As more and more business shift towards cloud, service providers are competing for the first spot. And Microsoft Azure seems to be the top name in the game. Microsoft was recently recognized as a market leader in IaaS (Infrastructure As A Service), PaaS (Platform As A Service), and cloud storage services. Microsoft's first cloud platform, Azure, was launched in 2010 and have significantly increased Microsoft's revenue. Azure is gaining popularity as a cloud service provider and is becoming the first choice of many IT professionals. Following are 10 reasons why you should turn to Microsoft Azure for cloud services:
Easy Integration with Other Microsoft Tools
For businesses that rely on other tools offered by Microsoft, such as Office 365, SharePoint, and Outlook, it made sense of investing in a cloud service provider that can easily integrate with these tools. Also, it can help with making the transition very easy for you. This also means that you will not have to update or change your virtual machinery also, such as Linux or Windows, which will help you further in shifting to the Azure cloud. Many IT experts expect Microsoft Azure to increase its market share because of its ability to provide an integrated and seamless service.
Reputable, Excellent Position In The Market
Needless to say that Microsoft is one of the oldest, reliable and credible brands in the IT industry. The company offers some of the most used and recognized tools such as Xbox, Skype, and Bing. A number of businesses, especially those that are small scale can increase their security by adopting Azure. Recently, according to a survey by The Virtualization Practice, a large number of Azure users confessed that they adopt Azure because Microsoft is a trusted name in the industry.
PaaS And IaaS
As I mentioned earlier that Azure offers PaaS (unmanaged) and IaaS (managed) services. PaaS will allow your company to create your own software and/or Web applications without the hassle of maintaining or buying the infrastructure. IaaS will allow you to outsource your Cloud platform infrastructure so that you can pay only for the number of services that you use. Both these tools will allow your organization to adopt a cloud software that best suits your needs. Since Azure is the market leader in these services, your organization will be able to easily and quickly manage, deploy, and build applications.
Protection
There is a wide misconception that keeping your data in a cloud will compromise your security. This couldn’t be more wrong. Without a cloud, think of your server as a locked cabinet and the only thing that is keeping your data from being stolen is a lock. As compared to that if you migrate your data to Microsoft Azure then imagine it as being protected in a movie like data center environment by Microsoft.
Regardless of where the data center is located, your data is more secure in a cloud than on-premise in your organization. Microsoft control entry to your data after two-tier authentication which includes biometric, access readers, and proxy cards. They also have an incident response team that works 24/7 to handle any kind of threat to Microsoft data centers.
Cost Effective
Investing in completely new infrastructure can seem like a big undertaking, but with Microsoft Azure, you no longer have to worry about this. Unlike other systems where you have to replace your hardware and servers every 5 years, with Azure you can rent Microsoft servers on a monthly basis on a smaller rent. Not only does this eliminate the need of making a huge investment, but you also no longer have to worry about costs associated with powering, heating, or cooling servers anymore because this too will be done and managed by Microsoft.
Scalability
One of the best think about using Azure is that it is easily scalable which means that you only have to pay for what you use. For example, if you want to host a website on Azure, and your business is such that it experiences high traffic in peak seasons and low traffic for the most part of the year then using Azure as host would mean that you can scale your service based on your business's requirement. Just like this, many other aspects of Microsoft Azure can be scaled up or down as and when you need them.
Disaster Recovery And Back Up
Taking the decision of backing up your data to Azure is both a smart and a cost-effective decision. It offers 99 years of data retention without having to take your hard drives and tapes off-site. Azure's disaster recovery is called sire recovery which you can use to either recover your data directly to the cloud or to a secondary recovery site.
Conclusion: Azure Training
Now that we have discussed 7 primary benefits of Microsoft Azure, it is now time to discuss how you can derive the maximum benefits out of all the services that Azure has to offer. You can start by hiring a team of employees with Azure training and certification such as Azure fundamentals and Developing Azure solutions; to make sure that your staff is qualified to handle and manage the offered products and services in the best possible manner. Whether you hire staff with Azure certification or you invest in training your team, it is going to benefit you in the long run. With the increase in demand of Microsoft Azure's services and more and more business adopting it, you need a team that can make this transition from an in-house data center to Microsoft's data center smooth and quick. Organizations need to consider training the teams in Azure tools and services so that they can utilize all its services in the best possible way and also achieve a competitive edge in the market.
Get in touch with one of our Azure experts today, to learn more about our training programs and modules.