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Microsoft Azure Cloud Services

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service from Microsoft. Azure offers a range of software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) options for deploying applications and services on Microsoft-managed data center infrastructure. Azure’s 50 operating regions are more than any other cloud provider.

What do I need to know about Microsoft Azure Cloud Services?

Microsoft Azure has more than a hundred services to help you quickly solve your toughest challenges. Azure’s agility and built-in Development Operations (DevOps) allow you to iterate quickly and deliver code using an end-to-end cloud development platform. Whatever language you utilize, whether Microsoft Azure’s Visual Studio Team Services or another open-source tool like Chef or Jenkins, you will be able to debug faster and easier than ever before.

Microsoft Azure supports private cloud, public cloud, and hybrid cloud deployments. Azure’s robust Information Security (InfoSec) services provide general storage, database, and networking security, identity and access management, backup and Disaster Recovery (DR).

Azure is the No. 2 public cloud provider

Since its creation in 2008, Microsoft Azure has grown to become the second-largest of the top three public cloud platforms — just behind market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) and ahead of Google Cloud Platform (GCP). 

As of the second quarter of 2021, AWS controlled 31% of the market, Microsoft Azure took 22%, and Google Cloud sat at 8% market share — according to Statista.

What can I do with Azure?

Microsoft Azure supports any tool, language, or framework: Node.js, Java, .NET, and more. Microsoft’s best-in-class development tools help you write great code. Visual Studio and Visual Studio Code are supported to improve your productivity.

Microsoft Azure offers more than 100 turn-key services, and the latest in AI and data to bring intelligence to your operations. More than 150 Azure Logic Apps connections are available right away, including favorites like Office 365, Dropbox, Google Services, Salesforce, and Twitter.

Azure is popular with enterprise organizations

Microsoft Azure is a popular pick in the enterprise space, with Microsoft claiming that 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure. 

Over the past few years, Microsoft has made moves that play to its unique strengths, using legacy footholds in organizations to ease reluctant organizations to the cloud. As a result, Azure adoption is increasing in enterprises while AWS adoption remains relatively flat .Historically, Azure has been the preferred choice for hybrid deployments. It is also well-regarded for its ability to sync well with legacy Microsoft solutions — the kind many businesses have been using for decades.

What Is Azure and Why Should I Choose It for Business?

Microsoft Azure runs on both PC and Mac. Azure can support applications as large and complex as you can make them. Continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) will shorten your development cycles. Move your test environments to the cloud so you can provision, spin up, and tear down environments in a flash.

Management tools like Azure portal, PowerShell, Bash, and REST APIs are available to meet your needs. Focus on your application and not infrastructure with support for application monitoring, log analytics, patching, backup, and site recovery.

Microsoft Azure cloud services are trusted by a broad section of industries: over 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies run on Azure, along with government agencies and startups. Built-in security controls and analytics help you respond to threads, plug gaps, and agilely respond to changes in your security needs.

Microsoft has industry-leading certifications for privacy and security. Azure meets compliance standards like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), HIPAA, HITECH, PCI-DSS, IRS-1075, SSAE 16, FedRAMP, SOC 1, SOC2, and ISO 27001. It also meets region-specific standards such as Australia IRAP, UK G-Cloud, and Singapore MTCS. The British Standards Institute and other third parties have verified strict adherence to these policies. Microsoft adopted the first global code of practice for cloud privacy, ISO/IEC 27018.

Usage and interest in Azure is growing

According to A Cloud Guru’s State of Cloud Learning report, cloud engineers are showing an immense increase in interest in Microsoft Azure courses and training at a rate much higher than interest in Google Cloud and AWS. ACG saw a rolling 3-month average of time spent on Azure learning up nearly 800% year-over-year, compared to between 50–100% for AWS and Google Cloud.

Migrating to the cloud (whether it be Azure or another cloud service provider) can save organizations and individuals the cost and complexity of purchasing and running resources on site.

The history of Microsoft Azure

Today, Microsoft Azure serves millions of applications, integrations, and customers. But its humble origins can be traced back to 2008 when it was announced as Project Red Dog.

The name “Azure” — for those who never got too deep into the jumbo-sized crayon box — is taken from a lovely shade of sky blue. (Sky. Cloud. Get it?)

Azure Infrastructure and Regions

At the time of publishing, Azure has 67 available and announced regions globally, more than 160 physical data centers, numerous availability zones, and millions of users. But how does it all work together?

