Embracing innovation with Microsoft Azure - The path to digital excellence

What is the Azure Cloud?

Modern cloud computing technology has been with us now for now for more than 15 years with the advent of Amazon’s game changing public cloud in 2006.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft followed suit, initially launching their cloud computing platform as Windows Azure in 2010 before re-branding to Microsoft Azure in 2014.

Since then, advances in cloud computing have moved quickly with today’s Azure cloud services delivering a combination of virtualised machines and fully managed applications and web services through IaaS/PaaS/SaaS deployment models.

Indeed, it’s now at the forefront of advances in generative AI, with Microsoft a major investor in OpenAI’s ChatGPT and providing the underlying cloud computing technology through Azure.

Some key facts about Azure

1. It’s in more than 60 regions across the world and has a wider distribution than both AWS or Google.
   
   
2. It doesn’t just cater for Microsoft technology – both open source and third-party vendor products are also supported.
   
   
3. It’s heavily used by government departments worldwide and in the US has deployed a dedicated cloud called Azure Government for public sector organisations only.
   
   
4. The core platform covers a range of general compute, data and storage services but there are many more specialised services besides covering internet of things (IoT), AI, machine learning, computer vision, monitoring, security and even space satellites.
   
   
5. The platform is committed to sustainability and has been carbon neutral since 2012, with the aim to be carbon negative by 2030.

Impressive stuff, and - if you look at how it’s tracked on the analyst reports over the last few years - you can see it’s an established leader in the sector and gaining ground on its closest rival AWS.