Microsoft Azure could be the missing piece of the puzzle for your SMB.
Recently, thousands of small and medium-sized businesses have added Microsoft Azure to their systems.
Is the hype worth it? And can Microsoft Azure really make life easier for your employees?
The short and sweet answer is “yes!” – Microsoft Azure is more than worth the hype. The benefits it offers businesses are essentially endless. For brevity purposes, this guide has narrowed the benefits down into a top-5 list for you to dive into.
Firstly, what is Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure is an umbrella for a variety of cloud-based computing services. This includes:
- Instant messaging
- Media services
- Mobile services
- Websites
- Data management
With so many excellent features, it makes Microsoft Azure a no-brainer for SMBs.
Microsoft Azure offers a comprehensive range of services, including Azure Databricks, which is an analytics platform built on Apache Spark. Azure Databricks pricing is flexible and caters to different requirements, allowing small and medium-sized businesses to make use of powerful big data processing capabilities. The pricing model includes various tiers, such as pay-as-you-go and reserved instances, which can help businesses optimize their cloud expenditures. By considering Azure Databricks pricing, SMBs can make informed decisions about the most cost-effective way to utilize the platform, while still benefiting from managed services that simplify their cloud management responsibilities.
However, like with most cloud-based services, a lot of work and maintenance is required to keep everything running smoothly. This is why many businesses are now using Azure managed services. Essentially, this is when a business’s cloud system is managed by a specialist company. It makes life so much easier for business owners and employees.
Now, the Benefits of Microsoft Azure
1) Data Backup
No matter how much data there is backed up on your servers, you can rest easy knowing that it’s safe in the Microsoft Azure cloud. In the case of disaster recovery, Azure offers an end-to-end recovery process that almost guarantees the recovery of any data that has been lost or damaged. Not bad, right?
2) Remote Work
Due to the scalability and flexibility of Azure, employees can easily work from home and access the cloud-based services that they need. The only catch is that they need a working internet connection to do this.
Whenever new employees are brought on board, they can be easily integrated into the system without the need for any physical hardware.
3) Microsoft 365 Integration
The vast majority of modern-day businesses use a variety of services and apps. More often than not, this includes Microsoft 365. With Azure, all of a business’s Microsoft tools and products can be integrated together in a single, easy-to-manage environment. In addition to this, other services, such as Oracle (a large database management service), can also be managed.
4) Analytics
Azure offers huge big data features. These features enable businesses to identify interesting trends from analytics. In turn, big improvements can be made to operations, such as customer service.
Data can be analyzed from a variety of different sources on Microsoft Azure, including:
- Websites
- Social media
- Devices
For example, if you run a big business website, you’ll be able to access analytics regarding website visitors and interaction – simple.
The business world is now in the ‘big data era’, which is why analytics are more important than ever.
5) Maximum Security
Microsoft Azure has excellent security measures in place. Across the cloud environment, all workloads and documents are secured, whether businesses are dealing with customer profiles or invoices. Cyberattacks are always lurking, but it’s very difficult for hackers to get into the Azure cloud.