When talking about cloud infrastructure, Azure has a global network of regions, availability zones, and data centers.

Azure regions are placed strategically all over the world to cover as large a percentage of the potential cloud customer as possible. Regions include Central U.S., Norway West, Brazil South, West India, South Africa North, Australia East, and everywhere in between. 

Each region consists of one or more data centers and availability zones, which are made up of one or more data centers equipped with independent power cooling and networking. This means that a service in an availability zone will keep running if one of the parts of the zone becomes unavailable. Nifty!

Azure also has geographies. These usually contain more than a single region and allow customers with specific data residency and compliance needs to keep the data and applications close. Geography is defined as a discreet market for doing just that.

Government regions

Azure also has government regions, which are only accessible to U.S. government bodies and their contractors. These regions are more stringent when it comes to compliance with government guidelines, and their locations are not disclosed.

Azure services can vary by region

Azure services are not all created equally either. Some require more resources than others and some just aren’t as popular. For this reason, not all services are offered in all regions. 

However, apart from the aforementioned government regions and newly established regions, most regions will have most of the Azure service catalog on offer. A few exotic services like Azure Machine Learning are sometimes only offered in one region within each geography. 

Azure IaaS vs SaaS vs PaaS

Infrastructure on Azure isn’t just a bunch of services. You need to understand the basic pillars: compute, network, and storage. 

Everything on Azure is built on top of those pillars, and they form a foundation for your cloud infrastructure too. You can build your own architecture from infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) products, such as Azure Virtual Networks, Azure VMs, Azure VDI, and Azure Disc Storage. Or you can take advantage of the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings, such as Azure SQL and Azure app services. All are built on top of the pillars, but offer different layers of abstraction for you to build your business applications. 

Azure vs AWS and GCP: Is Azure right for you?

Comparing Azure to the other cloud providers, Azure falls in the top three of most popular alongside AWS and GCP. AWS has the most market share, but Azure has the most regions, and GCP is growing rapidly. 

The documentation for Azure to learn from is decent. Documenting a whole cloud computing platform is a large task and maintaining it is a constant exercise.

Azure pros and strengths

We’ve got to talk about strengths and weaknesses, because how else can you know which cloud platform will work best for you? While cloud computing as a concept is a way to offer various levels of abstraction through IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, each cloud vendor is better at some things and less so at others. 

  • First, Azure has a lot of data centers, and they keep expanding. This means services and your applications will be closer to users. It also means specific legal requirements for certain countries when it comes to cloud computing are more likely to be met.
  • Because Microsoft has been supporting on-premises customers for 40-plus years, they have an extensive hybrid cloud offering to get all of their existing customers into the cloud. They also have a very good integration with existing tools and technologies such as Visual Studio, Active Directory, and File Storage.

If you have applications written in the .NET framework, Azure is almost a no-brainer as well. Azure has the most industry certifications of any cloud provider, and this can be useful for certain countries or industries when having to adhere to these.

Azure cons and weaknesses

While there aren’t many drawbacks or areas of improvement for Azure, there are a couple. 

  • Since Azure is trying to be all things to all cloud-computing crowds, at times some services just don’t get enough attention. This can mean that the new data analytics service you have made that uses a certain Azure feature might fall behind a bit as the feature disappears. 
  • Azure will try and keep up with every single trend in cloud computing, so the number of new services and renamed services (thank you, Microsoft) can be overwhelming. The key is to focus on just the ones you need for your project.

Azure services and project use cases

Let’s look at a couple of well-suited real-world use cases for Azure — something to whet your Azure appetite.

Hybrid cloud

Let’s start with the wonderful world of hybrid clouds. Microsoft has a long history of supplying on-premises computer systems, and a ton of those customers are still around. Are they going to throw all that they have away and buy it again because someone’s written “cloud” on it? Of course not! But there is value in some of the Azure services for most companies. Azure is making it increasingly easy to implement a hybrid cloud strategy. 

For example, using Azure Sentinel, you can monitor both your cloud assets and your on-prem services. Inadequate security is often a concern with hybrid setups, but with Sentinel express route and VPN gateways, this is just not an issue. 

Cosmos DB

I can’t talk about Azure and not mention Cosmos DB, one of the most impressive services on Azure. This single-digit-millisecond latency, automatic and instantly scalable global secure SQL database is about as cloudy as you can get. 

