Microsoft Azure is a public cloud computing platform owned by Microsoft. It caters to multiple requirements such as cloud computing, storage, analytics, and networking. Organizations make use of all these services or a few of them to build new applications, scale current ones or even run applications in the public cloud.
Why is Azure So Popular?
Businesses are banking on Microsoft Azure platform to manage all challenges intrinsic to their processes. As the platform offers tools that support to all industries cutting across domains and is open to the use of open source technologies it provides a lot of flexibility for the development and enhancement of applications. Besides, organizations can use the platform for platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS) and serverless management.
Yet another reason for its popularity is that it allows a number of third-party vendors to make their applications available through Azure. And these applications can be availed at different costs comprising a subscription fee and a usage fee for the platform for hosting the application. Also, there is no need to pay a lump sum for availing Azure services. Enterprises can pay for the specific resources they have used on a monthly basis.
How Businesses are Using Microsoft Azure?
Businesses are using Microsoft Azure in diverse ways. The most popular way is having virtual machines run in the cloud. These virtual machines are used to host critical components of infrastructures, such DNS servers; Windows Server services and even external operating systems, such as Linux. Another common business use of this platform is for hosting databases in the cloud. Azure SQL and non-relational databases like NoSQL are two serverless relational databases made use by enterprises. In addition, enterprises are also using Azure for data storage so that breakdown related disaster recovery becomes a breeze. Similarly, Azure storage is being used by enterprises to archive data for meeting long-term Data retention needs.
Microsoft Azure Costs
Microsoft Azure comes with a range of ownership options namely:
- Basic
- Developer
- Standard
- Professional Direct
- Premier
Apart from Basic support, each of these options differ in terms of scope which is why the price varies. Basic support is available to all Azure accounts. For Developer support, one has to shell out $29 / month, for Standard support it is $100/ month and Professional Direct support costs $1000 / month. The pricing for Premier support is not known.
Though Microsoft Azure services is new compared to its competitors, its portfolio is continuing to evolve. In due course it is expected to support a huge number of programming languages and operating systems.
