Microsoft AI Portfolio

Below is a visual representation of the Microsoft AI portfolio, showcasing various AI services and applications:

Introduction to Azure AI Services

Designed to be both accessible and robust, Azure AI Services allow businesses the flexibility to build, train, and deploy AI models efficiently using the secure and scalable infrastructure of Azure. The platform supports a range of programming languages and frameworks, making it a versatile choice for teams committed to driving innovation and improving decision-making using cutting-edge AI technologies.

Below is a detailed view of Azure AI services and how OpenAI models are integrated:

Azure AI Services Overview

• Azure AI Speech

Azure AI Speech offers tools for converting speech to text, text to speech, and translating speech into different languages. It also includes speaker recognition features, making it a powerful tool for applications requiring voice interaction and transcription services.

• Azure AI Language

Azure AI Language includes features like sentiment analysis, text summarization, key phrase extraction, entity linking, and custom text classification. These capabilities are crucial for building applications that need to understand and analyse textual data.

• Azure AI Vision

Azure AI Vision provides advanced image and video analysis capabilities, including optical character recognition (OCR), facial recognition, and object detection. This service is essential for applications that require processing and understanding visual data.

• Azure AI Search

Azure AI Search (formerly known as Azure Cognitive Search) enables developers to build sophisticated search experiences into their applications. It supports keyword searches, natural language processing, and AI-powered relevance ranking to deliver accurate search results.

• Azure Bot Services

Azure Bot Services provides a comprehensive framework for building, testing, and deploying intelligent bots. It integrates with other Azure AI services, allowing bots to use speech recognition, language understanding, and other AI capabilities to provide interactive and personalized experiences.

• Azure OpenAI

Azure OpenAI Service is a key component of the Azure AI portfolio, providing access to OpenAI’s powerful generative models, such as GPT-4, GPT-3.5, DALL-E, and Whisper. These models excel in understanding and generating human-like text, creating images from text prompts, and transcribing speech. Azure OpenAI integrates these advanced capabilities into the broader Azure AI ecosystem, enhancing its functionality and providing businesses with cutting-edge AI tools.

How Azure OpenAI Differs from OpenAI?

• OpenAI is an independent research organization focused on developing and deploying advanced AI models. Their flagship models include GPT-4, GPT-3.5, DALL-E, and Whisper. These models excel in generating human-like text, creating images from text prompts, and transcribing speech.
• Microsoft and OpenAI Partnership: The partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI brought Azure OpenAI Service into the picture. This collaboration leverages OpenAI’s cutting-edge models and integrates them into the Azure ecosystem, offering additional benefits such as security, compliance, and scalability.
• Azure OpenAI Service provides access to OpenAI’s models within the Azure ecosystem. This service offers the same advanced models as OpenAI but with the added benefits of Azure’s security and enterprise capabilities. By combining OpenAI’s innovative AI models with Azure’s robust infrastructure, businesses can achieve powerful AI solutions with enhanced security, compliance, and seamless integration with other Azure services.
• Key Differences with Azure OpenAI:
  • Security and Compliance: Azure OpenAI integrates with Azure’s robust security infrastructure, ensuring data protection, access control, and compliance with industry standards.
  • Integration with Azure Services: Azure OpenAI seamlessly integrates with other Azure services like Virtual Networks (VNETs) and Private Endpoints, providing a cohesive and scalable solution.
  • Data Handling: Data submitted to Azure OpenAI remains within Microsoft Azure and is not passed to OpenAI for model predictions, ensuring Azure has sole control and governance of the data, providing enhanced data privacy and security.

While there’s no strict guidance on when to use a particular service, Azure AI service can be used for widely known use-cases that require minimal tuning. Azure OpenAI Service may be more beneficial for use-cases that require highly customized generative models or for exploratory research.

Tools to Manage Azure AI Services

• Azure AI Studio

Azure AI Studio is a unified development environment where you can build, train, and deploy AI models. It offers a user-friendly interface and integrates seamlessly with other Azure services, making it easy to manage AI projects.

• Client Libraries and REST APIs

For developers and data scientists, Azure provides client libraries and REST APIs, offering programmatic access to Azure AI services. These tools provide flexibility and control for customizing AI models and solutions.

• Continuous Integration and Deployment

Azure supports continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) with tools like Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions. These tools automate the training, testing, and deployment of AI models, ensuring that your applications are always up to date.

