Understanding the Value Assessment of Microsoft Azure

Business-to-Business Market Management

Group Project

Project Title: Understanding the Value Assessment of Microsoft Azure

Table of Contents

Executive Summary        3

Introduction        4

Cloud Computing- Industry        4

Microsoft Azure        5

Current Strategy        8

Value Mapping for Microsoft Azure (in comparison to Amazon Web Services)        9

Verdict        11

Bibliography        12

Executive Summary

Cloud is a place a place where  a user can access apps and services and store data securely from anywhere in the world by using a device and internet. Service providers own and maintain the cloud. The space being offered is infinite. Cloud computing has various benefits such as Self Service Povisioning, Elasticity, Pay per Use, Workload Resilience and Migration Flexibility. Microsoft Azure offers a hybrid cloud that creates an automated, unified and scalable environment that takes advantage of both public and private cloud thereby maintaining control over critical data. It offers various products such as compute, web and mobile, identity access management, networking, etc. While Azure is still a new player in the market, the Hybrid offereing and intergration with MS Office 365, Eclipse and Visual Studio makes it an attractive choice for the customers. Microsoft’s pricing is pay-as-you-go, but they charge per minute, which provides a more exact pricing model and is not as cost effective as Amazon Web Services’ charge per hour model. The platform operation and development experience of Azure’s offering are slightly better than AWS owing to the flexibility Azure Stack provides and the ease of selecting from fewer options. Also, due to the reach of Windows and deep pockets of Microsoft, Azure has much larger global data center coverage.

Introduction

Cloud Computing- Industry

Cloud computing is a web based technology that serves centralized data to remote devices connected through internet or intranet. In cloud computing, applications or programs runs on a server. To use cloud computing services, the clients pay through consumption-based billing. Several end sectors are significantly adopting cloud computing giving a likely boost to the industry demand over the forecast period.

The industry can be divided on the basis of deployment models such as:

• Public Cloud – the cloud is made available to the general public, accessible through the internet, by the service provider. The infrastructure is owned and managed by the service providers themselves.
• Private Cloud – These are the clouds dedicated to a particular organization and used for storing data, hosting applications, etc. The cloud data can not be shared outside the organization. The cloud is managed by either the service provider or the organization.
• Hybrid Cloud – It is the combination of both private and public cloud. Organizations can use private clouds for critical and sensitive data and applications, while public clouds for other purposes. It provides flexible and cost-effective solutions to the organizations. (TutorialsPoint, 2016)

There are three main categories of cloud computing services:

• Platform as a service (PaaS) delivers applications over the internet as the hardware and software is provided by the service provider on its own infrastructure as a service, thereby providing users with a hassle free development. (Rouse, Platform as a Service (PaaS), 2015)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a model where a third-party provider hosts hardware, applications, software, servers, storage and other infrastructure components on behalf of its users. IaaS providers also handle tasks including system maintenance and backup. It gives a leeway to clients by giving an option to procure resources as an outsourced service rather than purchasing the software. (Rouse, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), 2015)
• Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications which are available to customers over the Internet. Customers are not required to install and run applications on their own data centres; rather licenses are provided through an on-demand model, hence, eliminating the expenses like hardware acquisition cost and maintenance along with software licensing, installation and support. (Rouse, Software as a Service (SaaS), 2016)

The major players in cloud computing are Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Google, IBM, Adobe and Hotmail among others. (Directions Magazine, 2016)

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Figure: Market share and Revenue Growth of various cloud players (Columbus, 2016)

Microsoft Azure

Azure is a public cloud-computing platform launched as Windows Azure on February 1st 2010 and renamed as Microsoft Azure on March 25th 2014. Like other cloud platforms, it provides a varied range of services such as computation, analytics, storage and networking. Users can either develop, scale or run applications by choosing these services. Microsoft Azure is widely considered both an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) as well as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. (Rouse, Microsoft Azure (Windows Azure), 2016)

Microsoft categorizes Azure services into the following main product types:

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Figure: Internet accessible applications that run in Azure (Microsoft Azure, 2016)

• Compute – these services provide virtual machines (VM), batch processing and remote application access. The VM scenarios are- Dev/Test, Lift and Shift (move applications to Azure) and Datacenter extension.
• Web and mobile – these services manage web environment using the Azure Management portal as well as APIs for development and deployment of web and mobile applications.
• Data Management – this category includes Database as Service offerings for SQL and NoSQL, as well as unstructured and cached cloud storage. The Azure SQL Database provides a managed relational database service in the cloud.
• Analytics – these services provide distributed analytics and storage, as well as real-time analytics, big data analytics, machine learning and data warehousing.
• Networking –includes virtual networks, dedicated connections and gateways, as well as services for traffic management, load balancing and domain name system (DNS) hosting. Virtual Networks provides a private network, which can be used by different services to talk to each other, or with on-premises resources.
• Media – these services include on-demand streaming, encoding and media playback and indexing. Media Services is a platform for applications that provide video and other media to clients around the world.
• Hybrid integration – these are services for connecting private and public clouds. This feature differentiates Azure from other cloud platforms such as AWS.
• Identity and Access Management (IAM) – these offerings ensure that only authorized users can use Azure services. It provides services to help track identity by multi-factor authentication, which provides the functionality for the application to verify more than one form of identification.
• Developer Services – these services help application developers share code, test applications and track issues. Azure also offers command line tools, which the developers can use with any editor and deploy it on Linux or Macintosh. Azure supports a range of programming languages such as Python, JavaScript, .NET and Node.js.
• Management and Security – these products help cloud administrators manage their Azure deployment, schedule and run jobs, and create automation by including capabilities that identify and respond to clouds security threats.

Current Strategy

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Figure: Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide (Lydia Leong, 2017)

Gartner Report on Magic Quadrant for cloud infrastructure positions Microsoft Azure among the leaders along with Amazon Web Services.

Microsoft Azure offers multi tenant Virtual Machines, with multi tenant storage, along with many additional IaaS and PaaS capabilities, including Blob Storage, a Content Delivery Network, an Azure Container Service, a batch computing service and event-driven "serverless computing". (Lydia Leong, 2017)