One of the most important aspects of technology is that it keeps on evolving, bringing something or the other to enhance the already serving tools or applications. Among various technological advancements the IT field has witnessed, cloud services remain the most convenient ones, as it has provided an unmatched level of freedom, thereby enabling everyone to have access to everything, that too from anywhere. One such cloud based service is Windows Azure, which was introduced by Microsoft back in February 2010 and was renamed as Microsoft Azure in March 2014. Let’s talk about Azure.
Microsoft Azure
As mentioned, Azure is a cloud based service, introduced by Microsoft. It offers computing, analytics, database, storage, network and mobile services. This is a cloud computing infrastructure used for deploying, building and managing applications. It supports both PaaS (Platform as a service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) along with supporting multiple frameworks, tools, operating systems, databases and programming languages. Windows Azure allows one to deploy the applications with the convenience of same platform and infrastructure. It reduces maintenance needs by maximizing performance, while minimizing the operational costs and needs.
Migrating to Azure
Applications and websites, especially those which have voluminous data and traffic, can be migrated to Microsoft Azure for hassle free operations. Azure offers authenticated mechanism, data synchronization, message queuing and traffic management, which are typically not present in other cloud services. The migration process is considerably quicker and easier. However, the very first thing that strike to one’s mind is that whether one should go with infrastructure or platform hosting. The Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) enables one to install operating system, applications and services of one’s choice, also allowing one to deploy Azure Virtual Machine (VM), which offers preinstalled database such as MySQL and SQL Server. Whereas, the Platform as a Service (PaaS) enables one to have Microsoft managed operating system and runtime platform, also offering a hosted database called Azure SQL, which is similar to the on-premises SQL Server.
The IaaS approach provides distinctive advantages, where you are allowed to move to a virtual machine in the cloud, without having the necessity to change your application code. It connects your domain and internal network via virtual network, where all your deployment, monitoring, testing and management systems will continue working exactly the same way. It is nothing but a replacement of the Ethernet cable of your datacenter with Azure internet connection.
The other benefits why one should consider Azure cloud computing platform are:
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Windows Familiarity – Azure is a windows based service, which means one can write applications using same programming languages, which are used to write windows applications.
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A strong advantage of cloud computing services, in general, is the cost advantage. With cloud-based file sharing systems, Azure allows companies to update files and they only pay for storage that is utilized.
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Scalability – Azure can help one create applications that can scale from 10 to 10 million users, without even altering the application code.
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Security – It is one of the major concerns for one while considering moving to cloud, which is why Azure is designed by keeping the security in mind. Both Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) and .NET Access Control Service tokens determine if the access is allowed to a user or not.
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Can be easily connected to Azure monitoring tools that will eventually save your IT consultant’s time.