Azure OpenAI Use Cases

• Customer Service: AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants provide instant, personalized responses to customer inquiries, enhancing customer satisfaction and reducing operational costs.
• Content Generation: Automate the creation of high-quality content, ensuring consistency and accuracy, particularly beneficial for marketing and content-driven businesses.
• Predictive Analytics: By analysing historical data, Azure OpenAI helps businesses predict future trends and make proactive decisions, optimizing inventory management and reducing risks.
• Personalized Marketing: Create highly targeted marketing campaigns by analysing customer data and behaviours, improving customer engagement and conversion rates.

Conclusion

Oreta stands at the forefront of harnessing the power of Azure AI services to drive business innovation and operational excellence. Our expertise in integrating these advanced AI tools enables organizations to unlock new levels of productivity, enhance decision-making, and implement cutting-edge solutions tailored to their unique needs. By leveraging Azure AI’s comprehensive suite, including speech, language, vision, search, and bot services, alongside the transformative capabilities of Azure OpenAI, we help businesses stay competitive and future-ready.

Stay tuned for the next instalment in our series, where we will delve deeper into practical use cases of Azure OpenAI and explore how its advanced features can revolutionize your business operations. Don’t miss out on discovering how to elevate your enterprise with the future of intelligent applications. Contact us today to learn how Oreta can help you implement and optimize Azure AI services for your business needs.

Introduction

Microsoft is a major player when it comes to cloud computing, specifically with its two foundational frameworks: the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and the Well-Architected Framework (WAF). The CAF has been instrumental in guiding organisations through their cloud adoption journey, offering a comprehensive array of best practices, documentation, and tools for effective cloud strategy and implementation.

On the other hand, the WAF, while not a recent introduction, has received substantial updates to further enhance cloud architecture approaches. These updates, particularly in late 2023, reflect Microsoft’s commitment to continuous improvement, ensuring that the framework remains relevant and valuable in addressing the evolving needs of cloud architecture.

Explore why CAF and WAF are the commonly discussed and implemented frameworks, gain in depth overview on their significance for businesses navigating the complexities of cloud transformation.

What is CAF and how does it work?

The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is not just a blueprint for cloud adoption; it’s an evolving guide that adapts to the ever-changing cloud landscape. This framework is meticulously designed to support cloud architects, IT professionals, and business decision-makers in seamlessly transitioning to the cloud. It aligns business objectives with technical strategies, ensuring successful cloud adoption and optimisation. The CAF encompasses a full lifecycle approach, addressing each stage of cloud adoption with detailed methodologies:

• Strategy: This involves understanding the underlying motivations for cloud adoption and clearly defining the desired business outcomes. It’s about setting a solid foundation for the cloud journey by aligning it with business objectives.
• Plan: Here, the focus is on developing actionable and strategic plans that align with the set business goals. This phase involves detailed planning for the cloud adoption process.
• Ready: This step prepares the cloud environment to accommodate upcoming changes, ensuring it’s optimised and aligned with the planned adoption strategies.
• Migrate: This critical phase involves the migration and modernisation of existing workloads to the cloud. It includes strategies for both moving existing applications and rearchitecting them in a cloud-native environment.
• Innovate: Encouraging the development of new, cloud-native or hybrid solutions, this phase fosters innovation and leverages the full potential of cloud capabilities.
• Secure: Recognising the importance of security, this methodology focuses on enhancing security measures and ensuring robust protection of cloud resources.
• Manage: This entails the management and operational oversight of cloud and hybrid solutions, emphasising efficiency and performance optimisation.
• Govern: It involves the governance of the cloud environment and workloads, ensuring compliance, risk management, and alignment with business policies.

Recent updates to the CAF include a stronger emphasis on sustainability, multi-tenant architectures, and integration with systems like Systems Applications and Products In data Processing (SAP). These updates reflect Microsoft’s commitment to providing a framework that not only guides but also grows with the technological advancements and changing business landscapes.

What is WAF and how does it work?

