What is Microsoft Azure and what is it used for. I will try to explain to you in this post.
What is Microsoft Azure
You might have heard about Azure or you might rely on it every day, without knowing it. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud service. It is one of the biggest datacenter in the world, but is so much more that just that. If your company is using Office 365 as your e-mail provider and OneDrive for your files, it is all located in one of Microsoft’s global datacenters. If your are using Microsoft Teams for business meetings, your are also using azure services. Azure is also hosting millions of apps and services that you might be using in a daily basis.
Microsoft Azure was officially launched on February 1, 2010, under the name: “Windows Azure”. It was later rebranded as “Microsoft Azure” in March 2014.
Azure Cloud service models
Like most other cloud solutions, Microsoft Azure, divide their cloud services into 3 models. Depending on your needs, you should select the model that fit your needs. Don’t very, you can mix the service models just like you need.
- IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service
- PaaS – Platform as a Service
- SaaS – Software as a Service
IaaS
Infrastructure as a service, is the most flexible category of cloud services, as it provides you the maximum amount of control for your cloud resources. In an IaaS model, the cloud provider is responsible for maintaining the hardware, network connectivity (to the internet), and physical security.
PaaS
Platform as a service, is a middle ground between renting space in a datacenter (infrastructure as a service) and paying for a complete and deployed solution (software as a service). In a PaaS environment, the cloud provider maintains the physical infrastructure, physical security, and connection to the internet.
SaaS
Software as a service, is the most complete cloud service model from a product perspective. With SaaS, you’re essentially renting or using a fully developed application. Email, financial software, messaging applications, and connectivity software are all common examples of a SaaS implementation.
Microsoft Azure Global Datacenters
Microsoft have datacenters all over the world. This make sure that you can have high arability, but still have low latency to your data in the cloud. Below you can see where the datacenter of Microsoft Azure is located. Microsoft are stilling building new datacenters, that pops up in regions all over the world.
If you click on the link below, you can explore the map over Microsoft Azure’s datacenter, world wide. You can also see where Microsoft is planning new datacenters.
Navigate Azure global infrastructure yourself
Check latency to all datacenters in Azure
If you want to know more about Microsoft Azure, you should take a look at Microsoft Azure Blog
Are you using Microsoft Azure?
How about you? Are you using Azure in your business and for what? I would love, if you would leave me a comment or question below.
