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Azure

What is Azure?

Azure is a trusted cloud platform for building, deploying, and managing innovative solutions.
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What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure, launched in 2010, marked a pivotal shift from on-premises datacenters to cloud computing. By offering businesses a global network of datacenters maintained and managed by Microsoft, Azure reduced the time and expense associated with maintaining on-premises infrastructure.

Since its original launch, Azure continues to offer extensive capabilities that go beyond simplifying infrastructure management. With comprehensive AI, data, and application services that work together, Azure delivers a unified approach to cloud computing that’s unique in the industry. Its open, flexible cloud platform is designed to support each company’s business strategy and stage of AI transformation.

Key takeaways

  • Azure, the Microsoft Cloud computing platform, offers more than 200 products and services across a global network of datacenters.
  • With more than 300 highly secure datacenters in over 60 regions, Azure delivers the most extensive cloud footprint, giving businesses more regions to choose from than any other cloud provider.
  • 95% of Fortune 500 companies trust Azure to help them run their businesses and meet their enterprise-scale demands.
  • Businesses of all sizes rely on Azure to help them bring their ideas to life, seamlessly unify their technology, and innovate on trust. 
  • Azure provides built-in security solutions designed to protect company’s workloads from code to cloud.
  • Azure AI Foundry provides an end-to-end AI platform across models, tools, safety features, and monitoring capabilities—to help organizations efficiently and cost-effectively design and scale their AI applications.
  • The Azure AI model catalog includes more than 1,800 models, offering organizations unmatched flexibility to choose and build AI solutions tailored to their needs.
  • Looking ahead, Azure will continue to drive innovation in cloud infrastructure and AI-powered services, providing the choice and flexibility businesses need to meet evolving requirements. 

Why do organizations choose Azure?

As a leading cloud platform, Azure empowers developers and organizations of all sizes to drive business growth through accelerated and sustained innovation.

Cloud platform—wherever you are

Azure delivers the most far-reaching cloud footprint in the industry, connected through one of the world’s largest networks. With over 300 highly secure datacenters in more than 60 regions worldwide, Azure gives organizations more regions to choose from than any other cloud provider.

The Azure global network empowers businesses to deploy applications closer to customers and employees, providing faster, more responsive experiences. With low latency, advanced networking, and optimized routing, Azure delivers content quickly and reliably to where it’s needed.

Enterprise expertise

Azure is built to meet enterprise-scale demands, delivering the high availability and reliability needed for mission-critical workloads. This focus on enterprise readiness has made Azure the trusted choice for 95% of Fortune 500 companies, supporting key applications like SAP, Databricks, VMware, SAP, and high-performance computing.

Extensive partner network

Microsoft offers an extensive network of Azure partners to support customers at every stage of their cloud adoption. Customers choose from a wide range of partners with the expertise, services, and industry knowledge needed to identify and implement the right Azure solutions tailored to their specific requirements.

Industry-leading AI developer services

Azure fosters open-source innovation by offering organizations the flexibility to choose tools and technologies that best meet their needs:
  • More than 60% of Azure customer cores run on Linux—and customers have the freedom to use any distribution. 
  • Azure also supports a vast array of popular technologies, including Kubernetes, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Redis, Apache, Cassandra, and MongoDB. The list is constantly growing. 
  • Some of the most popular AI developer tools, frameworks and experiences in the world are built around open communities. Here are a few featured Azure open-source collaborations of note: Azure OpenAI Service, GitHub, Canonical, Red Hat, Databricks, Hashicorp, Redis, and SUSE, as well as contributions to Python, Node.js, the Linux kernel, and Kubernetes. Learn more about open source on Azure. 
To support AI-powered innovation, the Azure AI model catalog features more than 1,800 models. These include open and frontier models, the latest from OpenAI, large language models, and the Microsoft Phi family of small language models. 

Built-in security

Azure customers gain peace of mind knowing their workloads are protected by built-in security solutions designed to safeguard their data from code to cloud. A dedicated team of more than 10,000 security experts continuously monitors systems, detects vulnerabilities, and tracks breach patterns and bad actors. The team synthesizes 78 trillion security signals daily with AI and advanced analytics to understand and protect against cyberthreats. Microsoft reinforces this commitment with a planned $20 billion investment in security over the next five years.

What does Azure do?

Taking businesses to the next level

Designed to help businesses bring new solutions to life, the Azure cloud platform provides industry-leading AI and cloud services. Developers use the tools and frameworks of their choice to build, run, and manage applications across cloud, hybrid, and edge environments

Optimizing operations

Azure provides more than 200 cloud-based products and cloud services , empowering businesses to optimize their operations across data storage, networking, virtual computing, databases, analytics, and AI. By reducing costs, automating workflows, and improving decision-making, Azure helps companies turn ideas into action.

Managing distributed environments

Azure hybrid solutions easily extend Azure services to on-premises, multicloud, and edge environments. Organizations smoothly manage, govern, and secure their servers, Kubernetes clusters, and applications from a unified platform. Hybrid solutions are ideal for modernizing legacy applications, improving disaster recovery, and supporting remote or hybrid work models.

Providing cost-effective scalability

Azure is flexible and scalable, allowing businesses to dynamically adjust their cloud resources based on demand, paying only for what they use. Whether responding to seasonal spikes in customer engagement or scaling operations for growth, Azure provides a cost-efficient foundation to adapt quickly and efficiently.