The Well-Architected Framework (WAF) by Microsoft, while not a brand-new introduction, has recently undergone significant enhancements to further strengthen its role in cloud architecture. Complementing the Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), WAF focuses intently on the architectural aspect of cloud solutions, guiding the design and management of cloud-hosted applications to ensure they are robust, secure, cost-efficient, and high-performing. The framework is structured around five key pillars, each representing a core element of architectural excellence:

• Reliability: This pillar emphasises the creation of systems that are not only resilient but also capable of swift recovery in the face of disruptions. The goal is to ensure uninterrupted service and high availability.
• Security: Focused on safeguarding applications and data, this pillar involves implementing comprehensive security measures that protect against threats while maintaining compliance and privacy standards.
• Cost Optimisation: Balancing cost against performance and capacity, this area aims to optimise resource utilisation and expenditure, ensuring that cloud investments are both effective and economical.
• Operational Excellence: This involves enhancing operational procedures to ensure smooth, efficient, and reliable business processes. It encompasses automation, monitoring, and continuous process improvement.
• Performance Efficiency: Concentrated on maximising system performance, this pillar stresses the importance of leveraging cloud capabilities to achieve scalable and responsive solutions.

The recent updates to WAF, announced in late 2023, have enriched the framework with more precise guidelines and instructional content across these pillars. These enhancements include updated design principles, checklists, trade-offs, and recommendation guides, all rooted in extensive real-world experience and customer engagements. The framework now offers more detailed guidance for workload teams, shaping discussions and decisions within these teams and setting continuous standards for all workloads.

How does CAF work with WAF?

Adopting these frameworks is not just about leveraging technology; it’s about a transformation in delivering IT services and reorienting business strategies. CAF ensures that this transformation is well-grounded in business strategy, while WAF guarantees that the technology implementation is optimal and well-architected. By integrating these frameworks, Oreta helps organisations to “stand on the shoulders of giants” by leveraging Microsoft’s vast experience to avoid common pitfalls and accelerate cloud journeys.

At Oreta, we understand the nuances and complementary nature of Microsoft’s CAF and WAF. By leveraging these frameworks, we guide organisations through each phase of their cloud journey, ensuring that every step is aligned with business objectives and grounded in architectural excellence. Our expertise ensures that your cloud transformation is not just a technological upgrade but a strategic evolution of your business.

Embark on your cloud journey with Oreta’s expertise in Microsoft’s CAF and WAF. Contact us to explore how we can tailor these frameworks to your organisation’s unique cloud transformation needs.

Introduction

In this blog post, we will explore the guideline for selecting the ideal cloud provider to suit your business needs. Whether you’re grappling with cloud solutions, software development, cybersecurity, or any other technological facet, join us as we uncover the secrets to effectively discerning the ideal service provider that aligns with your organisation’s unique needs and propels your business towards sustained success.

When choosing the right cloud provider, you should consider the below factors:

Deep Expertise
Scalability Support
Customer Service
Managed Services
Migration Support and Security

Deep Expertise

According to a Gartner report, almost all legacy applications migrated to public cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) will need optimisation to become more cost-effective by 2024. This underscores the critical role of a cloud provider’s expertise in maximising the benefits of cloud solutions.

A cloud provider’s deep expertise is essential for maximising cloud potential while minimising risks and complexities because it allows for:

• Strategic Alignment: Deep expertise aids in selecting a cloud solution that aligns with your business goals, driving efficiency and innovation.
• Risk Mitigation: A knowledgeable provider can navigate the complexities of cloud implementation, minimising risks such as operational disruptions and security vulnerabilities.
• Optimal Resource Utilisation: Expert providers can help identify the cloud services that deliver the most value for your unique needs, ensuring effective resource usage.
• Futureproofing: An expert provider stays updated with latest trends, helping your business adapt and leverage these advancements, safeguarding your technology investment.
• Vendor Management: Deep expertise simplifies navigation through the complex cloud ecosystem, ensuring seamless integration between different vendors.

Some pivotal questions to ask your cloud provider about their expertise should include:

• Can you describe your experience with cloud solutions similar to our needs?
• What is your process for understanding our business needs and aligning them with the right cloud solution?
• How do you ensure the solutions you provide are future-proof?
• Can you explain how you mitigate risks during cloud migration and implementation?
• What strategies do you employ for optimal resource utilisation in the cloud?
• Can you share your experience managing multiple vendors in the cloud ecosystem?

Scalability Support

RightScale’s 2020 State of the Cloud Report shows that 31% of businesses see cloud cost optimisation as a significant challenge when scaling cloud services, emphasising the necessity of professional scalability support.