A company that is looking to scale globally or to several regions can provide an exceptional experience for the end-user by plugging Cosmos DB into the front-end application. You are guaranteed speed at any scale. It’s super easy to plug into your application. It’s fully managed, so no servers or maintenance to do. And it’s cost-effective . . . when used correctly with Azure cost management!

Ready to start your Azure Journey?

If you want some further guidance on ramping up your Azure knowledge — or you’re wondering which Azure certification is right for you — we have you covered. Check out our rotating lineup of  Azure training and other cloud courses, fun projects, Azure courses, and hands-on labs.

Not sure where to begin? If you haven’t started your Azure journey yet or you’re just getting started in your cloud career, check out our AZ-900 Azure Fundamentals certification course.This foundational-level certification will teach you the basics of cloud computing with Azure and prepare you for the AZ-900 exam. Consider it Cloud 101.

The Azure Fundamentals cert lays the foundation for many different roles — not just budding Azure engineers and architects but cloud-adjacent folks, from leadership to sales to support. And it’s one of the top-paying Azure cloud certifications. 

There are plenty of reasons why you should consider getting Azure certified. But one nice bonus of pursuing Azure certs is how easy Microsoft makes it to get certified and stay certified. Azure certification exams can be taken remotely and big certification renewal and expiration changes made in 2021 make Azure certs free to renew indefinitely (which make them arguably the best certification renewal option in cloud).

Microsoft Azure FAQs

Microsoft Azure is a public cloud platform that offers more than 200 products and cloud services accessible over the public internet. Azure is the second-largest cloud computing platform (just behind AWS and above GCP), serving millions of applications, integrations, and customers.

Announced in 2008 as Project Red Dog, Microsoft Azure has grown to become a major cloud computing player. As of 2021, Azure has a 20% market share — with AWS at 31% and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) sitting at 9%

Azure has a global network of regions, availability zones, and data centers: Each region consists of one or more data centers and availability zones, which are made up of one or more data centers equipped with independent power cooling and networking.

Comparing Azure to the other cloud providers, Azure falls in the top three of most popular alongside AWS and GCP. AWS has the most market share, but Azure has the most regions, and GCP is growing rapidly. 

Since Azure is trying to be all things to all cloud-computing crowds, at times some services just don’t get enough attention. Additionally, Azure will try and keep up with every single trend in cloud computing, so the number of new services and renamed services can be overwhelming.

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform. Azure manages and maintains hardware, infrastructure, and resources in data centers. These assets can be accessed by individuals and organizations over the internet for free or on a pay-per-use basis. This allows Azure’s users to tap into powerful, often cost-prohibitive hardware and solutions without a large upfront investment.

Microsoft has a long history in enterprise organizations. Enterprises and those with hybrid environments or environments with essential legacy Microsoft solutions often prefer Microsoft Azure to AWS and GCP.

Azure services include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), Software as a Service (SaaS), and server less. These cloud services can be used for things like storage, networking, compute, and analytics.

Microsoft Azure lets businesses and individuals create, run, and manage applications and solve various technical challenges with flexibility across various clouds and on-premises data centers.

One popular Azure selling feature is Cosmos DB. Companies looking to scale globally or to several regions can provide an exceptional experience for the end-user by plugging Cosmos DB into the front-end application. This guarantees speed at any scale, is easily plugged into your application, is fully managed, and is cost-effective.

About this Specialization

Cloud computing is rapidly expanding into all areas of businesses, creating new and exciting career opportunities. These opportunities cover a broad range of roles, from developers and architects to security professionals and data scientists. This program will give you the fundamental knowledge, skills, and confidence to begin your Microsoft Azure certification journey.

This Microsoft Azure Fundamentals AZ-900 Exam Prep Specialization consists of four courses that will act as a bedrock of fundamental knowledge to prepare you for the AZ-900 certification exam and for a career in the cloud. The content of this program is tightly aligned to the AZ-900 exam objective domains.

This program will provide foundational level knowledge on Microsoft Azure concepts; core Microsoft Azure services; core solutions and management tools; general security and network security; governance, privacy, and compliance features; Microsoft Azure cost management, and service level agreements. Ideal for IT personnel just beginning to work with Microsoft Azure or anyone wanting to learn about it.

