Cloud computing is the term used for on-demand availability of computer system resources, such as data storage (cloud storage) and computing power, without involving any kind of direct active management by the user.
In simple words, it is the delivery of computing services, inclusive of servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and intelligence, that are provided over the Internet for the purpose of offering faster innovation, economies of scale and flexible resources.
These are based on the “ Pay as you go” model where the payment is solely required for cloud services used. It helps users in lowering operating costs, efficiently running the infrastructure and scaling according to the changes required by the business.
These cloud computing services can be availed through various companies such as Amazon Web, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, Oracle, IBM Cloud and several others. However, this article focuses on Microsoft’s Azure Development Company as a cloud computing platform.
Microsoft’s Azure Development Company:
Microsoft Azure which was previously famous as Windows Azure, is a public cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It provides the users with a range of cloud services like compute, analytics, storage, networking and others as mentioned above. The Users are required to accordingly pick and choose from these services. It can help them in developing and scaling new applications, or running pre-existing applications in the public cloud.
The primary aim of this platform is to assist businesses in managing the various challenges they face and meet their organizational goals. It offers the tools that provide support to all industries – such as e-commerce, finance and various Fortune 500 companies and it can also work in compliance with open source technologies. This allows the users to flexibly use their preferred tools and technologies.
4 Different Forms Of Cloud Computing Are Available Through Azure:
- infrastructure as a service (IaaS),
- platform as a service (PaaS),
- software as a service (SaaS) and
- serverless.
Working of Microsoft Azure:
First step to use Azure involves subscribing to it, then it provides the access to all the services included on it’s portal. These services can be used by the subscribers to create cloud-based resources, including virtual machines (VM) and databases.
Besides the services provided by Microsoft through the Azure development company, there are other third-party vendors who also make the software available through Azure directly. The cost to be paid for third-party applications may vary widely according to the services available, but the basic structure may remain stagnant involving payment of a subscription fee for the application followed by a usage fee for the infrastructure used to host the application over the portal.
5 Bifferent Customer Support Options are Available for Azure Based on Scope and Price-
- Basic : Available to all accounts
- Developer: Costs $29 per month
- Standard: Costs $100 per month
- Professional Direct: Costs $1000 per
- month
- Premier: It is also a paid support but it’s pricing hasn’t been disclosed yet.
Services and Products Provided by Microsoft Azure Development Company:
- Compute- It enables deploying and managing VMs, containers and batch jobs and supports remote application access too.
- Web- It allows deployment of web applications and offers features for search, API management, notification and content delivery.
- Storage- It provides scalable cloud storage for structured and unstructured data.
- Analytics- They offer real-time analytics, big data analytics, machine learning (ML), business intelligence (BI), internet of things (IoT) data streams and data warehousing.
- Networking- This involves virtual networks, gateways and dedicated connections. It also provides services for traffic management and diagnostics, DNS hosting, network protection and load balancing.
- Media and content delivery network (CDN)- These incorporate services such as on-demand streaming, media playback, encoding, digital rights protection, and indexing.
- Integration- It includes server backup, connecting private and public clouds and site recovery.
- Identity. It ensures that only authorized users can access Azure services. It also helps in protecting sensitive information and encryption keys in the cloud.
- Internet of things (IoT)– It enables users to capture, monitor and analyze IoT data from sensors and other devices. The services involve analytics, monitoring, notifications and support for coding and execution.
- Security– This product assures security against cloud security threats, and also manages encryption keys and other sensitive assets.
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning – This service can be used to incorporate artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and machine learning into applications and data sets.
- Containers– Common platforms Docker and Kubernetes are employed to assist users in creating, registering, orchestrating and managing huge volumes of containers in the Azure cloud.
Besides these, there are other services such as Migration, Intune, Block Chain, Development, Management and Governance, and Databases.