The quality of scalability support is crucial when selecting a cloud service provider for the following reasons:

• Future Growth: Scalability support ensures the IT infrastructure grows with the business, accommodating increased traffic, data, and complex applications without performance loss.
• Cost Efficiency: The elasticity of cloud solutions, allowing resources to scale based on demand, ensures businesses pay only for what they use, optimising IT spending.
• Performance Maintenance: Scalability support guarantees consistent service to customers, even as the business scales.
• Innovation Support: Scalability enables quick testing and implementation of new ideas without heavy upfront investment, propelling innovation.

Some pivotal questions to ask your cloud provider about their scalability support should include:

• How will your cloud solutions adapt to our growing needs, such as increased traffic or data volume?
• What is your strategy for adding resources to accommodate our business growth?
• How do you maintain high performance levels as the demands on our cloud resources increase?
• How does scaling up or down reflect on our billing and overall cloud expenses?
• Can you provide examples of how you’ve helped other businesses scale their cloud services successfully?

Customer Service

According to the Microsoft 2020 State of Global Customer Service report, 58% of customers say customer service is a very important factor when choosing a brand, signifying the vital role of customer service in client decision-making. As Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning,” emphasising the importance of responsive and effective customer service in any business.

Effective customer service is crucial when selecting a cloud service provider due to the following reasons:

• Immediate Assistance: In today’s fast-paced digital world, quick resolution of issues is paramount. Good customer service ensures swift and effective responses, minimising potential downtime.
• Product Understanding: A customer service team with deep product knowledge can guide businesses to better utilise their cloud services, boosting operational efficiency.
• Relationship Building: Exceptional customer service fosters a strong business relationship, promoting trust and long-term commitment.
• Issue Prevention: Proactive customer service can identify and rectify potential issues before they escalate, improving overall system reliability.

Some pivotal questions to ask your cloud provider about their customer service should include:

• What is your support response times, and do you provide 24/7 assistance?
• How does your team handle issue escalation and resolution?
• Can you provide specific examples of how your customer service team has gone above and beyond to support a client?
• How do you gather and incorporate customer feedback into your services and support?

Managed Services – Cloud Operations

According to a report from MarketsandMarkets, the managed services market is expected to grow from USD 223.0 billion in 2020 to USD 329.1 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 8.1% during the forecast period. This data highlights the increasing demand and value businesses place on managed services in the realm of cloud computing.

The inclusion of managed services is vital when choosing a cloud service provider for the following reasons:

• Operational Efficiency: Managed services allow businesses to concentrate on their core tasks by outsourcing IT management, thus improving productivity.
• Cost Savings: Managed services can lead to significant cost savings by reducing the need for in-house IT teams and infrastructure.
• Risk Reduction: With expert handling of IT aspects, managed services help mitigate the risk of data loss, downtime, and cyber threats.
• Access to Expertise: Managed services bring specialised knowledge and skills, which can lead to better IT decision-making and innovation.

Some pivotal questions to ask your cloud provider about their managed services should include:

• What managed services do you offer, and how do they enhance the base cloud services?
• How do your managed services improve operational efficiency and security?
• Can you provide examples of how your managed services have added value to other businesses?
• How does your managed services model reflect on our overall cloud expenses?

Migration / Integration Support and Security

According to a 2020 report by Fortinet, 74% of organisations have moved some applications into the cloud and then moved them back on-premises, indicating the complexities of the migration process. Moreover, a Gartner study found that through 2025, at least 99% of cloud security failures would be the customer’s fault, emphasising the need for expert migration, integration, and security support.

Migration, integration support and security are critical when selecting a cloud service provider for the following reasons:

• Smooth Transition: Expert support ensures a seamless migration, minimising disruption to business operations.
• Optimised Performance: Proper integration allows businesses to leverage their cloud services fully, enhancing performance and efficiency.
• Data Protection: Robust security measures protect sensitive business data from unauthorised access and cyber threats.
• Risk Reduction: Expert planning and execution of the migration process mitigate risks of data loss or system downtime. Similarly, stringent security measures help prevent potential cyber threats.

