Companies are constantly on the lookout for creative solutions to optimize their processes, enhance productivity, and foster expansion.
One such transformative avenue is through a Microsoft Azure migration. Azure is a leading cloud computing platform that offers an abundance of tools and benefits for businesses of all sizes.
In today’s blog, we'll explore the myriad of ways in which migrating to Azure empowers businesses to streamline their existing operations and what a successful migration strategy looks like.
While application and data modernization offer numerous advantages, organizations are predominantly driven by the following objectives:
Embracing cloud-native technologies enables organizations to redirect their focus from maintaining legacy infrastructure to fostering innovation. By leveraging the cloud, businesses can streamline operations and dedicate more resources to creative and strategic endeavors.
Implementing a microservices architecture empowers organizations to construct applications that are not only resilient and highly scalable, but also independently deployable and adaptable.
This approach ensures that applications can swiftly evolve to meet changing demands, providing businesses with the agility needed to thrive in dynamic market landscapes.
Azure offers an extensive suite of tools and services. From artificial intelligence and machine learning to data analytics, Azure provides businesses with the necessary resources to stay competitive.
With a Microsoft Azure migration, businesses can harness the power of tools like:
These are just a few of the tools that allow businesses to gain valuable insights from their data, enabling smarter decision-making and strategic planning.
Azure's pay-as-you-go model ensures that businesses pay only for the services they use, making it a cost-effective solution, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises. Additionally, Azure's scalability allows businesses to adapt to changing demands seamlessly.
Whether your business experiences sudden growth or requires additional resources for a specific project, Azure scales up or down according to your needs, ensuring optimal resource utilization and cost efficiency.
Security is paramount in the digital age, and Azure takes this concern seriously. It is estimated by most top cybersecurity firms that a breach will occur as frequently as every 7 seconds by 2024, and the overall cost impact of cybersecurity breaches have exceeded $20 billion (about $62 per person in the US) this year alone and is expected to be much higher in 2024.
Microsoft invests heavily in ensuring the security and compliance of its cloud services. That is why Azure offers robust security features, including:
These critical security features empower organizations to protect their sensitive data and digital assets effectively. By migrating to Azure, businesses can enhance their security posture, build customer trust, and comply with industry regulations effortlessly.
Azure's Lift-and-Shift strategy is a migration approach that involves transferring existing applications, data, and workloads from on-premises or other cloud environments to Microsoft Azure without making significant changes to the underlying code or architecture.
This method enables businesses to quickly transition to Azure's cloud platform, minimizing downtime and disruptions. The benefits of Lift-and-Shift include rapid migration, reduced costs associated with redevelopment, and streamlined deployment.
This strategy is ideal for businesses with tight migration timelines, or those looking for a straightforward, cost-effective way to move their existing infrastructure to the cloud. It suits organizations seeking a quick and efficient migration solution without the complexities of re-engineering their applications, making it a popular choice for various industries and enterprises of different sizes.
With tools like Azure Migrate, businesses can assess their on-premises infrastructure, identify dependencies, and migrate applications and data to Azure with minimal disruption. However, due to the sophisticated nature of Azure and its migration process, many companies benefit from employing a managed IT service provider to ensure a secure, seamless, expert led migration.
credit: Microsoft
Key Benefits:
Azure's Move-and-Improve strategy represents a comprehensive approach to cloud migration, enabling businesses to not only transfer their existing applications and data to Microsoft Azure but also enhance and optimize them for maximum efficiency.
This innovative strategy involves leveraging Azure's vast array of services and tools to modernize applications, making them more agile, scalable, and resilient in the cloud environment.
The key benefits of this strategy include increased operational efficiency, enhanced security, and the ability to innovate rapidly. Businesses with legacy systems, outdated applications, or those seeking to adapt to changing market demands can significantly benefit from Azure's Move-and-Improve strategy.
By combining migration with optimization, businesses can ensure a seamless transition to the cloud while positioning themselves for sustained growth and innovation.
Whether it's building innovative applications, implementing DevOps practices, or adopting serverless computing, Azure provides the foundation for businesses to explore new horizons, drive digital transformation, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.
Microsoft Azure opens the door to a world of possibilities for businesses. The abundance of tools and benefits, coupled with the flexibility to lift-and-shift existing operations and move-and-improve strategies, positions Azure as a game-changer in the business realm.
By embracing Azure, businesses can enhance their efficiency, boost innovation, and pave the way for sustainable growth in the digital age.
