Microsoft Azure Benefits Organizations with Flexible, Secure Cloud

It’s no coincidence that Microsoft Azure is the cloud service that 95% of Fortune 500 companies, including Walmart, FedEx, American Airlines, and AT&T, trust for their cloud and hybrid solutions.

What is Azure?

The Azure cloud platform has more than 200 products and cloud services designed to help you bring new solutions to life—to solve today’s challenges and create the future. Build, run, and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises, and at the edge, with the tools and frameworks of your choice.

Because Microsoft Azure relies on open-source computing, programmers and developers can use their existing code in a variety of languages. Businesses of any size can use just the cloud-based services and applications that fit their business model, and they pay for only what they use. This makes it a suitable option for companies that want to offload all their computing to the cloud, and those who want to retain some of their computing and storage onsite, also called a “hybrid cloud” mode. From healthcare to financial services to retail, companies in numerous industries use Microsoft Azure’s capabilities to increase their market share and save on infrastructure costs.

Microsoft Azure Benefits and Our Team

Microsoft Azure Cloud is a powerful platform that offers a wide range of benefits, services, and capabilities to organizations. By migrating to Azure, businesses can leverage scalable infrastructure, advanced analytics, AI capabilities, and much more. However, embarking on this cloud journey can be daunting, especially for those who are new to the cloud or just starting out. That’s where our team comes in.

Our team is experienced in helping organizations navigate the cloud landscape and has achieved Microsoft Advanced Specialization for Azure. We understand the challenges and complexities involved in cloud migration, and we have a proven track record of success. By leveraging the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), we follow a structured approach to guide organizations through their cloud journey.

What is the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework?

The Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is a set of Azure guidelines and best practices designed by Microsoft Azure partners, solution architects, and customers. The CAF’s goal is to help organizations align technical and business strategies around Microsoft Azure to drive long-term, sustainable business outcomes. The CAF has been vetted by over 200 organizations and is robustly supported by Microsoft.

How it Works: The CAF Framework

The CAF consists of a curated set of tools and documentation that’s broken down into six stages— corresponding to the typical cloud journey. They are the strategy, plan, ready, adopt, govern, and manage stages. The six modules of the CAF help businesses map out their cloud journey into discrete stages, ensuring IT professionals, cloud architects, and decision-makers have a consistent framework in which to work and form expectations.

It’s important to note that, while the CAF is often explained as linear, the fact is that the six stages represent an iterative, cyclical process. It’s common for organizations to jump in and out of stages as they make progress in different areas or need to go back and address workloads in earlier stages.

Here’s an overview of each stage:

1. Strategy: This phase is all about the “why” behind your cloud adoption. What are the business and financial justifications behind your migration? What outcomes are you expecting?
2. Plan: The plan phase is where you map out your cloud adoption based on business goals, workload priorities, and your current digital estate (licenses, Azure services, state of your data, etc.). It’s at this stage where you’ll assign internal and partner team members to your strategy team.
3. Ready: Get prepared to head to the cloud! Processes, people, and your IT environment all need to be ready for the change. To accomplish this, we’ll use landing zones and replicable mechanisms to begin migrating the workloads you prioritized in the “Plan” phase.
4. Adopt: Whether you’re shifting existing workloads to Azure or looking to create something entirely new, this is the phase where implementation really begins. It’s here that you’ll start to see the outcomes you set as goals in the strategy phase come to fruition.
5. Govern: Based on your goals, industry, and current IT policies, we’ll define a cloud governance plan. The priority is to ensure adequate governance now, in a way that enables agility in the future when priorities, processes, and your cloud estate change.
6. Manage: Manage, monitor, and optimize your Azure environment to maximize ROI and deliver on your expected outcomes. In the “Manage” phase, it’s all about building an operating model that consistently delivers excellence.

The Top 3 Benefits of CAF

There are many benefits to be gained from following the CAF, but here are our top 3:

1. Follow a battle-tested, well-supported framework: The CAF has already been used by hundreds of organizations, many of which have provided Microsoft with significant feedback. Additionally, Microsoft has demonstrated their commitment to CAF, which means you can count on their support through the framework for years to come. This level of support is invaluable for anyone looking to maximize the value of their Azure investment.
2. Proactively manage cost and compliance: When migrating workloads to the cloud, it’s not uncommon for organizations to go too fast, too soon. This can lead to all sorts of problems with security, cost, and regulatory compliance. The CAF dramatically reduces this problem. This is due to the safeguards in place at each stage of the framework to ensure scope creep, cost, compliance, and security are always attended to before moving onto the next phase – or next workload.
3. Better identify the end-to-end requirements for achieving technical and business goals: By breaking down the Azure journey into six components – all of which are heavily documented and supported by Microsoft – setting and hitting KPIs is a much more realistic process.

With our expertise, we can assist in planning the migration, designing the architecture, implementing the solution, and providing ongoing support and management. We take a holistic view, ensuring that your organization’s unique requirements are met while aligning with industry best practices and standards.

Security and Cloud Foundation

Security is a critical aspect of any cloud strategy. When moving to the cloud, organizations need to ensure that their data and applications are protected. By partnering with us, you gain a trusted ally that aligns with your security objectives.

Our team follows Microsoft’s recommended security practices to ensure a robust and secure cloud foundation. We can help implement advanced security measures, such as identity and access management, encryption, network security, and threat detection. By integrating these security measures into your Azure environment, we help safeguard your organization’s assets.

User Adoption and Key Metrics

Moving to the cloud is not just about technology; it also involves ensuring that users embrace the new platform and derive value from it. User adoption is a crucial factor in the success of any cloud migration.

Our team understands the importance of user adoption and change management. We provide training, workshops, and resources to help your employees adapt to the new cloud environment. By fostering a culture of learning and collaboration, we ensure that your organization fully realizes Azure Cloud benefits.

Additionally, we help organizations track and measure key metrics to assess the success of their cloud migration. We can provide insights into cost optimization, performance improvements, scalability, and reliability. These metrics allow you to make data-driven decisions and continuously enhance your cloud environment.

Optimizing Cloud Footprint and Transformation

For organizations already in the cloud, there are opportunities to review and optimize their current footprint. This helps identify areas for improvement, enhance security, and explore new avenues for transformation and modernization.

Our team can conduct a comprehensive assessment of your existing cloud infrastructure, applications, and workloads. By analyzing usage patterns, performance metrics, and cost optimization opportunities, we can identify areas where efficiency gains can be made. We can also help you leverage advanced cloud services, such as serverless computing, AI, and data analytics, to further transform your organization.

To further discuss the benefits of Microsoft Azure, reach out to Velosio today.