Which cloud should you choose?

21 Dec, 2022

The cloud gives CIOs the agility to innovate quickly at the lowest cost. Which cloud will give your organisation the strategic and operational advantage you are looking for? We give you 8 considerations for choosing the cloud that offers your business the most value.

1. Integration

Scalability and flexibility are the biggest advantages of the cloud. But to become agile, a flexible, easy-to-integrate Platform as a Service (PaaS) is crucial along with Infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Azure offers better hybrid cloud systems due to seamless integration with not only the Microsoft stack but also to third party platforms and cloud providers. This is essential, assuming you look to migrate business-critical applications to it. 

2. Continuity

When you already chose a cloud provider, you must rely on their expertise towards application refactoring or rearchitecting. This is to ensure utilising features of applications without compromising on non-functional requirements. When I worked for Microsoft, an American retailer wanted their ecommerce application to run in the cloud without degrading the performance and ensuring the best possible uptime during peak festive season. Microsoft decided to rearchitect the application instead of just rehosting. The retailer now relies on Azure.

3. Easier migration to Azure

Do you know businesses not working with Outlook or other products from the Microsoft stack like Windows, Teams or Excel? Moving to a non-Microsoft cloud, will involve refactoring. Migrating to Azure and integrating apps will be much easier and the total cost of ownership will be lower. Choosing Azure is also more convenient from a financial administrative point of view: you swap your on-premises license into a subscription and get Azure Hybrid Benefit.

4. Pricing is comparing apples and oranges

Costs always are an important factor for CIOs, but they are difficult to calculate in the cloud.  Your actual costs will always be different from estimates. After all, your business is constantly evolving. Some cloud providers might seem the cheaper option at first glance; however, this is only sometimes accurate since the initial cost for the entire stack is often not included in calculations. It is wildly inaccurate to compare cloud pricing because there are many factors to consider. While some cloud providers mainly excel in IaaS, Azure, in addition to delivering excellent IaaS options, also stands out in PaaS and globally acclaimed Software as a Service (SaaS).

5. More options to innovate

The Azure IoT Hub makes it simple and secure to connect almost any device without writing code, a clear differentiator. This advantage, along with the comprehensive Microsoft stack including M365, Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, makes Azure the appealing choice when it comes down to innovation possibilities. Azure, for example, has predefined lists of APIs and sensors to leverage IoT solutions.

6. Maximum security

Security is a must in your multi-cloud and on-premises environment. It is reassuring and good to know that Microsoft is a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant of 2022. The cloud-native Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) powered by AI and automation will protect your apps and data in your multi-cloud environment and on-premises.

7. Better insights

As a CIO, you want insights into how things are going. Power BI, which easily uses data stored in Microsoft Azure, is a great option for analysing and presenting data to anyone. It is easy to work with, and with real-time data, you can get actionable insights faster and online from any device.

8. Azure offers co-ownership

Having everything managed takes work off your hands, but you would like to keep a say in how processes run. Microsoft is encouraging customers to develop their Cloud Center of Excellence to manage things themselves instead of depending on a cloud provider.

Getting the most out of Azure

If you want superior flexibility and innovation power, Azure is the best choice. And why should global CIO’s pick HSO international? Because we only focus on global programs, from a Business Applications perspective as well as for Infrastructure, Integrations, and cloud technology. Thanks to extensive experience with global Business Applications programs, we have the technical and business knowledge on board. As a result, we achieve maximum results strategically, technically, and operationally.

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