Microsoft Azure is a hybrid cloud platform that has overcome various obstacles to constantly remain on top with offering advanced services. This as a result has earned the trust and global recognition amongst top companies of all sectors. By providing the bulk of products and cloud services, and with its extremely advanced solutions for designing, executing, and controlling applications across different clouds, on-premises, and at the edge, Microsoft Azure has revolutionized the way tasks are solved. Further, Azure services cover cloud computing models, such as:
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
- Platform as a service (PaaS)
- Software as a service (SaaS)
- Serverless model.
However, coming on the main path, the Azure Services. We are well aware of the popularity of Azure services worldwide and how they are providing benefits to many organizations. But, the question that comes to mind, which one to select as there are many services provided by Azure. To resolve this, we have created a list of top Azure services of 2021 that are trending in the market. So, let’s learn about them.
Trending Azure Services: 2021
Microsoft Azure is a priority for many top organizations whether it’s for offering security, scalability, IaaS, and PaaS capabilities. However, to understand this more specifically, let’s understand the trending Azure services:
1. Azure DevOps
Microsoft Azure DevOps delivers developer services to assist teams in project planning, code development collaboration, and app development and deployment. It also promotes a culture and methods that bring together engineers, project managers, and contributors to finish software development. It also enables enterprises to develop and improve products at a faster rate than traditional software development methods allow.
Microsoft Azure DevOps Services:
1. Azure Boards
Teams use the Azure Boards online service to manage their software projects.
2. Azure Pipelines
Azure Pipelines are in charge of creating and testing code projects for sharing with others.
3. Azure Repos
Azure Repos is a collection of version control tools for keeping track of your code. Free private Git repositories pull requests, and code search is all available.
4. Azure Test Plans
Using the manual and exploratory testing toolkit, Azure Test Plans allows you to test and ship with confidence.
5. Azure Artifacts
Teams of any size may use Azure Artifacts to generate and share Maven, npm, and NuGet package feeds from both public and private sources.
2. Virtual Machines
Transferring mission-critical and business-critical workloads to Azure infrastructure and enhancing operational efficiency is always possible with Azure Virtual Machine. Furthermore, Azure VM provides virtualization flexibility without requiring the purchase and maintenance of real hardware. However, it is necessary to keep the virtual machine up to date by configuring, patching, and installing the software that runs on it. Azure virtual machines can be used in a number of ways, including:
- Firstly, Development and test
- Secondly, Applications in the cloud
- Lastly, Extended datacenter
Start creating a virtual machine in Azure Portal!
The Azure VM has two categories:
1. Windows Virtual Machines (VM)
This allows you to take advantage of your current investments while also migrating your Microsoft technologies to Azure. By automating Windows Server management with Azure Automanage and utilizing existing on-premises Windows Server licenses with Azure Hybrid, this gives a cost-cutting option.
2. Linux Virtual Machines (VM)
Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, and CoreOS are among the Linux distributions available in Azure Linux VM. You can discover Azure-optimized Linux images from publishers of your choice, as well as preconfigured solutions from Oracle and other open-source VM-compatible vendors.
3. Azure Cosmos DB
Microsoft’s Azure Cosmos DB service is a globally distributed, multi-model database. It’s a fully managed NoSQL database for building modern apps. With single-digit millisecond reaction times and automatic and rapid scalability, it ensures speed at any size. With SLA-backed availability and enterprise-grade security, it also ensures business continuity. Furthermore, it also balances capacity and demand with cost-effective serverless and autonomous scaling solutions that respond to application needs.
Use Cases for Azure Cosmos DB:
1. IoT and telematics
In terms of how IoT use cases consume, analyze, and store data, there are several similar trends.
- To begin, these systems must consume bursts of data from many locations’ gadget sensors.
- Second, in order to obtain real-time insights, these systems process and evaluate streaming data.
- Lastly, the data is then archived to cold storage in preparation for batch analytics.