This Specialization will prepare you to take the AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam. Upon completion of the Specialization, you will be offered a discount to the Microsoft Azure Advanced Certification Exam to be redeemed at delegate login->Offers section. Limited discount vouchers are available on a first-come-first-serve basis. 

Applied Learning Project

Learners will engage in interactive exercises throughout this program that offers opportunities to practice and implement what they are learning. This environment allows learners to explore Microsoft Azure and get hands-on with live Microsoft Azure resources and services.

For example, when they learn about creating a SQL database, they will work in a temporary Azure environment called the Sandbox. The beauty about this is that you will be working with real technology but in a controlled environment, which allows you to apply what you learn, and at your own pace.

Learners can safely explore, create, and manage resources without the fear of incurring costs or “breaking production”.

There are 4 Courses in this Specialization

Introduction to Microsoft Azure Cloud Services 

 

Whether you're just beginning to work with the cloud or you already have cloud experience and are new to Microsoft Azure, this course provides you with everything you need to get started. It introduces you to Microsoft Azure core concepts and services. You’ll learn the basics of cloud computing, its advantages, and how to choose the right Microsoft Azure solution for different business scenarios. You’ll use the Microsoft Azure portal and a sandbox to create and test Microsoft Azure resources at no cost to you. You don’t need to write code or have scripting skills to do this.

You’ll learn about several of the database and big data services that are available on Microsoft Azure. You'll also learn how to take advantage of several virtualization services in Microsoft Azure compute, which can help your applications scale out quickly and efficiently to meet increasing demands. Finally, you’ll learn about the different storage and virtual network options available in Microsoft Azure. This course can help you prepare for AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam. This is the first course in a four-course program that prepares you to take the AZ-900 certification exam. This course teaches you the core concepts and skills that are assessed in the cloud concepts and core Microsoft Azure services exam domains. This beginner course is suitable for IT personnel who are just beginning to work with Microsoft Azure and want to learn about Microsoft Azure offerings and get hands-on experience with the product. To be successful in this course, you need to have basic computer literacy and proficiency in the English language. You should be familiar with basic computing concepts and terminology, general technology concepts, including concepts of networking, storage, compute, application support, and application development. You should also be familiar with the concept of application programming interfaces or APIs. It is beneficial to have a high-level familiarity with relevant Microsoft products such as Dynamics 365 and Office 365.

Microsoft Azure Management Tools and Security Solutions

 

Microsoft Azure offers a wide range of services to deploy your applications. To keep control of your environment and to make deployments easier, it also offers a wide array of management tools and services. In this course, you will be introduced to these tools and services and you will be asked to help choose the best one for a given business scenario. 

Some modules cover software development processes and services. You will learn about cloud monitoring solutions for your applications and infrastructure. As well as picking the right Microsoft Azure management tool depending on your technical needs. When you have completed this course, you will be able to choose the right serverless compute technology, Azure IoT service, or Azure Artificial Intelligence service. Having a good security strategy is essential in today's digital world. Every application and service, whether on-premises or in the cloud, needs to be designed with security in mind. Security needs to happen at the application level, at the data level, and the network level. You will learn about the various Microsoft Azure services you can use to help ensure that your cloud resources are safe, secure, and trusted. When you have completed this course, you will be able to identify security threats in Microsoft Azure, make security recommendations, and detect and respond to events using security and event management. From a developer perspective, you will look at how to secure your secrets and ensure that they are not exposed. You will also examine network security scenarios such as firewalling, network security groups, and protecting yourself from distributed denial of service attacks. You will learn how to build a complete network security solution that brings all these tools together to secure your Microsoft Azure deployments and resources. When you have completed this course, you will be able to choose the best Microsoft Azure tools and services for a given business scenario. You will also be able to describe how to protect the workloads that you run both in the cloud and in your on-premises datacenter. This beginner-level course is suitable for IT personnel who are just beginning to work with Microsoft Azure and want to learn about Microsoft Azure offerings and get hands-on experience with the product. This course can help you prepare for AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam. This is the second course in a four-course program that prepares you to take the AZ-900 certification exam. This course teaches you the core concepts and skills that are assessed in the Microsoft Azure management tools, and security solutions exam domains. To be successful in this course, you need to have basic computer literacy and proficiency in the English language. You should be familiar with basic computing concepts and terminology, general technology concepts, including concepts of networking, storage, compute, application support, and application development. You should also be familiar with the concept of application programming interfaces, or APIs. It is beneficial to have a high-level familiarity with relevant Microsoft products such as Dynamics 365 and Office 365.

