First, let’s clarify what the Azure platform actually is – released back in 2008, Microsoft Azure is a flexible public cloud service platform that enables your business to build, deploy and manage applications and services in the cloud. It supports a broad selection of operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases, and devices.

Azure can supplement or replace your existing on-premise servers.

It offers solutions including:

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Software as a Service (SaaS)

These services can be used for virtual computing, storage, networking, analytics and much more.

It boasts the following features:

• 99.9% Service Level Agreements. To learn more click here.
• A ‘pay for what you use’ pricing model with no costly upfront charges and no wastage.
• Limitless capabilities – no matter if you’re a small local coffee shop or a large multi-national, Azure can scale to meet your business needs.
• Fully integrated with all Microsoft products to complement your existing infrastructure.

So now you know what Azure can offer, why would you use it?

1. Rigorous Security

With a new mixed workforce of some home and some office based staff, security is even more of a risk to your business, so you want to be confident that whatever path you take your receiving the best in terms of security protection. No matter whether it’s network and system security, data or response and monitoring, Azure meets the needs of even the most secure conscious of organisations. Azure has its own Security Centre, which helps you prevent, detect, and respond to threats; offering increased visibility into and control over your Azure based resources. Plus, with its handy dashboard you’ll immediately receive alerts and recommendations so can you solve issues with just a click of a button. You’ll also have access to an Azure Resource Manager so you can deploy, update, or delete resources with ease. Plus carry out testing, staging and production too. This is just a handful of the comprehensive features and security measures Azure offers, to learn more click here.

2. Better Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

It’s the flexibility of the Azure backup and disaster recovery tool that makes it so attractive. You can back up your data on any OS, from any location and to any chosen schedule; daily, weekly or monthly. You can enjoy your data backed up and your systems mirrored in multiple data centre too. If you’re still relying on tape backup, Azure can enhance this with offsite replication. It’s essentially a cost-effective, secure one click backup solution that can scale as your business changes, with added peace of mind of data encryption and multifactor authentication. With user friendly management interfaces, you have the ease and flexibility to set your policies and definitions around your backup and disaster recovery needs and scale them as your business changes.

3. Insightful analytics

Knowledge is power, as they say, and Azure enables you to uncover key insights from your gathered data with managed SQL and NoSQL data solutions. With deeper data analysis, you can pinpoint actionable ways to improve your business processes and operations and make more informed business decisions.

4. Ultimate flexibility

You’d need a crystal ball to predict future business impacts these days, but at minimum you need technology that can flex as you change without penalties or barriers. One of the biggest advantages of Azure is its ability to scale in line with your business. You can also set it to auto scale depending on server loads or a pre-set schedule. So, no matter life throws at you, it can deploy extra storage and resources at the click of a button.

Embracing Azure technology doesn’t just mean you need to throw away your current infrastructure. You can use Azure as an extension of it and leverage the power of the platform to build on your existing technologies.

If the migration is carried out by cloud experts, you’ll quickly realise the benefits of a Azure migration; high availability, increased security, flexibility, and significant cost savings.

To start your journey to Azure now, call our team of experts today on 01392 796 779 or email ask@bluegrass-group.com.