Improving decision-making

Azure unifies disparate data— wherever it resides. This empowers businesses to generate actionable insights, enhance applications with AI, and make intelligent decisions faster. With tools for managing analytics, machine learning, and databases, organizations stay agile while safeguarding their data with built-in governance.

Accelerating developer productivity

Azure streamlines app development with tools like GitHub, Visual Studio, and Azure DevOps, offering a highly secure platform for building, collaborating, and deploying code faster. Developers use built-in provisioning, automated security patching, and continuous integration to efficiently build next-generation applications.

See innovation in action

Browse Azure customer stories to how companies are using Azure to take their businesses to the next level.

Supporting AI-powered innovation

Microsoft is recognized as a leader in enterprise-ready AI services, delivering highly secure, adaptive, and proven solutions. Azure AI offers a comprehensive portfolio of cloud-based AI services and tools, empowering developers to build AI apps—without requiring direct AI or data science expertise. Whether developers use prebuilt models or build, train, and manage custom models with their own data, Azure provides the tools and flexibility to bring AI initiatives from idea to code to production.

Supercomputing power for AI

Azure is designed for the world’s most sophisticated AI workloads, hosting the world’s most advanced supercomputer and serving as the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI. The Azure AI infrastructure delivers the most complete compute platform for AI workloads, with a diversity of silicon across AMD, NVIDIA, and the Microsoft Maia AI accelerators.

End-to-end AI platform

Azure AI Foundry provides an end-to-end AI platform across models, tools, safety features, and monitoring capabilities—to help organizations efficiently and cost-effectively design and scale their AI applications. By integrating with popular developer tools like GitHub, Visual Studio, and Microsoft Copilot Studio, Azure AI Foundry offers developers seamless access to its comprehensive portfolio of services. This includes state-of-the-art AI models, tools for building agents on Azure, and a unified toolchain for accessing AI services through one interface.

Empowering responsible AI

To support the responsible use of AI, Azure provides built-in tools and technologies to build AI apps responsibly and efficiently, from development to deployment, while keeping content safe. Guided by the Microsoft Responsible AI Standard, Azure is committed to the advancement of AI driven by ethical principles that put people first.

Providing cloud service models

A cloud service model outlines how cloud services are delivered and consumed. Azure cloud service models support businesses at any stage of digital transformation:
Use cases

What is Azure used for?

Azure equips organizations with cloud innovations built on a world-class foundation of trust, flexibility, and scale.
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Bringing ideas to life

Developers build solutions on a trusted cloud platform, advancing their organizations with industry-leading AI and cloud services.
Explore Azure AI
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Seamlessly unifying technology

Organizations efficiently manage all their infrastructure, data, analytics, and AI solutions across a single, integrated platform.
Learn how
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Innovating on trust

Decision-makers rely on a trusted cloud platform from a partner who’s dedicated to security, data privacy, and empowering responsible AI.
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Shaping the future of innovation

Cloud computing technology continues to evolve, driving growth across industries. As a leader in this dynamic field, Azure delivers continuous innovations in cloud infrastructure, data, and analytics, AI, and application platform, providing customers with the choice and flexibility to meet their unique business requirements. By continuously enhancing its offerings as customer requirements evolve, Azure empowers businesses with the solutions needed for sustained growth and long-term success.

Explore these resources to learn more:
  • Discover the roots of innovation: See how values and traditions shape the use of cloud technology to improve the world. Watch the cloud cultures video series.
  • Get strategic insights: Access executive guidance on AI innovation, intelligent data, cloud infrastructure, and optimization. Explore Azure innovation insights.
RESOURCES

Learn more about Azure, get innovation insights, and build your skills.

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Azure innovation insights

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Microsoft Learn

Azure training and certifications

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Azure Fundamentals course

Learn about cloud concepts, core Azure services, and Azure management and governance tools and features.
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Frequently asked questions

  • Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform. Azure offers a range of cloud services, including computing, analytics, storage, networking, and AI. Customers choose from these services to develop and scale new applications, or run their existing applications, in the cloud. Azure helps businesses manage and deploy applications globally with ease and flexibility.
  • No, Azure is not a datacenter. Azure is a cloud computing platform. Azure offers a wide range of cloud services, including compute, storage, networking, analytics, and AI. These services are hosted in the global network of Microsoft datacenters, but Azure itself is the platform that manages and delivers these services. 
  • Azure helps companies innovate on a trusted cloud platform with industry leading cloud services and AI. Azure also helps organizations seamlessly unify and efficiently manage all their data and analytics, AI solutions, and infrastructure. Azure is highly secure by default with multi-layered security across physical datacenters, infrastructure, and operations. Azure is designed with specialized hardware and incorporates security controls directly into its hardware and firmware components. Built -in resiliency features support high availability, disaster recovery and backup. Azure also supports more than 100 compliance standards.
  • The Microsoft Cloud is an umbrella term for all the Microsoft Cloud services, including Azure, Microsoft 365, and Dynamics 365. Azure specifically refers to the Microsoft Cloud computing platform, offering services like computing, storage, and networking, analytics, and AI. Essentially, the entire Microsoft Cloud runs on Azure.
  • Get started with Azure Fundamentals, an online training series exploring basic cloud concepts. To explore more learning options, browse Azure training on Microsoft Learn for Azure. Choose from self-paced online modules and learning paths, instructor-led training, and Microsoft virtual learning days. Once you’ve completed your training, demonstrate your knowledge by taking a Microsoft certification exam.