Azure

What is Azure?

At its core, Azure is a public cloud computing platform—with solutions including Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) that can be used for services such as analytics, virtual computing, storage, networking, and much more. It can be used to replace or supplement your on-premise servers.

What is Azure Used For?

Organizations of various sizes use Microsoft Azure to host websites, analyze data, conduct disaster recovery, and develop software—among other applications.

Azure Infrastructure as a Service (Azure IaaS). Azure IaaS is one of several tiers of service. With Azure IaaS, users can run and manage computing resources through the Azure Virtual Desktop interface.

Platform as a Service (PaaS). The PaaS model supports and maintains tools, programming languages, frameworks, and infrastructure.

Azure storage and databases. Solutions such as Azure Storage Explorer backup and store data using an SaaS model.

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). Azure ML and AI tools and cognitive services include data models, image recognition, and natural language processing.

Internet of Things (IoT). The Azure IoT Hub allows monitoring and analysis of IoT sensor and device data.

DevOps and application lifecycle management. Azure DevOps provides tools and services for automating software development processes, such as code repositories and build pipelines.

Security and identity services. Microsoft Azure features robust security services across mobile devices, such as Azure Active Directory for identity and access management, as well as features for threat protection and compliance.

Azure Content Delivery Networks (CDN). Azure CDN improves performance and scalability of websites and applications by distributing content to edge locations across regions.

Hybrid cloud solutions. Azure integrates on-premises data centers with the cloud to produce hybrid cloud environments organizations may access for increased flexibility and scalability.

Networking. Azure offers various services like Azure Virtual Network, load balancers, VPN Gateway, and ExpressRoute for creating and managing network resources in the cloud.

Serverless computing. Azure Functions is a serverless computing service that lets users run event-driven code without infrastructure.