Microsoft Azure
Build intelligent apps at enterprise scale with the Azure AI portfolio.
Microsoft Azure is Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform. It provides a range of cloud services, including those for compute, analytics, storage, and networking. Users can pick and choose from these services to develop and scale new applications, or run existing applications, in the public cloud.
Today large companies that have extensive experience managing large data centers, are offering customers to “rent” data capacity. This is great news for companies that want to focus on their core business application and not worry about the underlying platform.
Imagine that you just started a new business providing an environmentally friendly carpooling service. For the business to flourish you need a modern, flexible online application that allows your customers to choose and book vehicles, see a map of the currently available cars, manage their booking history, and connect with their friends using social media. Since you are convinced that your business will be a great success you want to make sure that the online booking application can handle hundreds of thousands of customers.
No matter what type of application you want to build, you need to have a basic platform in place. This includes an operating system that needs to be patched and up to date, the network, including load-balancers and routers, storage of your data. The platform needs to be scalable to support all your customers worldwide. Since you are a startup with limited funds, you don’t want to pay for such capacity upfront. In addition, you don’t want to have to worry about hiring people to look after servers, network appliances, software updates, and backup.
Luckily, in this day of age, you don’t have to! This is the beauty of cloud-based platform services. You can rent a data platform and pay for it as you go, just like you do for utilities like water or electricity. That is why it’s called utility computing – you only pay for what you use.
Why Azure?
1. Trust your cloud
Get security from the ground up, backed by a team of experts, and proactive compliance trusted by enterprises, governments, and startups.
- Build on a secure foundation
- Get comprehensive compliance coverage
- Own your data
2. Operate Hybrid seamlessly
On-premises, across multiple clouds, and at the edge—meet you where you are. Integrate and manage your environments with tools and services designed for hybrid cloud.
- Get flexibility with a truly hybrid cloud platform
- Work remotely, securely, and productively
- Use your licenses in Azure
3. Build on your terms
You have choices. With a commitment to open-source, and support for all languages and frameworks, build how you want, and deploy where you want to.
- Choose your language and tools
- Make AI available to everyone
- Build and scale without constraint
4. Be future-ready
Continuous innovation from Microsoft supports your development today, and your product visions for tomorrow.
- Invent with a comprehensive cloud platform
- Transform your business with AI
- Get instant and continuous insights from your data
Microsoft Azure Benefits
1. Faster time to market
Since you don’t have to worry about the underlying infrastructure or platform and only focus on developing the functionality of your business application it can be completed in a fraction of the time, thus reducing your time to market.
2. Reduced costs
Since you are only paying for what you are using, the pay-as-you-grow model reduces the upfront costs. Since Microsoft can pass on volume discounts to their customers the ongoing costs are also lower than if you were to host the full platform yourself.
3. Increased scalability
As your customer base grows and the usage of your application increases you can just add additional capacity to make sure your application is running smoothly. You don’t ever have to worry about running out of server capacity.
4. More flexibility and creativity
Applications can very quickly be deployed to the Windows Azure platform which means that changes can be applied without any downtime. This makes it an ideal platform for your developers to let their creative minds run wild and for them to add functionality to your application that you would otherwise not have dared to implement.
As you have probably guessed, the numerous benefits that Microsoft Azure provides make it the natural choice moving forward for businesses that need to deploy new applications. Why would they spend resources of their own to provide something someone else does better and cheaper? Microsoft® Azure™ is a powerful cloud platform that can deliver efficiency and agility for your business, but it can be incredibly complex and time-consuming to adopt without specialized cloud talent and knowledge.
For more information please visit https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/