Some pivotal questions to ask your cloud provider about their mitigation support and security should include:

• What is your process for migrating systems to the cloud, and how do you ensure minimal disruption to our operations?
• How do you ensure seamless integration between the cloud services and our existing systems?
• What security measures do you have in place to protect our data and applications in the cloud?
• Can you provide examples of migrations, integrations, and security measures you’ve successfully implemented for other businesses?

Conclusion

Additionally, outstanding customer service fosters trust and minimizes downtime. Managed services enhance operational efficiency, cut costs, and mitigate risks. Comprehensive support for migration, integration, and security ensures a smooth transition and data protection. By asking pivotal questions, you can partner with the right provider for a successful digital future.

At Oreta, we stand as the premier cloud service provider for businesses in Australia. With our deep expertise, proven track record, and strong partnerships with major cloud platforms, we deliver exceptional solutions tailored to our clients’ unique needs. Our focus on managed security services, compliance assistance, scalability support, transparent pricing, and outstanding customer service is what sets us apart. We ensure seamless migration and integration processes, enabling businesses to unlock the full potential of the cloud. Trust Oreta as your strategic cloud partner and experience the power of cloud technology to drive your business forward.

Contact us now for a no obligation chat.

Many innovators come up with their ‘Aha’ moment from seeing what their competitors are doing and going that one step further to meet the market’s needs better. Let’s take Apple, for instance; the iPhone is a result of looking at how other smartphones developed by competitors like Nokia, Microsoft and Blackberry were meeting the needs of their users, identifying and addressing gaps and successfully rolling out a more superior product. 

Cisco is doing something very similar to Apple with its new HyperFlex. The hyperconvergence product is not just about created to outsmart its competition; it is designed on what the real customer needs are and adapting to the shifting demands in the market – a product that offers increased flexibility and scalability – to achieve a unified solution.   

With HyperFlex, Cisco has adopted a ‘customer-centric approach and aims to help organisations match their workloads to the right architecture and, in the long term, have an edge over their competitors as the business world experiences significant digital transformation. All while technology in the data centre. 

As Cisco was developing HyperFlex, numerous conversations were taking place with various organisations to hear ‘what’ and ‘how’ they wanted their data centre to operate in the future. There was universal agreement that they wanted a modern data centre that was automated, orchestrated and open, with the ability to move workloads into the cloud. They wanted the flexibility to run business-critical apps on-premise to the public cloud while having the same operational capabilities. 

Cisco listened and delivered with HyperFlex, providing a product that increases operational efficiency, faster delivery of IT services, and greater IT agility. 

HyperFlex is paving the way for many different industries to improve their operational efficiencies. The health care industry is one particular example of the need for this hyperconverged technology. Health care providers are competing in a fast-paced, rapidly evolving business. Their current technology is outdated and not keeping up with the growing IT demands. Many are in dire need of transformation.  

The providers are fully aware that they need to address this problem if they want to succeed. As such, larger organisations are investing in Hyperflex to improve the ease of use, flexibility and scalability of their health care delivery systems. Many are also seeing the advantages of Hyperflex, including protecting its critical business applications and data. 

Cisco HyperFlex is galvanising how customers think about their technology in many ways. They are now thinking virtually rather than physically. For example, organisations can deploy new applications can in minutes, not hours or days. Gone are the days of manually putting in orders and waiting for the IT specialists to add storage or servers. With its seamless, on-demand response, HyperFlex cuts the process down dramatically and enables your IT team to do it in-house.    

Another big advantage organisations are experiencing is its simplicity and ability to build on a UCS base and integrate into existing converged database architecture. HyperFlex can be used in many different ways, from virtual desktops (VDI), app dev/testing to operating in a private cloud. 

Cisco HyperFlex is helping transform organisations in line with the new digital era. It isn’t just an appliance box. It’s designed to be an integral part of an organisation’s IT infrastructure. Integrated DC infrastructure, cloud suite, and application-centric infrastructure (ACI) are all building blocks creating the new digital data centre, spanning hardware and software – providing access to any application, from any cloud, anywhere.  

Cisco has introduced innovation to the data centre: IP Telephony Virtualisation, Application Economic, Hybrid Cloud, and Hyperconvergence with HyperFlex. Cisco is renowned for driving industry transformation, then taking a large percentage of the enterprise market. HyperFlex is creating a platform for the Next-Gen digital data centre. It is a vast advancement in consolidating the Data Centre as one, bringing computer, storage and network together, and creating tomorrow’s digital platform today. 

