While Amazon Web Services rules the market today for cloud computing services, many organizations use AWS alongside their Office 365 implementations for email and collaboration services for their company. This begs the question: what about going totally Microsoft by using their cloud infrastructure, Azure?
Microsoft was recently quoted on the subject, “Azure is Microsoft’s cloud platform and is really an extension of Office 365. The added benefit of Azure is that it allows you to run customized business applications from a virtual machine standpoint and to develop custom web applications that can easily integrate with SharePoint online. Azure also extends Office 365 with custom mobile application support. For those organizations running Active Directory with Office 365, Azure allows you to take that hybrid active directory infrastructure and extend it, providing single sign-on to thousands of third-party commercial SaaS applications outside of the Microsoft ecosystem.”
So, if you create a business application on Azure that leverages Microsoft collaboration services like SharePoint that are native to Office 365, the access to those services is much more neatly tied in. Compare that to trying to integrate to SharePoint from Amazon where a much more involved bridge (figurative) must be constructed and maintained!
Further, Active Directory is an industry standard credential management platform running as part of Office 365. Imagine building an application on Azure that fetches data from lots of third party systems that require sign-ins of their own. That can all be automated, eliminating the administration of user management in multiple remote systems.
While these advantages are compelling, the lead Amazon has in capability for the price on its cloud make it a tough decision to go “all Microsoft.” Superior Technology’s team has extensive experience in the cloud and developing efficient business solutions. Please contact us with questions on how to best achieve your technology goals at 845-735-3555 or online at www.superiortechnology.com.
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