Microsoft Azure

Introduction

• Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform by Microsoft. Currently, it is the second most popular cloud service provider on the list.
• It was developed under the code “Red Dog” in 2008 and became generally available on the 1^st of February 2010.
• It has an immense global presence than any other cloud service provider. 
• Various customers coming from industries like healthcare, banking, and manufacturing, are using Microsoft Azure for their IT services.

To know more about Azure Services, Click here

Important Milestones so far

Development and Launch(2008-2010)

• Azure’s development began in 2006, and it was publicly announced in October 2008. 
• Initially, Azure was positioned as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering, providing developers with a platform to build and deploy applications. 
• As we mentioned before also, On February 1, 2010, Microsoft officially launched Windows Azure.

Expansion and Service Offerings(2010-2013)

• Microsoft expanded Azure’s offerings to include Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) capabilities, allowing users to deploy and manage virtual machines in the cloud. 
• Services like Azure Storage, Azure AppFabric, and SQL Azure, were also introduced.

Rebranding Microsoft Azure(2014)

• Microsoft rebranded Windows Azure as Microsoft Azure to better reflect its broader scope beyond the Windows operating system.
• Azure Resource Manager was introduced during this period.
• This change emphasized Microsoft’s commitment to supporting various platforms and technologies, not just limited to Windows. 
• The idea was to go cross-platform!

Rapid Growth and Global Expansion (2015-2019)

• Azure experienced significant growth during this period. 
• Microsoft expanded its data center infrastructure globally, opening new regions to support customer demand across the world. 
• Azure became one of the leading cloud platforms, competing with other significant players in the industry.

Integration with AI and IoT (2017-2018)

• Microsoft invested heavily in integrating Azure with artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT). 
• They introduced services like Azure Machine Learning and Azure IoT Suite, empowering developers to build intelligent and connected applications.

Hybrid Cloud and Azure Stack (2017-2019)

• Microsoft recognized the importance of hybrid cloud solutions, enabling businesses to integrate their on-premises infrastructure with the cloud seamlessly. 
• Azure Stack, introduced in 2017, allowed organizations to run Azure services in their own data centers, providing consistency across on-premises and cloud environments.

Continued Innovation and Diversification (2020-present): 

• Microsoft Azure has continued to evolve with new services and features. 
• Microsoft Azure focused on areas such as serverless computing (Azure Functions), containerization (Azure Kubernetes Service), big data and analytics (Azure Data Lake, Azure Synapse Analytics), and enterprise integration (Azure Logic Apps, Azure API Management).

Azure Global Presence

Azure has a great global presence. It is one of the most reachable cloud services across the globe.

Image source: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/networking/microsoft-global-network

Azure’s global presence has three entities: 

• Azure regions
• Geographies 
• Availability zones

Regions

• An Azure data center is a unique physical building that contains thousands of physical servers with their own power, cooling, and networking infrastructure.
• Technically, Microsoft Azure is a network of data centers around the globe. 
• Azure region is a collection of multiple data centers, connected through a dedicated regional low-latency network. 
• This design ensures Azure services within any region offer the best possible performance and security. 
• Regions are in pairs. like, the East US region and West US are paired together.
• To know about all regions geography-wise, click here

Availability zones

• Azure availability zones are physically separate locations within each Azure region that are tolerant to local failures. 
• Failures can be operational or natural such as earthquakes, floods, etc.
• They are connected by a high-performance network with a round-trip latency of less than 2ms. 
• For further details, Click here

Azure Geography

• When two or more two regions come together, we call that geography.
• For example, the Americas, Asia Pacific, and Europe! 
• Geographies are fault-tolerant to withstand complete region failure through their connection to Azure’s dedicated high-capacity networking infrastructure.
• To know about all Azure Geographies, click here.