Preparing for the AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Exam

 

In this course, you will learn how Microsoft Azure can help you secure access to cloud resources, what it means to build a cloud governance strategy, and how Microsoft Azure adheres to common regulatory and compliance standards.

With the rise of remote work, bring your own device (BYOD), mobile applications, and cloud applications, the primary security boundary has shifted from firewalls and physical access controls to identity. Understanding who is using your systems and what they have permission to do is critical to keeping your data safe from attackers. To stay organized, manage costs, and meet your compliance goals, you need a good cloud governance strategy. Migration to the cloud presents new ways to think about your IT expenses. The cloud also removes the burden of supporting IT infrastructure. As you move to the cloud, you might ask:

  •  How much will it cost? 
  • What guarantees does Microsoft Azure provide around uptime and connectivity? 
  • How do preview services impact my production applications? 

In this course, you will also learn about the factors that influence cost, tools you can use to help estimate and manage your cloud spend, and how Microsoft Azure's service-level agreements (SLAs) can impact your application design decisions. This course can help you prepare for AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam. This is the third course in a four-course program that prepares you to take the AZ-900 certification exam. This course teaches you the core concepts and skills that are assessed in the Microsoft Azure identity services, and governance exam domains. This beginner-level course is suitable for IT personnel who are just beginning to work with Microsoft Azure and want to learn about Microsoft Azure offerings and get hands-on experience with the product. To be successful in this course, you need to have basic computer literacy and proficiency in the English language. You should be familiar with basic computing concepts and terminology, general technology concepts, including concepts of networking, storage, compute, application support, and application development. You should also be familiar with the concept of application programming interfaces, or APIs. It is beneficial to have a high-level familiarity with relevant Microsoft products such as Dynamics 365 and Office 365.

Preparing for the AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals Exam

 

Microsoft certifications give you a professional advantage by providing globally recognized and industry-endorsed evidence of mastering skills in digital and cloud businesses.​​ In this course, you will prepare for the AZ-900 Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam. 

You will refresh your knowledge of cloud concepts, Microsoft Azure services, Microsoft Azure workloads, security and privacy in Microsoft Azure, as well as Microsoft Azure pricing and support. in short, you will recap all the core concepts and skills that are measured by the exam. You will test your knowledge in a series of practice exams​ mapped to all the main topics covered in the AZ-900 exam, ensuring you’re well prepared for certification success. You will prepare to pass the certification exam by taking practice tests with similar formats and content. You will also get a more detailed overview of the Microsoft certification program and where you can go next in your career. You’ll also get tips and tricks, testing strategies, useful resources, and information on how to sign up for the AZ-900 proctored exam. By the end of this course, you will be ready to sign-up for and take the AZ-900 exam.​ This beginner course is suitable for IT personnel who are just beginning to work with Microsoft Azure and want to demonstrate foundational level knowledge of cloud services and how those services are provided with Microsoft Azure platforms. This course can help you prepare for AZ-900: Microsoft Azure Fundamentals exam. This is the final course in a four-course program that prepares you to take the AZ-900 certification exam. This course gives you opportunities to hone your exam technique and refresh your knowledge of all the key areas assessed in the certification exam. To be successful in this course, you need to have basic computer literacy and proficiency in the English language. You should be familiar with basic computing concepts and terminology, general technology concepts, including concepts of networking, storage, compute, application support, and application development. You should also be familiar with the concept of application programming interfaces or APIs. It is beneficial to have a high-level familiarity with relevant Microsoft products such as Dynamics 365 and Office 365.

How the Specialization Works

A Diana’s Specialization is a series of courses that helps you master a skill. To begin, enroll in the Specialization directly, or review its courses and choose the one you'd like to start with. You will be given a booking date where our experienced instructor will take you through the course live.

Every Specialization includes a hands-on project. You'll need to successfully finish the project(s) to complete the Specialization and earn your certificate.

There would be a Quiz assessment at the end of the course that has to be passed by the respective delegate with a minimum of 70% aggregate. There would be a maximum of 3 attempts provided . Note that Certificate of Merit will be provided on passing the assessment with required marks.

When you book the course you get access to all course materials, including the assignments. Upon completing the course and internal quiz, your electronic Certificate will be added to your Delegate > Login > Accomplishments page - from there, you can download your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile that you can share with prospective employers and your professional network.

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