What’s New With Microsoft Azure and What It Means For Your Business
Azure’s New Tools Add Value For Businesses
Microsoft’s new Cloud Migration Assessment tool gives much-needed assistance to any organization that is contemplating accessing cloud hosting services. The software giant says 80 percent of companies seeking IT consulting for cloud services are looking for hybrid cloud configurations; the Assessment tool offers them insights into how many and which applications should or could move to the hosted cloud. Azure Site Recovery, not only helps organizations with their Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategies, but also helps organizations migrate their existing on-premise servers and workloads to Azure. Microsoft has made it more affordable to use Azure-based servers by discounting the cost of Windows Server licenses when making the transition to a hybrid cloud.
The “Cloud Migration Assessment” Tool Clarifies Components of Hybrid Configurations
Transitioning to the cloud can be a complicated process, one that many companies elect to do in incremental steps. For many, a hybrid cloud configuration offers the right mix of cloud/on-premise computing capacity. The public cloud servers facilitate all the capabilities of the cloud computing universe, while the existing on-premise machines and data centers retain their tried-and-true functionality.
Many of these companies, however, are challenged when attempting to figure out the right balance of on-premise/cloud assets. Besides the ever-present cost concern, enterprise IT staff needed to accurately estimate the size of the new tech environment, review existing hardware configurations and evaluate server capacities, as well as understand how cloud capacities could duplicate, enhance or replace their existing workloads and processing demands.
The Cloud Migration Assessment tool responds directly to those challenges:
- The new program scans and discovers the corporation’s existing server setup, analyzes its configurations and then issues a report detailing why and how it might be economically beneficial to move some of those processing demands to the cloud.
- The Assessment report acts as a decision-making tool by combining the data-driven, “improved production” values conferred through managed cloud hosting services with the financial insights needed to encourage that investment.
- And because it identifies the applications that will be better utilized within the cloud, the report provides a blueprint for moving those to the cloud and reconfiguring them to continue to operate in conjunction with the on-premise technology.
Azure Site Recovery Migration Tool
Some VMs live in other environments. Entities that want to migrate their existing VMs to Azure from AWS, Hyper-V, VMware or physical servers can use the updated Azure Site Recovery (ASR) tool. The ASR tool allows organizations to migrate their on-premise servers much more easily than in the past.
Azure Hybrid Use Benefit Also Adds Value
Expense is always a concern, so Microsoft has made it less costly for Windows Server licensees with Software Assurance or Enterprise Agreement coverage to migrate those on-premise licenses to the Azure Hybrid Cloud Azure VMs. Using the existing licenses, organizations can save as much as 40 percent off the annual cost of having to purchase and maintain new licenses for the Azure VMs.
Microsoft’s Azure offers some of the best cloud hosting options available. Azure’s Visual Studio is a global leader in app development, allowing developers to create, deploy, operate and scale proprietary apps within Azure architecture. Its disaster recoverty capacity is unmatched, as is its flexibility. The Cloud Migration Assessment and Site Recovery tools ease the migration process of any application into the hybrid cloud environment, and the Hybrid Use Benefit saves organizations money. Click here to learn more.
