What are the top 10 most used Microsoft Azure services?

A public cloud computing platform, Microsoft Azure offers infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and a serverless model. A constant hybrid cloud, Microsoft Azure is growing in demand with approximately 90% of the Fortune 500 companies using Azure services.

The Azure cloud services are trained and created to deploy and manage even complex apps, through virtual infrastructure. It supports various programming languages, devices, databases, operating systems, and extensive frameworks. Therefore, Azure services intended for the professionals and enterprises offer all-around alternatives to the traditional means of organizational processes, with top Azure services greatly improving the performance.

Curated List of Top Azure Services

While there is no long list of competitors in cloud servicing, the top runners like Google and AWS continue to give a tough fight to Microsoft Azure in the race of being the most used cloud service. Despite intense competition, Microsoft Azure continues growing and evolving over the years, especially through the phase of remote working due to a pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Offering top Azure services, the platform has maintained its integrity and popularity. Now let’s delve deeper into understanding more about the top 10 most popular Azure services.

Azure Active Directory

Azure Active Directory (AD) is one of the most popular cloud computing services from Microsoft Azure. Belonging to the Identity section, it is a universal identity platform to ensure the management and security of identities. It deserves the topmost mention in our list of best Azure services because of its robust security solutions.

Azure Active Directory offers single sign-on and multi-factor authentication as an enterprise identity service to protect them from cybersecurity threats. Identity-based security ensures complete safeguarding of the users as well, against cyberattacks. They can access the software from any corner of the world through authenticated login. As Azure Active Directory creates a single identity platform, it is also easier to have secure engagement with internal and external users.

Azure CDN

Azure Content Delivery Network (CDN) deserves a mention here for being an extremely important Azure service that enables and accelerates growth in businesses. Its server is designed in a way that it can integrate a lot of storage space, web apps, and Azure cloud services. This is why Azure CDN is used to deliver content securely all across the world.

Azure Data Factory

To create a data-driven workflow in cloud computing, Azure Data Factory ingests data from several sources to automate data transmission and movement. Azure Data Factory utilizes several Azure services for computing like – Azure Machine Learning, Azure HDInsight Hadoop, and Azure Data Lake Analytics. Azure Data Lake can be understood as a huge repository of data in its original form for Big data analytics.

Output data from Azure Data Factory can be published on Azure Data Lake for Business Analytics (BI) applications for analytics and visualization. Azure Data Factory deserves a mention in the top Azure services as it does not store any data but allows you to gauge the movement of data and determine a data-driven workflow. By utilizing the raw data through data stores, better business decisions can be taken. Using UI and programmatic mechanisms, Azure Data Factory creates and monitors workflows.

Azure SQL

Azure SQL database comes under the category of the platform as a service (PaaS) and is related to most of the database management functions, like – backups, monitoring, patching, and upgrading without any kind of user involvement. The efficiency of Azure SQL without requiring any human intervention is the reason why we have to mention it in our list of top Azure services.

The Azure SQL database brings integrated PaaS capabilities helping you administer domain-specific databases and optimize the activities as per your business needs. The Azure SQL database is always upgraded to the latest and stable version of the SQL server database engine. It is accompanied by a patched OS with 99.99% availability.

Azure Function

Developers use Azure Functions to connect to data sources or messaging solutions and react to events. The best part about Azure Function is its compute-on-demand capacity which means that you only pay for the services when you consume the resources. Azure Functions, a serverless compute service, enables enterprises to run event-triggered codes without having an infrastructure for its provision.

Azure Function is greatly reliable and is used in production settings. It can be used to achieve decoupling, high-throughput, shared, and reusability.

CosmosDB

One of the most celebrated Azure services, CosmosDB is a globally distributed database service. It can access and manage data from scattered data centres while offering tools to scale up your computation resources and global distribution patterns through Microsoft Azure.

DevOps

As you start using Microsoft Azure services, the software as a service (SaaS) platform of DevOps will be needed to develop and deploy software. It offers easy integration facilities with famous tools in the industry and can help orchestrate a DevOps toolchain. DevOps services prove the agility of the tools by tracking, planning, and discussing their work among other teams.

Azure Backup

Human error is a crude reality and Azure Backup allows simple data protection tools from the Azure Web app services, to keep your data protected from ransomware or loss of any kind. The backup cost is almost inexpensive, and can be used for backing up SQL workloads, as well as data from virtual machines too.

Logic Apps

As one of the top Azure services, Logic Apps have gained immense popularity due to their useful and efficient tools. They can offer effective solutions to integrate different applications. One must note the tightly-knit ecosystem of cloud-based SaaS connectors like Google Services, Twitter, and Office 365.

Virtual Machine

A virtual machine is generally called an image, a file that can behave like an actual computer. Microsoft Azure offers the addition of virtual machines in its Compute category, thus creating Windows or Linux systems within a few seconds on a physical computer. The virtual machine stays separate from the rest of the computer, thus providing a perfect space to test beta applications, access virus-infected data, create system backups and run applications that were not natively intended to be run on the given operating system.

Can Microsoft Azure solve all your business queries with advanced Azure services? Do you need to consider alternatives with lesser features?

If you are just getting started with Microsoft, even the top Azure services can sound overwhelming. Apart from the Azure services mentioned in the list, several other services like VNet, Front Door, Azure Backup, StorSimple are crucial for organizations to scale up their enhanced enterprise solutions through a virtual platform.

Before you choose to go ahead with Microsoft Azure services for your business, it is also important to assess your requirements before choosing a set of Azure services. Based on your needs, you can pick from the best-rated top Azure services or try out others from approximately 600 securely available Azure services.