, this investment has meant great economic savings for small and medium-sized companies. represents a decrease of 36% of your expenses (Source: OpsRamp, Skyhigh Networks, Directive).
the first benefit What does it offer? is security of the stored data, unlike other cloud services, this one has the support of a team of more than 3,500 experts, and proactive regulatory compliance trusted by companies, public administrations and startups. According to the company's own data, they invest approximately one billion dollars a year in security to protect customer data from cyber threats.
This is why Microsoft Azure is a preferred service among businesses. In addition, it offers solutions that some of its competitors do not, with more than 200 services that range from data management, creation of complex web applications, physical servers, networks, virtual machines and development platforms.
What is Microsoft Azure and what is it for?
In 2014, Microsoft Azure began offering cloud computing services such as Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS). Currently, the 95% of Fortune 500 companies trust their work, given the success it offers both economically and in development and innovation to remain competitive.
Given its experience of several years in the industry, Microsoft Azure offers different solutions for each company:
Computing Solutions
It provides virtual machines, containers, batch processing and access to applications remotely, both traditional and web and mobile. Using these options allows you to manage and generate API reports. This can mean energy savings for the company and a more efficient way of doing teamwork.
In addition, these types of processes are protected through user identification credentials and also security methods that will protect your information from threats such as phishing attacks or ransomware. Security equipment with over 3,500 items keeps security controls built into hardware and firmware components up-to-date.
data storage
As mentioned before, Microsoft Azure offers solutions for both Microsoft and SQL database storage, but are not limited to them. Well, they allow the use of any other on the market, both unstructured and cached. In addition, they offer solutions for any eventuality such as server backups (Azure Backup), site recovery (Azure Recovery Site), connections to private and public clouds.
This allows the analysis of information in real time, as well as the generation of Big Data analysis, Data Warehousing, etc. In this way, each company create targeted marketing solutions for their .
networks
Microsoft Azure also enables the use of cloud networking, this includes virtual networks, dedicated connections and gateways, as well as services for traffic management, load balancing, and domain name system (DNS) hosting. As well as media and content delivery networks (CDNs) including on-demand streaming, media encoding and playback, and indexing.
Developing
These services help app developers share code, test apps, and track potential issues. Azure supports a variety of application programming languages, including JavaScript, Python, .NET, and Node.js. Azure supports open source technologies, so you can use the tools and technologies of your choice.
In Azure we can combine all this data using data extraction, loading and transformation (ETL) tools. We can use for example HDInsight to query, or move the Azure SQL database and consume them from Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Power BI.
These cloud services are supported by a series of artificial intelligence capabilities, cognitive services and machine learning. Artificial intelligence is no longer a science fiction concept or limited to a couple of companies with large economic capital, but rather it is embedded in experiences that we have every day and thanks to Microsoft Azure is more accessible to its customers, it turns out to be the friendliest Cloud Computing service.
In Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2018 we can find a cognitive service that is included in the standard functionality and that allows us to recognize, for example, characteristics such as the color and material of a photograph of a product, and automatically pass these characteristics to the list of product attributes, which can then be used as metadata for searching and filtering. With Cognitive Services and the Bot Framework, APIs and SDKs are provided to help embed these experiences within Azure applications. The Bot Framework includes a connector, to text/SMS, O365, slack, etc., an open source SDK, and a public bot directory.
Why do companies prefer this to other Cloud Computing services?
One of the main reasons Microsoft Azure is that it is ideal for SMEs, but also for independent professionals for its low cost compared to other Cloud Computing services. Because companies can launch and store internal and external applications in the cloud, they save directly on internal IT costs, including hardware and maintenance.
On average, the cloud migration save about 15% on all IT expenses. SMBs reap the most benefits from the cloud by spending 36% less money on IT (Source: OpsRamp, Skyhigh Networks, Directive).
For example, data security is the main reason why organizations hesitate to start your migration to the cloud. For its part, Microsoft Azure identifies new threats through its global and real-time cybersecurity intelligence services thanks to the analysis carried out on 18,000 million Bing pages, 400,000 million emails, 1,000 million Windows device updates and 450,000 million of authentications each month.
In fact, it has many compliance certifications in high-risk industries such as medical, government, and service. In this regard, Azure has designed specific applications for these areas with individualized security needs.
Microsoft Azure or AWS?
On average, Amazon Web Services (AWS) can be several times more expensive than Microsoft Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server. For example, for Windows Server, cloud services may claim savings similar to Azure Hybrid Benefit, but you will need to reassign your Windows Server license in those clouds. And only Azure offers free Extended Security Updates for Windows Server 2012/R2.
As these are Microsoft products, the functionality of Azure with SQL Server is indisputable: maximize savings by using the hybrid benefit of Azure for workloads on both Windows Server and SQL Server. You can use the SLQ Server licenses for platform as a service in the cloud environment (PaaS) and lor same with Windows Server where Azure can assign Windows Server licenses in the cloud, as well as obtain 180 days of dual-use rights in the local environment and in the cloud.
| Microsoft Azure | AWS |
| A D4s v4 virtual machine with Windows Server, 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of RAM | An m5.xlarge virtual machine with Windows Server, 4 vCPUs and 16 GB of RAM |
| US West Region 2 | US West Region (Oregon) |
| 730 hours per month for 12 months | 730 hours per month for 12 months |
| Use the Azure Hybrid Benefit to pay a reduced compute rate (equivalent to running Ubuntu Linux) for 3-year Reserved Instances. Requires Software Assurance. | Use the Windows Server Reserved Instance rate for a standard 3-year term with an up-front payment. |
| Free Extended Security Updates in Azure for Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2 virtual machines | The cost of Extended Security Updates (ESU) is based on Windows Server Standard, for which the average annual ESU cost over 3 years is calculated. |
Microsoft Azure is a cloud service technology that is helping to reduce costs in data storage, but it is also offering many other options for agile management application development workflows.
According to Standard and Poor's 500, the median age of a Standard and Poor's 500 corporation is 12 years, down from 1960 when the median age was 60 years. This short life is due to the constant competitiveness currently required by the market and many companies are having positive results by using Microsoft Azure to stay active. In fact, Microsoft Azure is a major player in this transformation. Some data:
- An average of 120,000 new subscriptions per month
- 715 million Azure Active Directory users (April 2019)
- 150 billion Azure SQL queries processed per day
- 120 billion clicks on website managed with Azure Web App Service.
If you are interested learn more about this, discover Cloud Computing solutions for your Digital Transformation processes using Amazon Web Services technology, from machine learning, microservices, migration of traditional monolithic systems to serverless architecture in record time that we have in Codster for your company. We are an official Amazon Web Services Partner, and we want to help you implement your digital transformation strategy at the hands of a group of experts.
