5 Azure Features That Will Benefit Your Business

It’s no secret that more businesses are shifting towards the Cloud. In today’s technological landscape, the effortlessness of foregoing an in-house infrastructure and the affordability of pay-as-you-go services is too good to pass up. Storing data on-premise is yesterday’s news and many businesses are maintaining a hybrid approach or planning to migrate to the Cloud entirely. Research indicates that the main driver for this migration is security and data protection, while the second is data modernization.

 

What is Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform that provides Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions. Over 200 products are sold under the Azure umbrella. Companies can use Azure to build, deploy and manage their applications and benefit from serverless computing, top security and compliance, and hybrid integration possibilities. It’s fast, flexible, and cost-effective. And with Microsoft, there’s no doubt of its top-notch security and regular, innovative updates.

Services like analytics, storage, and networking (with the added benefit of minimal capital investment requirements) make Azure a favorite among businesses worldwide. A whopping 95% of Fortune 500 Companies can vouch for Microsoft’s popular cloud computing platform. In 2020, Azure was ranked as the second top cloud provider in the world with approximately 715 million users on the Azure Active Directory (and over 100k new subscriptions per month!). Let’s delve into some specifics on what Azure can do for your business. 

 

Benefits of Microsoft Azure for Your Business

1. Scalable Pricing Models  

The scalability and “pay as you go” nature of Azure makes it a perfect fit for all kinds of businesses, from local retailers to multi-national corporations. Regardless of the size of your business, your IT demands will be exactly met—not more, not less. Aside from not requiring any grand initial investment, launching and storing your applications on the Cloud will save you the trouble of in-house IT costs for hardware and maintenance.

 

2. Great Backup and Disaster Recovery

Azure’s advanced backup and disaster recovery tool can back up your data on all operating systems, regardless of the location. Define the frequency and extent of your backup schedule, and restore entire file shares without needing additional infrastructure. Deleted something by mistake? No problem. Recover the file, even after an extended period, following a multifactor authentication process.

 

3. Dependable Security and Compliance

The safety of your data is Microsoft’s top priority; Microsoft invests $1 billion yearly in cyber security research and development. Azure’s multitude of compliance certifications and built-in security services provide relief for countless IT leaders. Advanced security management is ensured for both on-premises and cloud workloads.

 

4. Advanced Analytics

Azure cloud-scale analytics enables you to transform data into insight that will help your business make real-time, transformative decisions. Companies that leverage analytics and big data services report tremendous cost savings and customer satisfaction rates (Amazon, American Express and Netflix are popular examples of companies that use analytics for predicting customer behavior). Grow your business through informed, preemptive decisions on every aspect of your organization, from human resources to sales forecasts and supply chain movements.

 

5. Simple and Fast Deployment

Azure’s lack of any maintenance requirements leaves room for your IT department to focus on the fun stuff: developing enterprise applications that add value. The platform also provides an integrated development environment and direct access to Azure engineers, which reduces your IT team’s learning curve and accelerates deployments of Azure solutions—making for happy developers and business owners.

 

Simplify Connecting to Azure

Although we picked our five favorite features of Azure, its benefits are countless; the cloud-based platform is one of the best of its kind and provides business owners with the tools to take their company to the next level. Nonetheless, migrating to the Cloud has its challenges. And so does maintaining a hybrid system together with SAP.  

Almost half of IT executives are surprised by the range of difficulties they encounter while migrating and admit that the Cloud is more complicated than they thought. Integrating Azure with existing SAP ERP systems requires a complex set of procedures and lengthy man-hours. Luckily, this doesn’t have to be the case! Mitigate these challenges by introducing third-party adapters in your IT system for a simpler and faster integration.

Our SAP PO Azure adapter reduces the complexity of connecting existing SAP ERP systems to the Azure platform. Users need two things: an Azure Storage Account and the MDP adapter. After that, uploading or downloading data to/from Azure can be completed in only a handful of steps (detail on that can be found in this blog post). Following the initial integration, users can activate the connection between the Azure platform and SAP system, and enjoy an exceptionally convenient data sharing method. 

If any of this sounds appealing, feel free to contact us for more information and stay tuned for more content on solutions that will help your business thrive!