2. Retail and marketing
Microsoft’s own e-commerce services, such as the Windows Store and Xbox Live, primarily use Azure Cosmos DB. It’s also utilized in the retail industry for catalog data storage and order processing pipeline event sourcing. As it supports customized schemas and hierarchical data, Azure Cosmos DB is ideal for storing product catalog data.
3. Gaming
The cloud is utilized to give specialized and personalized material such as in-game stats, social network integration, and high-score leaderboards in modern games, which utilize mobile/console clients for graphical processing. Azure Cosmos DB is used in games like Next Games’ The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land and Halo 5: Guardians.
4. Azure Active Directory
Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is a global identity platform from Microsoft that supports single sign-on and multi-factor authentication to protect users from cybersecurity threats. This is a cloud-based identity and access management service that assists employees with logging in and accessing resources in:
- Firstly, external resources, such as Microsoft 365, the Azure portal, and other SaaS applications.
- Second, internal resources such as corporate network and intranet apps, as well as cloud apps, are created by the organization.
Functions of Azure AD:
1. Connecting workforce
Azure Active Directory enables seamless access to all apps, allowing users to be productive whether on-site or remotely. This aids in the automation of workflows for user lifetime and provisioning, allowing self-service administration to save time and resources.
2. Option to choose numerous SaaS apps
Thousands of pre-integrated software as a service (SaaS) apps are available with Azure AD.
3. Protecting and governing access
Strong authentication and restricted access controls are used to keep user credentials safe. Furthermore, it manages identities in a methodical manner, guaranteeing that only legitimate individuals have access to legitimate resources.
4. Engaging with your customers and partners
Using Azure AD, you can secure and manage clients and partners outside of your organization using a single identity solution. Moreover, you can also customize user journeys and clarify authentication using social identities, among other things.
5. Integrating identity into your apps
By providing single sign-on and user provisioning, you can help your application gain traction in the enterprise. It also reduces sign-in friction and streamlines the creation, deletion, and maintenance of user accounts.
5. Azure Content Delivery Network
A content delivery network (CDN) is a distributed network of servers that is in charge of delivering web content to users. However, to reduce latency, Azure CDN caches content on edge servers in point-of-presence (POP) locations close to end-users. Furthermore, it gives developers a way to distribute high-bandwidth material to users by caching it at strategically positioned physical nodes around the world. In addition, Azure CDN assists websites in the following ways:
- To begin with, faster performance and a better user experience for end-users when utilizing applications that require many round-trips to load content.
- Secondly, massive scaling is used to better handle heavy loads that occur suddenly, such as at the commencement of a product launch event.
- Finally, in order to send less bandwidth to the origin server, user requests are distributed and content is served directly from edge servers.
6. Azure Logic Apps
A platform as a service (iPaaS) built on a containerized runtime is referred to as Azure Logic Apps. This cloud-based platform solution integrates your apps, data, services, and systems by allowing you to create and operate automated workflows. You can quickly create highly scalable integration solutions for your corporate and business-to-business (B2B) layouts using this method.
Logic Apps also illustrates how historical, modern, and cutting-edge technologies are connected across cloud, on-premises, and hybrid settings. Logic Apps Service includes the following actions and processes:
- To begin, use Office 365 to schedule and send email notifications when a specific event occurs.
- Secondly, consumer orders must be routed and processed across on-premises systems and cloud services.
- Lastly, upload files to Azure Storage from an SFTP or FTP host.
The Logic Apps integration platform also provides built-in operations for connecting and integrating apps, data, services, and systems, as well as pre-built Microsoft-managed API connectors. This allows you to focus on developing and implementing your solution’s business logic and features.
7. Azure Backup
The Azure Backup service makes backing up and recovering data from the Microsoft Azure cloud simple, secure, and cost-effective. It is, however, a cost-effective, secure, one-click backup solution that can be scaled to meet your backup storage requirements. The centralized administration interface makes defining backup rules and protecting a variety of enterprise workloads, such as Azure Virtual Machines, SQL and SAP databases, and Azure file shares, simple. In addition, Azure Backup:
- Firstly, use Backup Centre for monitoring, running, governing, and optimizing data protection at scale in a unified and consistent manner.
