Why Microsoft Azure Cloud Skills Are All the Rage

Azure Is a Great Environment for Hybrid Clouds

The hybrid cloud model, where companies use a combination of public and private clouds, is becoming the foundation of choice for many companies that want to balance their operations to meet different business objectives. Today, 58 percent of companies are planning a hybrid cloud strategy, and 85 percent of enterprises are employing multiple clouds in their business, running applications in 3.1 clouds on average, and experimenting with 1.7 more, for a total of almost five clouds per enterprise. Microsoft Azure has strong support for hybrid cloud services, with platforms like Azure StorSimple, Hybrid SQL Server, and Azure Stack, a new hybrid cloud platform product that allows you to bring nearly full public Azure functionality to your own on-premises data centers using the same pay-as-you-go pricing model it offers for its public cloud. If you’re looking to build a hybrid cloud model, Azure is a great start.

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Microsoft Has Developed a Cloud-first Strategy

It’s good to know that technology as important as cloud computing has the backing of the CEO and senior management of Microsoft. Azure is a key focus and priority with the company and Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella has become known as the “cloud-first” leader, showcasing time and again how important the company views Azure and cloud development as a core of its business. Microsoft has developed a huge global cloud network of its own and offers incentives for customers to adopt a cloud-first strategy of their own. Microsoft has moved into growing markets before, and it is now leveraging its vast experience and resources to provide a cloud platform that offers real value to customers long term.

Azure Helps Optimize IT Operations

Of course, one of the key tenets of cloud computing is reducing the cost and complexity of IT and other technology operations. And Azure seems to have impressed users so far. InformationWeek shared some successes recently. An Azure architect at a tech services company was quoted saying he’s “saving a lot of resources and money, and we gain fast flexibility to grant new capabilities, computing power, and PoC scenarios. All of this without compromising production workloads and overall computing power, and any investment.” Another Azure user noted how his team had been able to reduce costs using Web Apps and Functions to change how they developed solutions and reduced time to market. And not surprisingly, Azure has become known as a user-friendly cloud offering. Developing and administering Azure out of the box is particularly easy for those with Windows admin experience. It’s simple to integrate on-premises Windows servers with cloud instances to create a hybrid environment. Tools such as SQL database and Active Directory work well with Azure, according to one third-party review.

Acquiring the Right Skillset Is Easy

According to a LinkedIn study, cloud and distributed computing are the most difficult skills for companies to fill in their day-to-day operations. Fortunately, skills training is readily available online for teams that want to master cloud frameworks like Azure. Among the popular new offerings:

Azure Administrator

New training is aligned with the 2018 Exam AZ-100: MS Azure Infrastructure and Deployment and Exam AZ-101: MS Azure Integration and Security. The training covers everything you’ll need to know as an Azure administrator, including managing subscriptions and resources, implementing and managing storage, deploying virtual machines and networks, managing and securing identities, migrating servers to Azure and managing app services.

Azure Developer

New training is aligned with the latest 2018 edition of Azure Developer Certified Associate exams AZ-203. The blended foundational and advanced course curriculum will show you are verified by Microsoft to select, develop and implement Azure cloud technology solutions, including cloud storage, Platform as a Service (PaaS), cloud security, cloud integration, and develop Azure Cognitive Services, Bot, and IoT solutions.

Azure Solution Architect

New training is aligned with exams AZ-300: Azure Architect Technologies and AZ-301: Azure Architect Design. You will learn to configure infrastructure, implement workloads and security, create and deploy apps, secure data, determine workload requirements, architect data platform, and cloud solutions, create continuity and infrastructure strategies, and execute deployment, migration and API integration.

Azure is certainly hot cloud technology. Take the first step to improving business and IT operations with Azure skills training and become a part of the Azure revolution.