Microsoft Azure is the core of Microsoft’s Cloud offering, and it’s getting more and better received each year. In the final quarter of 2016 alone, Microsoft has reported a whopping 102% growth in Azure revenue, with usage doubling year after year.
As we look towards 2017, we’ve picked our top 10 reasons organizations are moving to the cloud.
1. Agile and scalable
Business growth is often unpredictable. For your IT platforms to provide the most value, they need to be able to grow and scale as your business does. Azure shines at this, allowing you to develop applications as a cluster that designates a web application to a set of specific set of processes. With applications spread across multiple of servers, they won’t run out of server capacity.
2. Microsoft compatibility
For any organization currently using Microsoft products like SharePoint and Office 365, a cloud infrastructure provider that works seamlessly with existing technology is vital. Microsoft Azure is in a unique position to offer that ease of use to organizations, over providers like AWS. The same Virtual Machines can also be used on-premises, further simplifying processes.
3. On-demand computing
Vast amounts of computing resources can be provisioned in minutes, typically with just a few mouse clicks, giving businesses a lot of flexibility and taking the pressure off capacity planning.
4. Elastic hosting
With the complex range of computing and software options available on the market, flexibility is vital. Azure offers Infrastructure as a service option, allowing organizations to outsource their cloud infrastructure (to us for instance) and follow a pay-as-you-go, model.
5. Secure and resilient
Microsoft is one of the most renowned, long-standing technology companies out there and has proved their capability in the enterprise space many times over. For many organizations where security and reliability are critical, this is a big selling feature of Azure. Data is also safe, with Azure based on the Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle, a highly advanced approach to developing the most secure code.
6. Global data centers
For global organizations with employees located in several countries, local data centers to improve speed and uptime are important selling points of a cloud infrastructure provider. Azure is backed up by Microsoft’s growing number of global managed data centers; there are currently 30 with eight additional regions including Korea, France, and four more locations in the USA coming soon. From a user’s point of view, their experience is also hugely improved by having a local data center.
7. Hybrid capability
Azure also gives users the choice to build hybrid environments, allowing organizations to leverage on-premises resources and the advantages of the cloud without complexity.
8. Economies of scale
Azure’s pay-as-you-grow model decreases unnecessary costs as you’re only paying for what you use. With their large customer base, they have also been able to pass on volume discounts to their clients.
9. Simplified management
Even though the Azure platform has been around for many years now, the services that it offers have been continuously evolving, offering new features to consumers. It has not been standing still from a management point of view either, and the IT professional now has a much more superior API to use in the form of Azure Resource Manager (ARM).
10. Support
From small dev-test projects to global product launches, Azure is engineered to handle any workload. Azure also offers enterprise-grade SLAs on services, 24/7 tech support, and service health monitoring. Microsoft also provides support in a variety of languages to help the regions of their data centers.
We work with clients every day to build business cases for Azure, consulting on the best strategies for cloud infrastructure that will add value. Look here for more info on the cloud infrastructure services we offer and feel free to contact us to discuss your requirements.
