If you’re looking to migrate your business to the Cloud and are comparing cloud service providers, you should consider Microsoft Azure cloud as one of your top options. Microsoft Azure leads the market with the largest Cloud in the world – second only to AWS in terms of revenue – and is available in 140 countries, 17 languages and 24 currencies. Microsoft reports that 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure, and it is the most trusted Cloud platform among US government institutions. Azure revenue has grown by 62% over last year, suggesting that they are not slowing down.
So, Microsoft Azure is big. But is it better? There are a number of compelling reasons that Azure might be the best choice for your business – especially if your data center is built around Windows.
1. Faster development in a familiar environment
If you already develop software using Microsoft, doing so within Azure will be an easy transition. Your developers can continue to use Visual Studio, so they won’t need to learn any new tools, and Azure features software development kits that will help them access all of Azure’s APIs. Azure is built to enable fast and easy development, testing and delivery across platforms, with tools, products and support services that cover a broad range of needs including databases, analytics, mobile app development, and more.
2. Easier integration
Migrating to Azure is the fastest, easiest, most seamless way to integrate your enterprise applications, data and processes—on-premises and in the Cloud. Additionally, Azure can make the most of your SQL Server data – providing analytics and other big data services, while also offering products and services that can add functionality to your existing Microsoft infrastructure.
3. High availability
Did we mention that Azure is big? With a huge footprint and over 40 data centers around the globe (and growing), Azure Cloud storage is highly available and wherever you need it to be. With this many data centers, Azure has higher redundancy than other providers, which also means that they offer better disaster recovery – ensuring if there is a problem in one data center, there are others in many other locations that can back it up.
4. Better security and compliance offerings
Microsoft guarantees the best protection for data held on the Azure Cloud; they invest $1 billion/year on security and have 3,500 security professionals on staff to protect that data. They also utilize advanced AI to analyze 6.5 trillion global signals to analyze, detect and respond to potential threats. Additionally, Azure is the first Cloud provider to adopt the new international standard for Cloud privacy (ISO 27018).
Azure also has 90+ compliance offerings for a breadth of specific industries, such as healthcare, government and manufacturing – the largest compliance portfolio in the cloud market.
5. Flexible and cost-efficient
Azure is flexible, dynamically scaling your data storage and compute power up and down based on your business’ demands. This flexibility also makes Azure more cost-efficient, because Microsoft offers a pay-as-you-go plan so you are only paying for the services and space you have used during a billing cycle.
Microsoft Azure’s Cloud services platform can be utilized for storage, app development and hosting, SQL database hosting, virtual workstations, backup and recovery, API management, DNS hosting, business intelligence, data warehousing and more. Azure supports a variety of operating systems, programming languages, databases and frameworks, and it is highly scalable based on your computing, storage and bandwidth needs.