It used to be so easy to store all my work on my laptop when I was the sole employee of my company. That was like five years ago. I had no customers, I had no staff and I wondered why companies paid lots of money to host their data in the ‘cloud.’
Backup and recovery
Years later, when we become a complex organization. I realized, my laptop is not just safe enough and had no capacity to even store our sales records, let alone daily work and HR logs. Then a friend told me about Azure.
Microsoft Azure is a cloud service with other services such as analytics, computing, database, mobile, networking, storage and web with integrated tools, pre-built templates and managed services which make it easier for anyone to build and manage their personal or work applications easily and faster. Because Azure is owned and run by Microsoft, you end up in the familiar environment and operating system.
Azure backup can help you store as much files as possible without worry of losing them. Users have access to Azure servers, client machines and Azure virtual machines which store data in compressed and encrypted formats with replica data on-premise and other copies off-site regardless of a customer’s package.
Pay as you go
Being an open and flexible cloud service platform, Azure allows SME owners to pay for they use only and then expand as they grow. Users scale when they realize the need to. One can either scale up or down when you feel the need to, the means you only pay for what you use or when you need it. Azure’s pay-as-you-go services have per-minute billing with as much infrastructure, storage and bandwidth because the firm has small businesses like ours in mind.
The per-minute billing is also low compared to the competition while the infrastructure incomparable.
Protection
With Azure, your data is protected from unauthorized access just as the government’s. Microsoft knows the importance of data protection and knows that SME’s are wary of the cloud due to misinformation in the public about how unsafe it is. the firm has made an industry-leading commitment to the protection and privacy of user’s data regardless of your firm’s size or the package you are paying for.
Azure was the first cloud provider to be recognised by the European Union’s data protection authorities for its seriousness about data safety and privacy and was also the first to be ISO certified. Azure, under Azure Government, runs government applications including data for various governments in the world. Your data is most definitely safe with Azure.
Mobility
As an SME, we have teams around the continent running assignments for us. Azure allows us to our apps from anywhere because it runs on a worldwide network of Microsoft-managed data centres across 22 regions beating its closest competitors Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud combined and more data centres are coming by the day allowing us to run applications from around the continent as if we were based at Redmond, Microsoft’s HQ.
Analytics
As your SME grows, you’ll realize there is so much data to go through to make decisions than when you began. Microsoft Azure comes with simple to use predictive analytics services such as Machine Learning, Cortana Analytics and Stream Analytics to help you make smarter decisions faster and on a budget. With such business intelligence, your SME is able to make smarter decisions, improve your operations and customer service and easily identify new business possibilities unlike other forms of providers who don’t have tools to help you simplify and interpret your data.
Join the Fortune 500 league
It’s one thing to be a small business in a remote part of Kenya or Africa but when you are served by the same support teams across the globe and with the same attention, you realize you are in safe hands and treated as a customer, regardless of your package. Azure cloud is a trusted cloud service used by more than 66 per cent of Fortune 500 companies such Skanska, Heineken, 3M, Dyson, Paul Smith, Mazda, GE Healthcare, Trek, McKesson, Milliman, Towers Watson, NBC Sports, TVB and thousands others.
Whether it is an online game, a cross-platform web and mobile application, Azure is right for you.
You can learn more about this through Microsoft Azure training which can be found online.
Get a free trial here.
