The Benefits of Using Microsoft Azure

As a Managed Services Provider, we work with customers to select the best services to support their IT and make it secure. It’s our job to know the difference between a trend and solutions worth adopting. In this cloud market, we’re an MSP that recommends Microsoft Azure as one of our primary solutions. Azure provides an efficient, secure, flexible, and cost-effective method for data storage and IT infrastructure. 

How those solutions are delivered is where we do our best work. Building the right cloud solution for your business is how you get the most out of the cloud at the best cost, with the least hassle. Whether beginning your move to the cloud or building out an existing solution, we’ll help you build the best foundation for your custom cloud solution.

Azure’s Security takes an “assume breach” approach to its cloud. Its focus on compliance, privacy, and threat detection are hard to beat. Answer the following questions and see if your security stacks up to the features we list below.  

• 24/7 global incident response team monitoring servers
• Certificate and Private Key Management
• Encryption protected communications
• Identity and access management
• Firewalls, partitioned Local Area Networks, and Network Security Groups
• Intrusion detection and distributed denial of service

If you’re interested in a technical summary of 10 critical security functions Azure uses, you can learn more here. For an overview of even more security features, go here.

In terms of privacy, Azure adheres to the international standard for cloud privacy, ISO 27018, publishes transparency reports, and publishes law enforcement guidelines. Microsoft also tells users about government data requests and requires a warrant for content.

A lot of customers worry about compliance, but Azure offers guidelines for compliance by service, location, and industry. No matter what Azure option you choose, there’s help.

Moving to Azure through Astadia offers a wide range of support. We don't just mean technical or billing support when you need it. IT support comes in the form of automatic patches, security updates, and upgrades. For running workloads, Azure supports some of the the broadest number of cloud solutions, operating systems, software, development languages, and devices.  

Azure integrates with existing Microsoft licenses, SQL servers, and Sharepoint. It also supports different Operating Systems, development languages, frameworks and third party technologies. ‍

Cost is up to you. Since Azure is a cloud, you pay for what you’re using and can use more or less. It’s important to work with a professional if you’re looking to build the most cost-efficient model for your business, as some workloads may be more expensive than others. The ability to research, right-size, ultimately build a secure, efficient and cost-conscious infrastructure makes this a worthwhile move for many—especially when compared to the maintenance and service costs of running infrastructure on-premises.

Some customers are worried that switching to Azure will mean moving everything they have and stop their search there. Not only is this untrue, but it misses the opportunity to explore the different Azure options for storage, infrastructure, and deployment. Plus, it’s a huge missed opportunity to develop better disaster recovery and preparedness.  

In our next blog, we’ll start thinking ahead with Azure and look at two forms of Azure that help customers understand what they’re looking for.