Cloud services is one of the most lucrative industries in the technology sector right now. According to research conducted by Rightscale, 95% of businesses* are using some sort of cloud-based technology in their day to day business activities. In this article, we look at two of the market’s leading cloud solutions; Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been established since 2006. They’ve gone on to become the market leader in cloud technology, boasting a burgeoning portfolio of clients. However, since Microsoft Azure was launched in 2010, Microsoft have made enormous strides with the Azure product. Microsoft Azure is rapidly gaining ground on AWS and was identified by Gartner as a leader in IaaS, PaaS and SaaS in a recent report.
We’ve identified four key reasons why businesses should love Azure.
True hybrid cloud solution
Unlike Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure adopts a true hybrid cloud methodology. Instead of using a ‘virtual’ hybrid, Azure can be tailored to utilise the public cloud and infrastructure based on premise, in your own data centre. You’ll be empowered to call the shots on what part of the system processes specific data and have options to build an effective cloud strategy.
Unrivalled security
Microsoft has been around since 1975. For the last 46 years, as an enterprise software developer, Microsoft have unrivalled and stringent security measures. Azure was built using the ‘Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle’ recognised by Aberdeen Group, as a comprehensive approach to increasing security and negating vulnerability. As such, Microsoft was the first cloud provider to achieve ISO 27018 – giving you the peace of mind knowing that your data will be held securely with Azure.
Familiar software and programming languages
Azure is made up of familiar software and tools. You’ll be ready to go on your first day of being in the cloud. Services like Virtual Machines, Backups and Active Directory are all available and ready to use. It also ties in toolsets such as Visual Studio, XCode, Eclipse, GitHub and Hadoop, and offers a vast array of third-party tools, solutions and partner-developed applications via the Microsoft Store.
Transparent Disaster Recovery
Azure is one of the only cloud providers to offer transparency on their disaster recovery plans. Under a non-disclosure agreement, you can request details on their disaster recovery measures. Microsoft also guarantee that if they make any changes to their Service Level Agreement (SLA), they’re obliged to let you know 90 days in advance. AWS offers half this time, giving you less time to mitigate for any potential issues this may cause.
If you’re interested in learning more about Microsoft Azure, give our experts a call on 0203 004 4600 or fill in our online contact form.