If you’re ready to take the next step and learn more about Azure migration, you can chat with one of our experts, you can also save your seat for our upcoming webinar that dives deep into Azure migration to help you learn more about strategies, benefits, and the platform as a whole.
Check out our previous Azure webinars:
Cloud computing has become the backbone of modern businesses. Among the leading cloud service providers, Microsoft Azure stands out as a versatile and powerful platform, offering a wide array of services to meet various business needs.
However, managing an Azure infrastructure is no simple task, and one critical aspect that should never be overlooked is monitoring. In this blog, we'll delve into why monitoring your Azure infrastructure is paramount for ensuring optimal performance, robust security, and overall business success.
Before we dive into the significance of monitoring, it's essential to understand the complexity of Azure infrastructure. Azure's ecosystem comprises various interconnected components, including virtual machines, databases, storage accounts, networking resources, and more.
These components work together to deliver a seamless cloud experience. However, as the infrastructure grows, so do the chances of encountering issues, making monitoring a vital practice to keep everything in check.
One of the most significant advantages of monitoring your Azure infrastructure is the ability to detect and address potential issues before they escalate into critical problems.
Real-time monitoring allows you to set up alerts and notifications for abnormal behaviors, sudden resource spikes, or system errors. By identifying and resolving these issues proactively, you can significantly reduce downtime and ensure high availability for your services.
Security is a top concern for any cloud deployment, and Azure is no exception. Monitoring plays a crucial role in identifying security threats and ensuring compliance with industry standards. By closely monitoring access patterns, failed login attempts, and potential breaches, you can swiftly take action to protect sensitive data and secure your infrastructure from unauthorized access.
Efficiently utilizing resources is essential for both cost-effectiveness and optimal performance. Monitoring your Azure infrastructure provides valuable insights into resource utilization, helping you identify underused or overburdened resources.
By optimizing your resource allocation, you can reduce operational costs and ensure optimal performance for your applications and services.
Keep an eye on CPU, memory, storage, and network usage metrics to understand how efficiently your resources are being utilized. Monitoring these metrics enables you to identify bottlenecks and allocate resources appropriately to avoid performance degradation.
To make better-informed decisions, prevent budget overruns, and ensure you get the most value from your cloud investments; ensure your Azure Monitoring platform enables real-time visibility into cloud resource usage, performance, and overall spend for things like average compute and storage cost.
The performance of your applications directly impacts user experience and business productivity. Monitoring application response times and latency allows you to identify performance bottlenecks, improve responsiveness, and deliver an exceptional user experience.
In distributed cloud environments, monitor the percentage of servers or nodes up and available compared to the total deployed. While automation tools can redistribute workloads, a decrease below 90 percent of available servers might signal serious issues with your cloud server instances.
In a cloud environment, network traffic and latency can significantly affect data transfer and application performance. Monitoring network traffic helps you ensure smooth data flow and identify any network-related issues that may impact your services.
Reveal load balancer or under provisioning issues. Monitor metrics for each cloud region to pinpoint specific latency problems. Compare acknowledgement time with and without a CDN for better performance optimization.
These metrics provide visibility into your application's health and the hosting cloud environment. Errors may stem from application issues or cloud environment problems, such as unavailability of cloud services or misconfigured access credentials for services within your cloud setup.
Regularly monitor security-related metrics such as failed login attempts, firewall logs, and access permissions to maintain a secure and compliant Azure infrastructure. These elements are crucial for protecting sensitive data and adhering to regulatory requirements.
Patched/unpatched known vulnerabilities will indicate how timely and adequately patch cloud security risks in your system -- or if you leave them open for too long.
predict peak demand times, enabling efficient scaling of cloud resources. It also aids in identifying and mitigating issues like DDoS attacks, enhancing application security and performance.
Monitoring peer-to-peer file-sharing metrics enables the tracking of changes in authorized file downloads or sharing. An unexpected increase in these activities could be indicative of a compromised cloud security posture.
As Microsoft's native monitoring service for Azure, Azure Monitor provides a comprehensive solution for monitoring your infrastructure. With custom metrics, log analytics, and application insights, Azure Monitor offers powerful capabilities to help you gain valuable insights into your Azure environment.
While Azure Monitor is robust, it can be expensive and time-consuming to implement, which can be a huge factor for hesitancy in business leaders.
Thankfully, through managed service partners (MSPs), one can set up the integral monitoring solutions with equally powerful monitoring features and integrations with hands-on expert support – all at an affordable rate.
At Managed Solution, we offer Azure Assure managed services to help you monitor and better manage your Azure environment.
