Microsoft
Microsoft is a large and diversified technology vendor that is increasingly focused on delivering its software capabilities via cloud services. Its Azure business was initially strictly PaaS, but Microsoft launched Azure Infrastructure Services (which include Azure Virtual Machines and Azure Virtual Network) into general availability in April 2013, thus entering the cloud IaaS market.Offerings: Microsoft Azure offers Hyper-V-virtualized multitenant compute (Virtual Machines), with multitenant storage, along with many additional IaaS and PaaS capabilities, including object storage (Blob Storage) and a CDN. The Azure Marketplace offers third-party software and services. Enterprise-grade support is extra. It has a multi-fault-domain SLA. Colocation needs are met via partner exchanges (Azure ExpressRoute). See the In-Depth Assessment for a detailed technical evaluation.
Locations: Microsoft calls Azure data center locations "regions." There are multiple Azure regions in the U.S., Canada, Australia, India and Japan, as well as regions in Ireland, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, Singapore and Brazil. There are also two regions for the U.S. federal government. (The two Azure China regions are part of a separate service operated by 21Vianet Group.) Microsoft has global sales. Azure support is provided in English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and Portuguese; support for Azure IaaS capabilities is also available in Hebrew. Technical documentation is available in those languages, as well as Russian. The portal is additionally available in Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Swedish and Turkish.
Recommended mode: Microsoft Azure appeals to both Mode 1 and Mode 2 customers, but for different reasons; Mode 1 customers tend to value the ability to use Azure to extend their infrastructure-oriented Microsoft relationship and investment in Microsoft technologies, while Mode 2 customers tend to value Azure's ability to integrate with Microsoft's application development tools and technologies. Azure is frequently chosen for strategic adoption by organizations with a strong commitment to Microsoft technologies.
Recommended uses: General business applications and development environments that use Microsoft technologies; migration of virtualized workloads for Microsoft-centric organizations; cloud-native applications (including Internet of Things applications); and batch computing.
Strengths
- Microsoft Azure encompasses integrated IaaS and PaaS components that operate and feel like a unified whole. Microsoft has been rapidly rolling out new features and services, including differentiated capabilities. It has a vision of infrastructure and platform services that are not only leading stand-alone offerings, but also seamlessly extend and interoperate with on-premises Microsoft infrastructure (rooted in Hyper-V, Windows Server, Active Directory and System Center), development tools (including Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server [TFS]), middleware and applications, as well as Microsoft's SaaS offerings. Microsoft is also becoming more open and less reliant upon its Windows franchise, and Azure's support for Linux and other open-source technologies is improving quickly.
- Microsoft's brand, existing customer relationships, history of running global-class consumer internet properties, deep investments in engineering and innovative roadmap have enabled it to rapidly attain the status of strategic cloud IaaS provider. Microsoft is aggressively pushing Azure into its customer base, and discounting to promote adoption. Azure is growing quickly, and is in second place for market share. Microsoft has pledged to maintain AWS-comparable basic cloud IaaS pricing for the general public; and, on a practical level, customers with Microsoft Enterprise Agreement discounts obtain a price/performance ratio that is comparable to AWS. Although Azure is neither as feature-rich nor mature as AWS, many organizations can now consider it "good enough," and base their vendor decision on factors other than technical capabilities.
Cautions
- While Microsoft has met its promised time frames for introducing critical features that help Azure fulfill enterprise needs for security, availability, performance, networking flexibility and user management, not all such functionality is implemented with the level of completeness, ease of use or API enablement that is desired by enterprise customers. These difficulties are exacerbated by disorganized, incomplete and sometimes out-of-date documentation, as well as a support organization that is not always capable of solving complex implementation challenges, a limited number of Azure experts outside of Microsoft (whether consultants or potential employees) and few options for Azure training.
- Microsoft is still in the process of building out its Azure ecosystem. It has been aggressively recruiting managed service and professional services partners, but many of these partners lack extensive experience with the Azure platform, which can compromise the quality of the solutions they deliver to customers. Many such partners do not take advantage of cloud-native capabilities, reducing the value their customers receive from Azure. CMP vendors and MSPs report challenges in working with Azure, particularly in the areas of API reliability and secure authentication, which are slowing their ability to deliver solutions.
