The cloud for modern business. Move faster. Save money. Integrate on-premises apps and data.
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, a growing collection of integrated services—analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage, and web—for moving faster, achieving more, and saving money. 

Azure Delivers Unmatched Productivity

Any developer or IT professional can be productive with Azure. Azure’s integrated tools, pre-built templates, and managed services make it easier to build and manage enterprise, mobile, web, and Internet of Things (IoT) apps faster, using skills developers and IT professionals already have and technologies they already know. Microsoft is also the only vendor positioned as a Leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Application Platform as a Service, and Cloud Storage Services for the second consecutive year.

Open and Flexible

Azure supports the broadest selection of operating systems, programming languages, frameworks, tools, databases and devices. Run Linux and Docker containers; build apps with JavaScript, Python, .NET, PHP, Java, Node.js; build backends for iOS, Android, and Windows devices. Azure supports the same technologies millions of developers and IT professionals already rely on and trust.

Azure Works With Existing IT

Some cloud providers make you choose between your data center and the cloud. Not Azure, which easily integrates with your existing IT environment through the largest network of secure private connections, hybrid database and storage solutions, and data residency and encryption features—so your assets stay right where you need them. You can even run Azure in your own data center with Azure Stack. Azure’s hybrid cloud solutions give you the best of both worlds: more IT options, less complexity and cost.

Azure Is Built To Protect Your Data

We know some organizations are still wary of the cloud. That’s why Microsoft has made an industry-leading nt to the protection and privacy of your data. We were the first cloud provider recognized by the European Union’s data protection authorities for our commitment to rigorous EU privacy laws. Microsoft was also the first major cloud provider to adopt the new international cloud privacy standard, ISO 27018. We also launched Azure Government, a stand-alone version of Azure designed to meet the rigorous compliance requirements of U.S. public agencies.

Azure Is Ready For Any Business

From small dev-test projects to global product launches, Azure is engineered to handle any workload. More than 57% of Fortune 500 companies rely on Azure, which offers enterprise grade SLA’s on services, 24x7 tech support, and round-the-clock service health monitoring. Customers include 3M, AccuWeather, Condé Nast, Diebold, GE Healthcare, HarperCollins, Heineken, LG, NBC, Pier 1 Imports, Real Madrid, Saab, Samsung, Trek, Xerox…and many, many more.

While there are many considerations for implementing a cloud-based Disaster Recovery solution, the best practices for designing a DRaaS include:

• Analyze cost and ROI, comparing public clouds like Azure to secondary data centers
• Determine RPO/RTO and performance requirements, then assess applicability of replicating to Azure vs replicating to other DR locations
• Assess your organization’s DR tenant location, to ensure it’s located in a different region than your core data center to protect against regional disasters
• Ensure security (policy, identity/access, VM and network security, monitoring/alerting)
• Model dependencies and sequencing, to configure in which order the applications and supporting services should be failed over (i.e. SQL may need to be failed over and activated before an application server).
• Plan for capacity and bandwidth, not only for initial replication, but also for delta replication and peaks
• Test frequently. You can use Azure Site Recovery’s to create a copy of your environment, on an isolated network mirrored test environment where you do DR drills as often as you want, without impacting production. The replication continues in production while you're testing your DR in its sandbox.
• Ensure complete replications.

Gartner's Recommended use cases: Microsoft Azure appeals to two types of customers, but for different reasons.

• Type 1 | customers tend to value the ability to use Azure to extend their infrastructure-oriented Microsoft relationship and investment in Microsoft technologies.
• Type 2 | customers tend to value Azure's ability to integrate with Microsoft's application development tools and technologies, or are interested in integrated specialized PaaS capabilities, such as the Azure Data Lake, Azure Machine Learning or the Azure IoT Suite.

Recommended uses: All use cases that run well in a virtualized environment, particularly for Microsoft-centric organizations.

Microsoft Azure's core strength is its Microsoft heritage — its integrations (both current and future) with other Microsoft products and services, its leverage of the existing Microsoft ISV ecosystem, and its overall strategic importance to Microsoft's future. Azure has a very broad range of services, and Microsoft has steadily executed on an ambitious roadmap. Customers that are strategically committed to Microsoft technology generally choose Azure as their primary cloud provider.

Microsoft Azure's capabilities have become increasingly innovative and open, with improved support for Linux and open-source application stacks. Furthermore, many customers that are pursuing a multicloud strategy will use Azure for some of their workloads, and Microsoft's on-premises Azure Stack software may potentially attract customers seeking hybrid solutions.

Microsoft has sustained a very high growth rate over multiple years, and Gartner estimates its end-of-2017 revenue run rate for integrated IaaS+PaaS at more than $4 billion. Microsoft is leveraging its tremendous sales reach and ability to bundle Azure with other Microsoft products and services in order to drive adoption; Office 365 customers often decide it is most logical to adopt Azure. Microsoft is steadily growing the size of Azure customers; many are beginning to spend more than $500,000 a year, and a growing number exceed $5 million in annual spending.

For the Access Management Gartner Report

You can get a free trial of Azure AD Premium to test these features, and our experts at Enabling Technologies can help you get them set up.

For a visual explanation of Azure AD, check out the 11-minute video. Many new capabilities have been added since its recording, but the fundamentals are still sound. 

Early adopters of public cloud services like Azure experienced three main challenges; cost overruns, security, and manageability. Enabling’s Azure Foundation Deployment Service applies those lessons learned to provide a fundamental deployment of Azure services. We’ll educate you on how to get started, how to secure the environment, and then guide you through hands on deployment.

Enabling will provide foundation planning, design, and configuration services for up to (2) workloads (domain controller, web server, etc.). Our Azure Specialists will focus on:

Infrastructure & Network Planning	Cost Management	Security	HA/DR
Naming conventions Azure Resource Manager Network Security Groups User-defined routing VPN connectivity ExpressRoute	Subscriptions and billing Rightsizing Up/Downscaling Resource Tags Azure Cost Management/Cloudyn Azure Advisor	Secure RDP access and Multifactor Authentication Role Based Access Control Azure Security Center Microsoft vs 3rd party firewall services	Backup Azure Site Recovery Storage redundancy options

Options
Planning & Design
The result will be a documented plan to build a secure Azure tenant in the future.

Planning, Design & Deployment
The result will be a working Azure tenant with a secure foundation.

Early adopters of Azure Infrastructure and Storage as a Service occasionally report unexpected cost overruns. Often, those early experiences created a perception that Azure seems expensive. In fact, cost overruns are often due to improper configurations and misuse of Microsoft licensing advantages, not Azure’s inherent charges. Getting off on the wrong foot has stalled rollouts, especially when compared to organizations that followed best practices from the outset.

Enabling Technologies provides an Azure Audit Service to assess the existing Azure infrastructure and look for areas of improvement. Enabling’s Azure engineers focus on storage, virtual machines, networks, the use of IaaS versus PaaS, and other critical contributors to cost. Our engineers provide recommendations to optimize spending and performance based on Azure tools, experience, and best practices.

The Result
The result is cost savings or at the least, a scale-able plan for expansion that can realize the intended ROI. We also train your IT audit staff to be equipped to understand and manage costs in the future. Getting cost under control can offer a more predictable, better managed Azure environment.