Azure Assure, at a Glance:Azure Assure Managed Services offers companies, like yours, strategic cloud adoption and optimized support for their Azure infrastructure. Managed Solution handles day-to-day administration, providing 24/7 security and performance monitoring, advanced security and compliance services, cloud migration, and on-demand professional services.
To businesses' cloud journeys, chat with one of our cloud experts today.
Before setting up your monitoring strategy, define specific monitoring objectives based on your business needs. Clear goals will guide you in choosing the right metrics to monitor and setting up meaningful alerts.
Avoid alert fatigue by configuring alerts and notifications judiciously. Set appropriate thresholds and escalation policies to ensure you receive alerts for critical issues while avoiding unnecessary noise.
Azure infrastructure is dynamic and constantly changing. Periodically review your monitoring configurations, analyze historical data, and fine-tune your monitoring setup to adapt to evolving requirements.
The 2023 State of the Cloud Report by Flexera reveals that an overwhelming 92% of enterprises have embraced a multi-cloud strategy. Despite this growing trend, a significant challenge lies in the networking teams' ability to cope with the rapid changes in the cloud environment.
According to Cisco's findings, a staggering 73% of networking teams find themselves dedicating more time to maintaining the existing status quo rather than efficiently managing multi-cloud deployments.
Furthermore, in a survey by Sciencedirect.com, experts highlighted the following conclusions:
“Monitoring of Cloud is a task of paramount importance for both Providers and Consumers. On the one side, it is a key tool for controlling and managing hardware and software infrastructures; on the other side, it provides information and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for both platforms and applications. The continuous monitoring of the Cloud and of its SLAs (for example, in terms of availability, delay, etc.) supplies both the Providers and the Consumers with information such as the workload…” (Sciencedirect.com).
“As introduced in Section 3, Cloud monitoring is needed to continuously measure and assess infrastructure or application behaviors in terms of performance, reliability, power usage, ability to meet SLAs, security, etc. [44], to perform business analytics, for improving the operation of systems and applications [45], and for several other activities (see Section 3). In this section we introduce a number of concepts at the base of Cloud monitoring that are used to set the context for the following…” (Sciencedirect.com).
These findings make it clear that managing cloud platforms is growing increasingly difficult for businesses, and only further highlight the growing need for cloud monitoring as well as expert-supported management of these incredible systems.
Monitoring your Azure infrastructure is essential for modern businesses. More than having your cake and eating it too, you will secure, optimize, and save on costs to make every bite all the more worthwhile.
From proactive issue detection, to enhanced security, to in-depth visibility enabled performance & cost optimization – the benefits of Azure monitoring enable you to leverage the power of one of the best cloud computing platforms on the market and advance it to the benefit of your business.
Embrace monitoring as an integral part of your Azure strategy and pave the way for a successful and resilient cloud journey. Chat with one of our cloud experts today about Azure Monitoring and get any questions you have, answered.
In today’s dyna
mic IT landscape, keeping an eye on your infrastructure is crucial. That’s where Azure Monitor comes into play. It’s a robust, all-encompassing monitoring solution designed to collect, analyze, and respond to data from both your cloud and on-premises environments.
If you're ready to talk more about Microsoft Azure with a qualified expert, send us a contact request here and we'll set up a time to chat with you. For a deeper dive into the platform, join us on October 25th for part two of our free Azure Webinar series.
Cloud computing has emerged as a game-changer for businesses, enabling companies to scale, secure, and streamline their operations more efficiently than ever. Among the cloud giants, Microsoft Azure has risen to prominence as a go-to platform for organizations worldwide. In this blog, we'll delve into what Azure is, to help users and companies looking for cloud opportunities understand how it can benefit them.
Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform and infrastructure. It provides a vast array of cloud services, including computing, analytics, databases, networking, storage, and more through global data centers. It also empowers organizations with the flexibility to build, deploy, and manage applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers globally.
Azure Virtual Machines
Azure offers virtual machines that allow businesses to run applications in the cloud, providing scalable and flexible computing power without the need for physical hardware.
Azure's hybrid cloud solutions enable seamless integration between on-premises and cloud environments. This flexibility allows MSPs to cater to clients with varied infrastructure requirements, ensuring a smooth transition to the cloud.
Single-pane Operations
Microsoft Azure's single-pane operations via the Operation Management Suite (OMS) offer seamless monitoring and management of hybrid environments, including virtual machines, storage, network services, logs, and insights. OMS prioritizes security, providing comprehensive solutions for hybrid infrastructure challenges.
Computational services
Azure Blob Storage
This service enables secure and cost-effective storage of large amounts of unstructured data, ideal for backups, media files, and application data.
