6 Reasons To Embrace Microsoft Azure For Your Enterprise

There’s an old IT catchphrase that has been around since the early 70s. It goes — nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. Today in the cloud world, people have started to exert the same logic to another popular vendor — Microsoft.

For businesses with ample Microsoft footprints — spanning Windows, Outlook, Dynamics, Office, and other well-known enterprise applications — opting for Azure services as a part of cloud strategy is probably the pathway to least resistance.

Yes, you must be wondering about the legacy of Amazon Web Services by now. But the truth is — although AWS remains the market leader in the domain of pure cloud infrastructure, Microsoft isn’t lagging behind either. And the abiding effects of the pandemic are helping it make headway faster.

Here’s a comprehensive column on the cloud war between Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Read on to know the winner!

Is Microsoft Azure Gaining Ground On Cloud Providers?

In January 2021, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed the record cloud earnings of $16 billion, up a mind-blowing 34% year-over-year. Since then, Azure has achieved a total 20% share of the cloud computing market, rising from 10% in 2017. Today, over 90% of Fortune 500 companies count on Azure services for app management and data storage needs.

Microsoft’s deep-rooted bedrocks, chiefly user-facing technologies, undeniably appeal to all types of businesses that are struggling with digital strategies and in need of a trusted partner to scale up their cloud usage.

And when we talk about Microsoft Azure, ‘trust’ is the word that pops up a lot. This cloud partner has built out compliance and certifications and invested quite a lot to gain that trust. Being at the forefront of blooming cloud trends, Azure is the perfect solution for enterprises to grow and stay ahead in the game.

Why Should You Trust Your Workloads To Microsoft Azure?

The bigger question, however, is — How useful is Azure for your business?

First and foremost, let’s keep in mind that every enterprise has different requirements when it comes to application development, data storage, and resource management. For instance, smaller companies that don’t fetch customer data might not need vast storage space but an agile and flexible testing environment for their latest web apps. But in the case of giant companies, it may be otherwise.

Besides, do on-premises data centers seem to have any future? I hope we all can agree on the fact that, like dial-up modems and mainframes, self-hosted data centers have no prospective future and are outdated by increasingly affordable and available cloud solutions.

Sure, AWS, iCloud, IBM, and other prominent cloud players hold song preferences and picture memories of millions of users, among other data. But there must be something about Azure that has made megacorps like BMW, Samsung, eBay, and Boeing turn to this platform.

Here’s why!

1. On-demand Scalability

Whether for downsizing or growth, enterprises need change. This is why scalability is a primary concern for any infrastructure-related investment. The public cloud framework offered by Microsoft Azure allows enterprises to boost their computing power and increase storage space on demand. This ensures peak capacity during long-term development projects and short-term traffic bursts.

In short, Azure has been designed to upgrade alongside businesses so that you can readjust the service agreement and fend off disruptions of your high-load applications.

2. Prime Availability

Far from its competing cloud service providers, Azure offers high redundancy and availability covering each of its data centers. In case you didn’t know, this tech giant is available in 140 countries and has a presence in more than 55 regions around the globe.

Hence, Azure services are well-suited and tailor-made to organizations with a global presence. Additionally, Microsoft offers a service-level agreement ensuring 99.95% availability and amounting to less than 4.5 hours of downtime in a year due to its massive occupancy.

3. No Need for On-site Hardware

As already mentioned, we all know the drawbacks come with owning and implementing on-premise data storage equipment. Increasing maintenance cost, extra IT support, risk of data loss are some of the many cons that can eat into an enterprise’s overall IT budget. But if you migrate your computing processes, apps, and data to the cloud, you can essentially shrug off the need for on-site hardware.

Even if you’re facing some compliance or convenience issues and want to keep some of your business processes on private servers, Azure empowers you to build a hybrid cloud environment utilizing its advanced networking features.

4. Top-notch Security

As more and more cybersecurity threats are surfacing every day, security has become the top priority of all kinds of enterprises. With this demand in mind, Microsoft has invested over $1 billion in security research and development, protecting stored data by an advanced encryption process. The data centers of Microsoft are armed with proxy card access readers, two-tier authentication, and biometric scanners.

So when configured with existing security policies and systems, Azure pre-built security tools can help you sustain the privacy, integrity, and accessibility of sensitive customer data and information. Some of Azure’s stand-out security features are data protection, automated monitoring, threat detection and protection, threat intelligence database, VPN gateway, and more.

5. Worthwhile Subscription Models

Microsoft Azure has a pricing structure based on usage. This empowers small enterprises and large businesses to leverage cloud services as per their needs and manage their IT budget in the most cost-effective way. This consumption-based model is amazingly helpful for a wide array of functionalities, such as streamlining cross-departmental workflows, reducing infrastructure costs, and shrinking the pressure on in-house IT teams.

But what if a critical issue arises? Azure got your back there as well by emancipating its extensive knowledge base and 24*7 support team.

6. Enterprise-level Development Tools

This is probably the most exciting feature of Microsoft Azure. It lets any organization create, deploy, and control their bespoke web applications with a myriad of sought-after tools and programming languages. This list includes Python, .NET, Java, Kubernetes, and so on. This intriguing flexibility offered by Azure that delegates users to build next-gen web and mobile apps.

In addition, while building apps, Azure also uses a host of management resources, from automatic updates to container orchestration. Its end-to-end development platform provides dedicated and effective testing environments that can help you optimize your customer experiences and internal web apps.

Read more: Microsoft Azure Migration — Planning, Process, and Adoption

Summing Up

With all being judged and said, it can be concluded that AWS and Microsoft Azure are the apparent cloud leaders in today’s market and will be for the anticipated future.

But what is also apparent is the abundant levels of expertise and familiarity Microsoft is bringing to enterprise engagement. Such aspects clearly offer a comfortable blanket that prudent and risk-averse organizations considerably appreciate. This not only empowers Microsoft to seize on the coming wave of cloud computing but also advocates a changing of the guard when it comes to cloud buyers, from CIOs to developers to architects with a distinctly proposed strategy, one that will play elegantly into the master plan of Microsoft.

So, when are you redefining your enterprise with secure and scalable Azure solutions? Cast about for a leading Azure development company, adopt the cloud environment, and enable your team to spend more time on constructive work and say adieu to handling the tedious IT infrastructure.

As they say, a progressive business works with the cloud, but a successful progressive business works with Microsoft Azure!