Today, businesses must adapt to new challenges and market demands faster than ever before. The digital landscape is changing rapidly, and companies that fail to adapt risk being left behind.
Operating a business today requires a company to have nimble IT infrastructure that can support rapid change. Cloud computing is one of the fastest-growing technologies, with Gartner predicting public cloud services spending will reach $480 billion this year.Â
More businesses are turning to cloud services to streamline operations, cut back on capital expenses, and make it easier for their team to work from anywhere in the world – and Azure has the services to make this happen for your business.
What is Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of business applications and software services. It helps you increase operational efficiency, accelerate innovation, and reduce costs.
The premise behind Azure is simple – it allows you to use your computer’s resources to their maximum capacity by storing your data on its servers. This means that your computer’s hardware is freed up for more important tasks, and you don’t have to pay for the amount of resources it would take to keep its data on-site.
Azure is one of the world’s leading platforms for cloud computing, second only to AWS, with 20% of global businesses using Azure’s range of services, such as analytics, storage, computer power, and more.
Azure Active Directory
Azure AD is a cloud-based directory service that helps you manage user identities and access permissions across different applications and devices.
By storing user account metadata in the cloud, Azure AD allows organisations to easily onboard new users and log them into their corporate systems. It also enables enterprises to roll out more scalable and secure authentication solutions by allowing different applications to use the same user database for signing in.
Azure Backup
Do you have important data on your computer that you need to protect? Consider using Azure Backup to back up your data on a continuous basis to protect against data loss.Â
Azure Backup has two main components: the agent and the cloud. The agent runs on the computer that hosts your data. It continually copies the data to Azure Backup. You can use the cloud to manage your backups, configure schedules, and more.
Azure DevOps
Azure DevOps is a set of applications that help you build, deploy, and manage your applications and data. It offers built-in tools for collaboration, build and release automation, and application monitoring. It can be used to track work items, release plans, and other project details.
DevOps is built on the principles of collaboration and continuous delivery, with a focus on ease of use for both teams and individual users. As more people become involved in the software development process, it becomes increasingly important to make sure that everyone is working together effectively.
Azure Virtual Machines (VM)
Azure Virtual Machines gives you the ability to create a VM that fits your specific needs. You can select the VM size and operating system type to get going right away.
Virtual machines are a great way to host applications, databases, and other services on Azure. You can use them to scale your application or data to meet higher demand, or you can use them as a secondary location to protect against downtime.
Azure Logic Apps
Logic Apps is a cloud-based platform solution that integrates your data, services, systems, and apps by allowing you to create workflows and automate business processes based on specific triggers. For example, imagine that you want to create a workflow that sends out an email to new customers. You can create a workflow that’s triggered whenever a new customer subscribes to your service.
This makes it a highly scalable platform for B2B layouts.
Azure Blob Storage
Blob Storage is a highly scalable object storage that provides a low-cost, highly available, and secure way to store data such as files, images, videos, and more. It’s designed for use cases that require large amounts of data with frequent access and requires high performance, scalability, and availability.
It allows you to store your data in the cloud at any time, from any device. This means that you can store and access data on your phone, tablet or laptop — even when you’re not connected to the internet. You can also share data securely with other people in a business network.
Azure Cosmos DB
Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft’s globally distributed database service. It is a highly resilient, globally distributed, multi-model database that allows you to store data in the cloud with minimal latency and low cost.Â
It is a relational NoSQL database that supports SQL, JSON, and Document databases, along with both SQL-like and non-SQL key/value stores. It also supports both global and local replication for higher availability and performance.
Azure Content Delivery Network
CDN is a service that enables you to distribute your content faster and improve the performance of your website by storing it in multiple locations around the world. It is a way to provide fast access to your content, improve search engine rankings and reduce load times for users.Â
Azure CDN can be used to accelerate web traffic, store static content such as images, HTML, and JavaScript, or deliver dynamic content such as media files like videos and audio.
Azure Automation
As the name suggests, Azure Automation is an automation service that allows users to create, schedule, and monitor tasks based on triggers. It provides a scalable, secure, and reliable service for the automation of repetitive tasks and actions across different platforms.
Azure Automation lets you build highly flexible workflows that are free to use and scale as your business grows. It also enables you to automate complex business processes by orchestrating multi-step, multi-platform tasks across your entire organisation.
Find the right Azure services for your business
With Microsoft Azure, you can use your existing hardware assets more effectively to create powerful applications, manage sensitive data, and automate business processes.
The Microsoft Azure specialists at Steadfast Solutions will help you migrate to the cloud, help you discover the right Azure services for your business, and manage your entire cloud environment for optimal performance.