HyperFlex gives you the right tools to modernise the present and simplify the future. No wonder it has been recognised as a leader in both the Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave for multiple years, and most recently was named HCI product of the year in 2020 by CRN. If you are responsible for managing your business’s critical applications and would to discuss whether Cisco HyperFlex is right for your business contact us today.

Cisco HyperFlex Anywhere extends the simplicity of hyperconvergence from core to the edge and multicloud, putting IT at the centre of rapid innovation in a world where data is everywhere. 

Today, many organisations face new challenges with computing requirements that go beyond their core data centres to clouds and edge environments – driven by the rise of IoT and AI/ML-powered applications.

 The latest innovations in Cisco HyperFlex 4.0 with Cisco Intersight, introduces new edge scaling options and cloud management for multisite edge deployments, engineered to meet the unique requirements for deploying hyperconverged infrastructure at the edge at a global scale thus enabling new IoT and intelligent services at the edge

HyperFlex and Intersight allow customers to extend the simplicity and efficiency of HCI from their core data centres to the edges of their operations with consistent policy enforcement and cloud-powered systems management. 

HyperFlex makes it straightforward to expand an organisation’s computing environment across the modern, distributed data centre. Each node ships with fully integrated hardware, software, and networking, making HyperFlex solutions ready to deploy in minutes and bringing the power to deliver HCI anywhere while delivering a seamless experience from edge to core. 

Organisations that invest in Cisco HyperFlex are experiencing many unique benefits, including: 

• Broad workload support: The HyperFlex 4.0 release delivers core-to-edge enhancements to the platform. At the edge, new capabilities for HyperFlex Edge and Cisco Intersight provide an enterprise-class platform to aid in simplifying the deployment of branch and edge applications and enable new IoT and intelligence services while performance, security, and container enhancements broaden the support capabilities of mission-critical applications in the core. 

• Simpler multisite deployment and management: Cisco Intersight lets organisations automate the deployment and ongoing operation of HyperFlex systems across hundreds or thousands of remote locations from a single point of control. The unique cloud-powered management, enabled through Intersight, delivers consistent policy and security enforcement, true full-stack upgrades, and proactive contact with the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC)—redefining operational simplicity at the edge. 

• Workload flexibility and configuration: Meet aggressive cost envelopes for computing at branch locations in retail and other consumer industries, with efficient management at a massively distributed scale. Organisations can enjoy flexibility from a choice of fully configurable 2-node up to 4-node hybrid or all[1]flash cluster sizes, with the ability to use 1 or 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity that can operate over the existing network infrastructure. No other HCI appliance on the market offers the range of configuration options available with HyperFlex.

If you are responsible for managing your business’s critical applications, discuss whether Cisco HyperFlex is right for your company to contact us today.

Key points

• Microsoft Azure gives enterprises the flexibility to start small and grow their infrastructure as their business grows.
• Enterprises can easily integrate Microsoft apps and services into its existing solutions.
• Microsoft Azure offers secure cloud solutions by using sophisticated encryption algorithms and techniques.

Australia is at the forefront of cloud adoption. Approximately 95% of organisations are running applications or experimenting with infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), with cloud service providers, such as Microsoft Azure, managing the infrastructure – and for a good reason. They are seeing the benefits of migrating their apps and workloads to the cloud.

Microsoft Azure (‘Azure’) is one of the fastest growing and most secure cloud infrastructure platforms available today. It is renowned for its speed, flexibility, and resilience. It boasts the highest amount of security and privacy certifications of any cloud provider. Azure empowers workers to be more productive, enables cognitive learning and AI, and can ultimately transform businesses.

Here our cloud specialist, Dev G, digs a bit deeper into the benefits your business could experience shifting to Microsoft Azure.

Ability to scale on demand.

Cloud infrastructure is hugely beneficial to organisations looking to shift workloads to an expandable pool of resources that can contract and enlarge as demand requires; Azure is no exception. Azure scales alongside an enterprise’s current needs, Enterprises can monitor and tailor their cloud usage as per their workload requirements in a secure environment with no limitation on server capacity. Thus, giving them the flexibility to augment their infrastructure at a pace that suits their business needs.

