Microsoft Azure, previously known as Windows Azure, is a cloud computing platform developed by technology giant Microsoft. Due to the range of services, like computing, analytics, storage and networking, it’s becoming increasingly popular among businesses of all sizes. By allowing users to pick and choose from its services to develop and scale new applications, it provides speed, enhanced flexibility and security. However, the range of its benefits goes far beyond. With cloud computing at its prime, applications and platforms are spreading across all industries, serving as the IT infrastructure that powers new digital enterprises. These platforms and applications have revolutionised how businesses function and have made processes easier. More than 77% of companies today have at least some of their computing infrastructure in the cloud. In this article, TWC highlights and elaborates on the most crucial Microsoft Azure benefits supported by some of the latest statistics about Azure to help business owners make well-informed decisions in transforming their companies.
Microsoft Azure Benefit #1: Enhances and expands your existing IT systems
Microsoft Azure allows you to quickly and easily deploy your existing apps without downtime. It enables your IT staff to focus on the core of your business rather than having to worry about in-house capabilities or maintaining overburdened or underused equipment. The platform’s flexible features can be utilised on a manual and auto-scaling basis in accordance with the demands of application usage. Compared to traditional hosting, scaling in Microsoft Azure is a lot more effortless, enabling you to change to different service plans that better suit your business needs.
MS Azure vs AWS vs Google Cloud: When it comes to deployment, Microsoft Azure utilises virtual hard disks. In contrast, AWS, for example, provides the instances of virtual servers and virtual machines, with Google Cloud supplying the virtual machine instances.
Insightful tip: UK businesses can benefit from such transformation. By deploying applications and utilising Microsoft Azure, they increase their overall productivity levels and optimise resources.
Microsoft Azure Benefit #2: Improved insights
Azure’s SQL and NoSQL data services and built-in support make it easier to gain access to key data insights. It also integrates with Excel; as demand grows, more business intelligence features are added. This means you can improve decision-making processes and gain valuable insight into available opportunities. Additionally, Azure’s ‘Application Insights’ feature, an extension of Azure Monitor, provides application performance monitoring (also known as “APM”). APM tools effectively oversee applications from development, through testing, and into production by proactively understanding how an application is performing. Also, by reactively reviewing the application execution data to establish the root of the issue.
MS Azure vs AWS vs Google Cloud: To improve performances, compared to Microsoft Azure’s proactive performance monitoring, Amazon Web Services utilises machine learning and natural language capabilities to provide deeper insight into your data. At the same time, Google Cloud’s ‘Query Insights’ detects, diagnoses, and prevents query performance problems for Cloud SQL databases.
Insightful Tip: UK businesses can leverage the power of improved insights to target their clients better and create more customised products and services to increase their revenue.
Microsoft Azure Benefit #3: Control your budget with the pay-as-you-go model
Microsoft offers a pay-as-you-go model, allowing businesses to only pay for the services they use. Furthermore, Microsoft Azure also enables companies to access additional resources as needed, loading them as a cluster. This means businesses using Azure don’t have to spend money on additional hardware or IT maintenance during the desired periods of high-volume transactions. The pay-as-you-go model also allows users to take advantage of specific applications for free, such as the Azure Advisor, API Management, App Configuration or Service, Automation or the Azure Active Directory, among others.
Insightful Tip: One of the most significant advantages of a pay-as-you-go subscription model is that no resources are wasted, and businesses choose and pay for the services they require, allowing UK businesses to optimise their resources in the era of rapid digital transformation.
Read all the 13 benefits of Microsoft Azure for every UK business here: https://twc-it-solutions.com/blog/microsoft-tips/microsoft-azure-benefits-for-uk-business/