Azure SQL Database
A fully managed relational database service, Azure SQL Database offers high-performance, secure, and scalable database solutions for various applications.
Azure AI and Machine Learning
Businesses can leverage Azure’s artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to gain valuable insights, automate processes, and create intelligent applications.
Azure IoT Hub
For companies delving into the realm of IoT, Azure IoT Hub facilitates seamless communication between IoT applications and devices, enabling real-time monitoring and control.
Azure's elasticity allows businesses to scale resources up or down on-demand. It caters to the dynamic needs of companies without forcing them to invest in expensive hardware. Whether it's handling a sudden surge in web traffic or expanding storage capabilities, Azure provides the necessary scalability to support business growth.
Azure boasts a global network of data centers, ensuring high availability and redundancy (i.e. ensures that accounts meet their durability targets). This infrastructure minimizes downtime and data loss, which is crucial for businesses in the digital age where loss of data can cost millions.
Not to mention that with Azure’s world-wide distribution of data centers, businesses can expand into global markets with more ease. This can greatly advance growth opportunities for a number of businesses and therein lead to greater innovation when competing in new markets.
Security is paramount in the digital age, and Azure prioritizes it. Azure's robust security features include threat detection, identity and access management, encryption, and compliance certifications like ISO 27001 and SOC 2. With Azure, organizations can rest assured that their data is secure and compliant with industry standards.
With a variety of licensing and pricing models, organizations have the option to leverage Azure’s revenue-boosting productivity enhancements while paying only for the resources they consume. It also provides flexibility in allowing businesses to scale their resources up or down based on demand.
credit: Microsoft
Furthermore, Azure offers an array of tools and services designed to assist businesses in maximizing their cloud expenditure, such as cost management and resource optimization tools. These resources empower organizations to supervise and manage their Azure expenses.
With flexibility and cost-management features, Azure enables companies to optimize their IT budgets, minimizing wastage while providing the resources necessary to meet their specific needs.
Check out this in-depth forum post that demonstrates how Azure is one of the most cost-effective cloud infrastructures.
Microsoft Azure offers powerful analytics and business intelligence tools for data-driven insights. Services like Azure Machine Learning and Power BI enable businesses to analyze data, enhancing decision-making processes. Furthermore, Azure seamlessly integrates with Microsoft products like Dynamics 365 and Office, ensuring a smooth user experience and boosting productivity.
Microsoft Azure offers diverse tools and services aimed at enhancing business collaboration and productivity. Azure Active Directory enables streamlined management of user accounts and access control for cloud applications, enhancing security measures and simplifying user administration.
Additionally, Azure provides a suite of collaboration tools, such as Microsoft Teams and SharePoint. These platforms facilitate real-time collaboration on documents and projects, fostering increased productivity and teamwork among employees.
Azure continuously evolves, offering cutting-edge technologies such as AI, machine learning, and IoT. For businesses, this means they can stay ahead of the curve by integrating these innovative technologies into their operations, driving efficiency and competitiveness.
Microsoft Azure is more than just a cloud platform; it's a catalyst for innovation and transformation in the modern business landscape. Businesses have a unique opportunity to leverage Azure's capabilities to meet their dynamic IT needs. Namely, because Azure offers scalability, reliability, security, cost-efficiency, and access to cutting-edge technologies.
As businesses continue to navigate the digital frontier, Azure stands as a powerful ally, helping them achieve their goals and thrive in the digital age. Embracing Azure is not just a choice; it's a strategic imperative for all businesses.
If you're ready to talk more about Microsoft Azure with a qualified expert, send us a contact request here and we'll set up a time to chat with you. For a deeper dive into the platform, join us on October 25th for part two of our free Azure Webinar series.
Hybrid cloud approaches have seen a steady rise in popularity among organizations. A hybrid cloud approach refers to incorporating the benefits of company-owned private clouds, public cloud services, and the more traditional dedicated hosting services. Each of these has its pros and cons, and companies are starting to take advantage of what each has to offer while also minimizing the potential risks that come attached.
It was the concern over the security of public clouds that have led many to turn to hybrid models, in the first place. For instance, businesses will make use of the privacy and security that private clouds have to offer, while still benefiting from the flexibility and easy scalability of public clouds. Below are some of the main reasons why organizations are steadily moving towards hybrid cloud methods.
One of the most immediate benefits of such a hybrid system is that it allows companies to manage their applications and databases more effectively. On the one hand, they can host their important data on private clouds and/or dedicated servers, where they will have absolute control. On the other hand, they will use the available public cloud space for faster and easier scalability. They'll be able to test out new applications on the public cloud, determining their feasibility, among other such benefits.
