Azure Matures, Delivers Wide Range of Opportunities

Azure, Microsoft’s hosted application and storage services offering, has evolved substantially since it became commercially available in Feb. 2010. It consists of dozens of Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) components. Customers can leverage Azure’s massive scale and geographic reach for solutions in diverse areas, including virtual machine and Web site hosting, mobile application services, relational and nonrelational storage, and disaster recovery. Azure supports many non-Microsoft technologies, including Linux and Java. Services are added and updated frequently, so current and potential customers may find new opportunities by conducting regular Azure evaluations.

IaaS, PaaS, Microsoft, and Non-Microsoft Tech Supported

Azure services can be grouped into two broad categories:

IaaS. These services, which primarily consist of hosted virtual machines that can run Windows Server or Linux variants, are similar to those offered by Amazon Web Services, Azure’s highly successful competitor. An IaaS system burdens customers with managing the OS and application platform, but customers can migrate existing applications that are deployed on-premises with little or no code rewriting. IaaS thus offers the most straightforward route to the cloud.