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Microsoft Azure in Context

Dennis Faucher

• 9 min read



I have been working with many customers over the last 12-24 months to define their 3-year cloud strategy.  The conversation always begins with applications and the applications’ required business characteristics. Then the correct home for each application can be chosen and a strategy that supports the business.


Public cloud, private cloud, managed colocation are all possible application homes.  The usual application refresh options of rehost, rewrite, replace are also on the table.  Quite a few of my customers are “Microsoft First” for both internal IT and cloud.  As cloud iterates daily, I thought it would be a good idea to cover the Azure offerings as of today and why a business may use these services to solve a problem and/or be more competitive.  Most of my customers are still using public cloud primarily for “ephemeral” workloads.  Either workloads that do not need to run 7×24 or are of unknown scale.  The ability to pay for services, only when in use, is beneficial to these customers.  Test servers, D/R and backup are the three major use cases I am seeing today. Serverless Computing/Back End as a Service is trending at my most advanced customers.


On to describing the Azure offerings as of today…


Compute




What

The compute section is where you will find traditional Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings such as Windows and Linux virtual machines.  You will also find pre-built server appliances such as Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint, LAMP stack, SAP HANA, WordPress and Visual Studio.  You can also find the Function App here which represents “serverless” computing.  Pricing for IaaS is based on the size of the VM you choose.  You have many choices of number of CPU cores, amount of memory as well as disk performance.  As of this writing, there were 63 size options for a Windows Server VM.


Why

As mentioned earlier, IaaS is best used if you do not currently have available capacity in your current data center, cannot accurately forecast rapid scale or you need temporary capacity for new projects or D/R (There is a specific Backup and Site Recovery section under Storage I will cover later).


The Function App is Microsoft’s instantiation of serverless computing where your only interface to the compute is via the API calls your application makes.  The cost of serverless computing can be a fraction of the cost of IaaS and has practically unlimited scale.


Networking






What

There are two major types of networking resources – network connectivity and network appliances.  This is true software defined networking (SDN).  Create virtual switches, virtual routers, firewall security rules, load balancers, site-to-site VPNs.  You can also install third-party virtual network appliances from companies such as Barracuda, Check Point, Cisco, F5, Fortinet, Riverbed.


Why

You need security and unified threat management in the cloud as much as you do in your internal data center.  The major benefit to software-based and software-defined network resources is that their creation and configuration can be automated.  This automation increases agility as well as compliance.


Storage






What

Compute + networking + storage form the platform of the majority of most cloud applications. The options for storage are numerous and include options for backup as well as site recovery (D/R).  

The Microsoft storage account can provide storage access via blob (object), table (NoSQL), (message) queue, disk (block), file.  The disk storage type has the option of standard and premium (SSD) performance tiers.  The premium tier supports up to 80,000 IOPS.

Microsoft Data Lake Store is your Hadoop HDFS storage system in the cloud with no storage limits.

Microsoft StorSimple cloud storage works with on-premise StorSimple NAS appliances to automatically backup and archive local storage to Azure for recovery and multi-site access.

Microsoft Backup and Site Recovery can be used to replace local backup software and infrastructure to protect local servers, virtual machines and applications to Azure.  The Site Recovery portion enables the replication of on-premise servers to Azure for disaster recovery, if needed.

From a storage virtual appliance standpoint, there is a long list of solutions from well-known companies such as Acronis, Actifio, CommVault, Double-Take, Nasuni, NetApp, PlateSpin, Quest Seagate, Veeam, Zerto.


Why

So why would you store application data in Azure?  If your applications are running in Azure, the answer is pretty clear.  If your applications are running on-premise or in colocation, cloud storage is an excellent option to off-site tape backup and archive.  D/R as a Service (Site Recovery) is providing significant value over traditional D/R providers in terms of flexibility, access and especially cost.  Traditional D/R providers charge significant monthly fees for access to resources that are not necessarily guaranteed and hard to schedule for D/R testing.   Azure site recovery is roughly $25/month for each protected workload after the first free month.


Web + Mobile




What

An extensive collection of Platform as a Service (PaaS) options.  I once had a customer CIO tell me “If you are a Microsoft developer, Azure is better than any other cloud offering.”  You can see why in the Web + Mobile section of Azure.  Build and run web apps, RESTful API apps, apps that bridge on-premise and cloud, search apps, CDN, logic apps, mobile apps, mobile notifications and many application appliances from third parties.

Why

One of the promises of “cloud native” applications is the fast access to application capabilities and scaling to enable new business models without maintaining underlying infrastructure.  If you, or your organization, have development capabilities, you should investigate the Web + Mobile section of Azure.


Databases




What

A collection of database technologies delivered as Platform as a Service (PaaS).  Offerings include SQL Server, SQL Data Warehouse, Redis Cache (in-memory), MongoDB (NoSQL), Cassandra (NoSQL), Cloudera (Hadoop), Vertica (columnar), DB2, Informatica, MapR, R, MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL.

Why

The care, maintenance, patching, tuning, upgrading, scaling and clustering of databases requires extensive talent, experience and time.  DBAs with these skills are difficult to find, hire and retain.  Also, the per-core licensing models of some databases can be extremely costly.  PaaS database licensing can be less expensive in some cases.