So, as you steadily reach your limit, you can easily and seamlessly migrate entire services and applications to the public cloud. If you do need to scale down, you'll be able to take the same action in reverse. This enhanced flexibility and the ability to mix these functionalities based on your own needs is what draws so many companies to hybrid clouds.
When you are using a third-party, public cloud system to store all of your sensitive data, you are leaving yourself exposed to all sorts of possible risks. You will need to take into account all security problems, compliance issues, and performance requirements, which indicates that private clouds are also a good alternative. When using a hybrid cloud, you can choose which services will be on the public cloud and which will remain on the private one. In addition, when you're also using a public cloud, you're not overcrowding your private and secure space.
An organization that uses a hybrid cloud approach will almost always experience lower costs than a company that is exclusive with either one or the other. Hybrid clouds allow you to pay-as-you-need, meaning that you will have complete control over your IT expenses. You'll still have your backups in the cloud, which further reduce the costs. And with public cloud services, such as Azure or AWS, you can accurately determine your exact requirements without having to overpay for something you won't use.
With the ability to test and develop new applications on the public cloud, you can focus more of your efforts of this process without having to worry about ever exceeding your limits. This will reduce your potential costs of failure and give you access to an immense potential for scalability. In such an environment, the probabilities of innovation are greatly enhanced without having to sacrifice privacy or security in doing so. You'll not have to rearrange your infrastructure to test out a new service when using a hybrid cloud.
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A case in point is Pro Bono Net, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing access to justice through innovative uses of technology and increased volunteer lawyer participation. The organization meets this mission, among other ways, through its Pro Bono Manager™ service, which boosts a law firm’s pro bono program management capacity. Operating as a secure, seamless extension of a law firm’s intranet, Pro Bono Manager integrates content from the public-interest legal community with reporting, knowledge management, and lawyer-and-case matching tools that draw on a firm’s own human resources and time keeping systems.
Pro Bono Manager is a web-based, or software-as-a-service, solution—and the low-cost and minimal management required by the law firms that adopt it has been one of its selling points. But the cloud that hosted the service was a very physical set of servers owned and managed by Pro Bono Net. When those servers reached end-of-life, Pro Bono Net faced the same choice that their customers had answered by choosing Pro Bono Manager: Should Pro Bono Net refresh its hardware installation, or migrate Pro Bono Manager to a cloud platform?
The organization had to consider the economics of its choices, as any enterprise would. But, as a service provider to others, it had additional considerations: Would a move to the cloud affect the prices, availability, reliability, and speed that Pro Bono Net offered its customers and, if so, how?
One reason: Windows Azure was built from the ground up to support the same Microsoft technologies—Microsoft SharePoint Server, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (in the cloud: Windows Azure SQL Reporting), and the Microsoft .NET Framework—that Pro Bono Net already used. Another reason: Microsoft offered Windows Azure Virtual Machines, which provided the flexibility and availability that comes from the use of virtualization technology.
Pro Bono Net used Windows Azure Virtual Machines for persistent virtualization in support of SharePoint Server, which serves as the foundation for Pro Bono Manager. If the organization had been moving between more consistent platforms—say, two virtual platforms, one managed on-premises and one in the cloud—it would have been easier to estimate cost. Going from a physical/on-premises platform to a virtual/cloud platform required some experimentation in preproduction environments, which the organization and Microsoft completed successfully.
Pro Bono Net eventually decided on a high-availability infrastructure that replicated domain controllers, front ends, application servers, and Windows Azure SQL Database instances on virtual machines. It also adopted Windows Azure availability sets to further mitigate risk and promote reliability. And as its use of Windows Azure grows, the organization expects to adopt geo-colocation features that will further increase fault tolerance and business continuity.
For its specific configuration on Windows Azure, Pro Bono Net spends $11,000 annually—and saves 79 percent over comparable cost for an on-premises infrastructure and support, after a 1.4-year payback period.
Pro Bono Net now pays less to support Pro Bono Manager while gaining more, particularly more reliability. Since the move to Windows
Azure, uptime for the application has increased from 99 percent to 99.9 percent. “That’s a significant increase for us,” says Alec Rosin, Consulting Engineer for Pro Bono Net. “On-premises, if we had a disaster, we could be out for a week. We don’t anticipate that happening on Windows Azure.”
Pages and reports now load about 20 percent faster on Windows Azure, creating a more natural user experience.
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