Pillars Of Cloud And Azure Services

1. We may need to visualize the intent from images, data, speech, or vision in certain applications.
2. Intelligence services help users to connect to the application in natural and contextual ways.
3. Azure cloud has cognitive API’s built-in service to reduce the implementation efforts with other benefits.
4. Typically, the below services are coming under this category in Azure
   • Conversational user interfaces
   • Virtual personal assistant
   • Speech recognition
   • Text to Speech
   • Speech to Text
   • Text translation
   • Text analysis
   • Visual recognition (Face API, Emotions API etc.)

Internet of Things (IoT)

1. If the application is connected to the device(s) to capture untapped data, process it, and visualize it then IoT is indeed a great choice.
2. It is nothing but the collection of the device(s) and software(s) interacting with each other.
3. Typically, the below services are coming under this category in Azure
   • IoT Suite (IoT Hub, Machine Learning, Stream Analytics, Notification Hubs, Power BI)
   • IoT Hub
   • IoT Edge
   • Streaming data (Event Hubs, Event Hubs Capture)

Management & Monitoring

1. If we are moving applications to the cloud then depending upon the cloud resources and service plans, we also need to monitor,
   • Health and performance of the application
   • Utilization of the application
   • Workloads and infrastructure
2. Azure cloud has different features to monitor and control the application.
3. Typically, the below services are coming under this category in Azure
   • Cloud advisor
   • Deployment orchestration (DevOps)
   • Management & monitoring (Azure Portal, Cloud Shell, Application Insights and many more)
   • Administration (Log Analytics, Operations Management Suite, Microsoft Operations Management Suite, Resource Health, Storage Explorer)

Mobile Services

1. Nowadays every application is compatible with the mobile device.
2. It helps users to keep interacting with the application from everywhere by using small devices like mobile.
3. Typically, the below come under this category in Azure
   • Pro app development (Mobile App, Xamarin apps, etc)
   • App testing
   • Analytics (HockeyApp, Application Insights, etc.)
   • Enterprise mobility management
   • Real-time data queries

Security, Identity & Access

1. It is the most important factor when you are dealing with cloud applications.
2. We have a need to protect each of the cloud resources carefully.
3. Azure Cloud has a range of features that help to protect your Azure resources.
4. Every resource has different techniques to protect it. It varies on which type of resource you are going to protect like the identity of the user, data, database, azure functions, etc.
5. Typically, the below services are coming under this category in Azure
   • Authentication and authorization (Active Directory, Multifactor authentication, Role Based Access Security [RBAC], etc.)
   • Encryption (Storage/Data encryption, Key-vault, etc.)
   • Firewall (Application Gateway, Web Application Firewall)
   • Security (Security Center etc.)

Developer Tools

1. To build any application and deploy to the cloud is easy now.
2. Azure Cloud has integrated with other development tools which helps to development team to easily and quickly build, deploy, monitor, and manage applications by using different development tools.
3. Typically, the below services are coming under this category in Azure
   • Media transcoder
   • Media encoder
   • Workflow (Logic Apps, Microsoft Flow)
   • API management
   • Enterprise app integration
   • Backend process logic
   • Application development (API apps, web apps, VSTS, etc.)
   • Programmatic access (Power shell, cloud shell, Command line interface CLI, etc.)

Enterprise Integrations

1. This is one more important factor that needs to be evaluated while dealing with multiple features/apps together to solve the B2B workflows that integrate with third-party software, any other apps, or on-premise resources.
2. Example – Web App can connect to logic app to on-premise SQL etc.
3. Typically, the below services are coming under this category in Azure,
   • Enterprise app integration (Logic Apps, Ms. Flow, Dynamics 365, Office 365)
   • Content management – SharePoint Online
   • Messaging (Queue Storage, Service Bus Queues, Topics, Relays)

Hybrid Cloud & User Friendliness

Hybrid Cloud When you deal with multi-cloud applications OR when there is a combination of cloud service with on-premise services then it is coming under the hybrid cloud category.

E.g. Connecting networks, Relay, Service Bus, and On-premise gateway connector Azure services come under this category.

User Friendliness Azure Cloud has a more friendly interface than other cloud providers. Most of the time we work with Microsoft’s ecosystem. That's an edge here because as the majority of people use Windows, Azure is easy for them to use.

Data Centers

• When your application is developed then we need to select the proper data center location to host our application. Standards say that the data center should be near the location from from users will access the application.
• Azure Cloud is available in 54 geographic regions worldwide, 140 countries as of Oct 2018 and it's growing.
  

Pricing Options

• Azure Cloud works on a Pay-as-you-go model
• Charges are applied on a charge per minute depending upon the resource
• We can also do short-term commitments with Microsoft for options between pre-paid or monthly charges

Disaster Recovery

• If an application is critical then we need to configure resources in the cloud in such a way that in case of disasters, we can make the application available in a minimal amount of time
• We need to use features like availability sets (fault domains/ update domains), site recovery, multi-regional replicas, etc.

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