Intelligence + Analytics



What

I had a Microsoft Architect tell me the other day that the three forces driving advancements in IT today are IoT (Internet of Things), AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Bots (human-computer interaction).  Microsoft is heavily investing in, and talking about, all three of these areas.  IoT has its own section within the Azure catalog and I will cover IoT below.  Offerings in the Intelligence + Analytics area include Bot Service (chat), Cognitive Services (vision, speech, language, knowledge, search), Machine Learning (AI), Log Analytics, Cherwell ITSM, CloudMonix, DataStax, HDInsight, ArcSight (SIEM), PowerBI, Splunk, Tableau, Turbonomic (VMTurbo).

Why

You cannot improve what you cannot measure.  Also, easy access to the deep Microsoft research into artificial intelligence, cognitive services and human-computer interaction can provide breakthrough insights or can provide tremendous business value from your applications and services.   


Internet of Things



What

The IoT market is expected to grow to $1.7T by 2020.  As more devices become connected, the rich data being collected from those devices can be turned into insight to streamline processes, predict failures and serve customers and patients.  Some of the IoT services provided through Azure IoT are HDInsight (Hadoop), Machine Learning (AI), Stream Analytics (real time event processing), Event Hubs (stream events into applications), Service Bus (application message bus).

Why

Microsoft defines the three steps to IoT value as 1) Connect your things 2) Turn data into insights 3) Transform your business.  I am working with a customer right now who makes optical scanners for conveyor belts.  These scanners are used for package tracking, luggage tracking and other purposes.  The other day they said to me “Apparently, I am in the IoT business.”  They have already connected all their things and collected data for years, but done very little with the data collected other than provide barcode quality feedback to their customers.  Now their customers are demanding ad hoc access to all that rich real-time and historical data to improve their business.  As we work with our customer to enable their customers through IoT, all members of that value chain transform their business and become more competitive.

Enterprise Integration



What

Enterprise (Application) Integration (EAI) has been important to businesses and IT organizations since the 1990s.  Microsoft Azure extends EAI to multiple clouds.  Some of the EAI services provided also fall under previously coverged headings.  Here are a few of the EAI services in Azure: BizTalk (B2B, EDI), Logic App (workflow), Scheduler, Service Bus (message bus), Event Hubs, Relay (on-premise to cloud connect). 


Why

Enterprise applications need to talk to other enterprise applications to share data. Today, we have enterprise applications spread across multiple data centers and clouds.  The modern EAI requires connectivity and orchestration of applications regardless of location.

Security + Identity





What

Security and identity has always been important to business applications.  With the rise of successful phishing and ransomware attacks, security and identity must be closely managed in every application.  Some of the Azure security and identity services provided are Azure Active Directory, AD Identity Protection, AD Privileged Identity Management, Intune (MDM), Multi-Factor Authentication, Trend Micro, Barracuda, Brocade, Check Point, F5, Fortinet, Blackberry, HPE ArcSight, Kaspersky, Citrix NetScaler, Citrix ShareFile, Citrix XenApp, Puppet, Chef, Shavlik, Sophos, Splunk


Why


As business applications increase in number and location, the importance of a single, central directory service is important for both single sign on (SSO), authorization and authentication. As employees come and go from roles and organizations, a single point of management improves compliance.  Tools for compliance checking and mobile device management add to the strength of a single, centralized directory service.



Developer Tools

What

This is the area of Azure your developers and DevOps teams will spend most of their time in.  Solutions for building applications and automating the build of applications include Logic App (workflow), Scheduler, Team Project (Visual Studio), Automation, DevTest Labs (self-service templates for developers), Bing Maps API, Chef, Puppet, Docker, Drupal, LoadRunner, Quality Center, Stackato, WebSphere, Jenkins, LAMP, Nginx, Node.js, RabbitMQ, Ruby, Subversion.


Why

New open source and commercial developer tools are being released daily to speed time to innovation for companies.  Providing pre-built, cloud-based development environments can lead to faster time to market and competitive advantage. 


Monitoring + Management


What

Whether you are developing a new application, or adding functionality to an existing application, close monitoring is important to stability and performance.  Azure solutions in this area include Insight and Analytics (Operations Management Suite), Automation (OMS), Security & Compliance (OMS), Security & Audit (OMS), Automation, Scheduler, InTune (MDM), Network Analytics, SQL Analytics, Change Tracking, Chef, Log Analytics, Office 365 Analytics, AD Assessment, Malware Assessment, SQL Assessment, SCOM Assessment, Service Map (ADM), Cherwell (ITSM), LoadRunner, UniDesk, Update Management, VMTurbo, ESXi log monitoring. 


Why

Internet-accessible, 7×24, cloud-scale applications need intelligent monitoring to enable high levels of uptime and user satisfaction.



Containers




What

Containers are the next step in fast-to-deploy, low-overhead application platforms.  Just as physical servers made way to virtual machines, in many ways virtual machines are making way to containers.  Azure container services include Azure Container, Docker, CoreOS, DC/OS, Container Registry, RancherOS, pre-built database containers, pre-built application server containers.

Why

Containers have a smaller footprint and a smaller security attack surface. Each container is typically used for a single application and can be tuned and secured for the needs of that single application.  The creation and disposal of containers is also faster than the creation and disposal of VMs.  Some large Internet companies create over 2B containers per day.

Closing

I hope you have enjoyed this very high-level overview of the current Azure services.  I welcome and look forward to your input, opinions and corrections.