Azure can also be set up to auto scale as workloads change. With greater scalability, enterprises can gain the experience and confidence in operating their business in the cloud as they continue to grow, while only paying for what they use.

Tip – To make the most of Azure’s hyper-scale environment and avoid unnecessary costs, enterprises should avoid making the common mistake of ‘just’ migrating from on-premises to the cloud. Enterprises need to continue to monitor Azure once they have migrated to the platform. There are helpful tools, such as Azure Advisor and Azure’s auto-scaling engine, to help set triggers to analyse the environment, including workload behaviour, and create sanctions for availability, performance, security, and cost. 

Greater Flexibility 

In the dynamic technology sector, enterprises need to partner with a host that can evolve as quickly as their needs do. Azure can easily adapt to an enterprise’s unique business needs and provides the capability to manage, deploy and control infrastructure from almost anywhere, at any time, enabling enterprises to modify the cloud as required.

Tip – When adopting Azure, enterprises need to scrap the ‘lift and shift approach. They need to see Azure as a highly scalable and adaptable solution that can be right-sized to their specific and current needs – such an approach will lead to many cost savings. 

More Availability 

Azure features an industry-leading SLA and more than 10,000 Availability Zones enabling businesses to migrate their workloads seamlessly from one locality to another.

Tip – Enterprises need to be mindful that the availability is not built-in to Azure by default. Just because it is in the cloud does not mean a resource is always available. It is important workloads enterprises can access their workloads from more than one virtual machine within the same availability zone (to achieve a high SLA).

Improved Accessibility

Azure offers enterprises the freedom to access services from any device and any location in a secure environment. Azure enables enterprises to easily integrate Microsoft apps and services into their existing solutions. Enterprises can also use the Microsoft Azure App service to write apps that use all the platform’s capabilities, including app storage, networking, servers, storage, database, analytics, and machine learning.

Robust Security 

Azure offers several secure cloud solutions which use sophisticated encryption algorithms and techniques. When users access Microsoft cloud services, they can retain complete control of their data while remaining fully protected. Azure’s also gives enterprises the flexibility to choose which apps they want to use, the level of encryption to employ and other settings.

Tip – Enterprises need to ensure they have the right security and backup levels in place when they move to Azure – ultimately, it is their responsibility regardless of if the workloads are on-premises or in the cloud. Enterprises also need to extend their continuity strategy, processes and tools to include Azure – there are various storage and backup tools available. 

Ability to optimise costs 

Many customers have no idea what discounts or entitlements are available with Microsoft Azure and therefore miss out on huge cost savings. With Microsoft’s huge customer base, it has been able to offer discounted prices to its customers. As the market gets more competitive with AWS and Google, costs will likely go down even further. Also, Azure provides a ‘pay what you use’ model, which significantly reduces the upfront costs for small businesses.

Tips – Azure subscriptions should align with an enterprise’s business goals. Governance tools such as Azure Scaffold can be a powerful cost-management tool, helping enterprises protect businesses from human errors, tag resources, set up policies, quickly run reports on various resources and reduce susceptibility to vulnerabilities which could lead to costly mistakes in the future. 

A great way to optimise your costs with Azure is to shut down machines that are not mission-critical when they are not in use (e.g., after-hours). If you are using a subscription model and not paying upfront for virtual machines, you don’t need to have your infrastructure operating 24 x7.  

Platform as a Service (PaaS) 

Another core strength of Azure is its Platform as a Service (PaaS) capability. Completely serverless, enterprises do not have to worry about infrastructure, including monitoring patching or remediating the server. Enterprises do not have to waste time on deploying, configuring, managing, and monitoring IaaS infrastructure Their IT team can spend more time on the business’s strategic aspects; helping it grow and succeed and save on time and money.

Tip – Enterprises must select which workloads they want to move to PaaS as not all workloads are suitable for this environment.

Hybrid Capability 

Azure allows enterprises to build hybrid environments, enabling them to take advantage of on-premises resources and the benefits of operating on a cloud platform without any hidden unnecessary costs.

Azure continues to grow rapidly, regularly adding support for various features, applications and different technology platforms. If you are considering migrating to the cloud, Azure should be on the list of options.

Oreta has gold partner status with Microsoft because of its distinctive competencies in Azure, including system integration and managed services. We partner with customers throughout their journey to the cloud – from advisory and delivery to operations and continued optimisation.