- Secondly, use Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) in Windows and pre-and post-processing scripts in Linux for backing up and restoring data from virtual machines with application consistency.
- Then, back up Azure Virtual Machines, on-premises servers, SQL Server, and SAP HANA to Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Files, and PostgreSQL Azure Database.
- Lastly, keep your backups in LRS, GRS, and ZRS (locally redundant storage, geo-redundant storage, and zone-redundant storage) (ZRS).
8. Azure Bots
Azure Bot Solution is a managed bot development service that allows you to engage with your users across popular channels in a seamless manner. Here, you only have to pay for messages sent through Premium channels. Thus, enabling the bot for engaging with users inside the app or website. However, this is a complete development environment for creating enterprise-grade conversational AI. It also helps in the development of enterprise-grade conversational AI experiences while maintaining data governance.
Key service capabilities of Azure Bot:
- Firstly, existing FAQ pages and documentation may be quickly converted into a simple bot, which can then be refined over time.
- Secondly, Azure provides security, availability, compliance, and manageability at the enterprise level.
- Thirdly, this includes advanced multiturn conversation designs from the author, such as interruption handling, cancellations, and context switching.
- This enables you to design bots that can understand and speak a variety of languages, as well as handle both text and speech.
- Then it takes advantage of the open-source community’s reusable conversational components.
- Lastly, you have the option of adding prebuilt components, dialogues, and language models to your bot.
9. Azure Automation
Azure Automation is a cloud-based automation and configuration tool for managing both Azure and non-Azure environments. Moreover, you have complete control over the deployment, operation, and decommissioning of workloads and resources due to automation.
Components:
1. Process Automation
Process Automation is for automating cloud administration processes that are repetitive, time-consuming, and prone to errors. This solution assists you in concentrating on work that brings value to your company.
2. Configuration Management
Two features are available in Azure Automation’s Configuration Management:
- Change Tracking and Inventory
- Azure Automation State Configuration
3. Update management
The Azure Automation Update Management solution is for Windows and Linux systems in hybrid environments. This gives you visibility into update compliance in Azure and other clouds, as well as on-premises. In addition, the capability aids in the creation of planned deployments, which organize the installation of updates within a specified maintenance window.
4. Shared capabilities
Azure Automation offers a number of shared capabilities. This includes:
- Shared resources
- Role-based access control
- Source control integration
5. Heterogeneous support (Windows and Linux)
Automation is optimized for use in a hybrid cloud environment, as well as on Windows and Linux platforms. It also provides the ability to automate and configure deployed workloads and the operating systems that run them in a consistent manner.
10. Azure Site Recovery
When scheduled and unplanned outages occur, you must have a business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy that keeps your data safe and your apps and workloads operational. For this, the Azure recovery service plays a major role. That is to say, Azure Recovery Services can help you with your BCDR plan in the following ways:
1. Site Recovery service
Site Recovery keeps company apps and workloads functioning during outages, ensuring business continuity. Moreover, this replicates workloads from a primary site to a secondary location using physical and virtual computers (VMs). When your primary site goes down, you failover to a secondary site and access apps from there. You can failback to the principal location once it restarts.
2. Backup service
Your data is protected and recoverable because of the Azure Backup service.
Further, Site Recovery can now handle replication for:
- Azure VMs that are replicated between Azure regions.
- On-premises virtual machines, Azure Stack virtual machines, and physical servers are all available.
Final Word
Microsoft Azure offers many services that provide solutions to companies and organizations of all sectors. However, to help you out, above we understood the top trending services that are gaining attention these days. To sum up, selecting a service is important to tasks. And, to do it correct order, you first have to identify the requirements, and then you can select the service which matches.
