Azure Arc Has Tangible Benefits but Tethers Customers to Microsoft

• Azure Arc provides server management and less well-known database and application services.
• Arc is also being used by Microsoft for billing and delivering special security updates, making it harder for customers to avoid.
• Although Arc is free, using Arc results in additional costs incurred by Azure services that Arc itself requires.
• Customers with servers and databases in multiple hosting environments could benefit from Arc’s unified resource management.

Azure Arc is a set of capabilities enabling Azure to work with deployments hosted outside of Azure, and it includes several generally available and in-preview offerings. Arc services could simplify managing a hybrid or multicloud combination of services that are hosted in Azure, on-premises, and in other clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud. It works by extending Azure management services to resources outside of Azure and enables some Azure services to operate on-premises. However, realizing the full benefit of some Arc services requires use of Azure services that incur additional costs, and Microsoft has made Arc harder for customers to avoid by leveraging it for delivering Extended Security Updates (ESUs) and some on-premises subscription services.