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Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure ( , ), is a
cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mu ...
platform operated by
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
for application management via around the world-distributed
data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...
s. Microsoft Azure has multiple capabilities such as software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and supports many different
programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...
s, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. Azure, announced at Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October 2008, went by the internal project codename "Project Red Dog", and was formally released in February 2010 as Windows Azure, before being renamed Microsoft Azure on March 25, 2014.


Services

Microsoft Azure uses large-scale
virtualization In computing, virtualization or virtualisation (sometimes abbreviated v12n, a numeronym) is the act of creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something at the same abstraction level, including virtual computer hardware platforms, stor ...
at Microsoft data centers worldwide and it offers more than 600 services.


Compute services

* Virtual machines,
infrastructure as a service The first major provider of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) was Amazon in 2008. IaaS is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, net ...
(IaaS) allowing users to launch general-purpose
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
and
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine images for popular software packages. ** Most users run Linux on Azure, some of the many Linux distributions offered, including Microsoft's own
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
-based
Azure Sphere 'Azure Sphere is a secure, world-class application platform with built-in communication and security capabilities for Internet-connected devices- IoT. The platform consists of integrated hardware built around a secure silicon chip, the ''Azure Sph ...
. * App services, platform as a service (PaaS) environment letting developers easily publish and manage websites. *
Websites A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wiki ...
, Azure Web Sites allows developers to build sites using ASP.NET, PHP,
Node.js Node.js is an open-source server environment. Node.js is cross-platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Unix, and macOS. Node.js is a back-end JavaScript runtime environment. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript Engine and executes JavaScript cod ...
,
Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
, or Python and can be deployed using FTP, Git, Mercurial, Team Foundation Server or uploaded through the user portal. This feature was announced in preview form in June 2012 at the Meet Microsoft Azure event. Customers can create websites in PHP, ASP.NET, Node.js, or Python, or select from several open source applications from a gallery to deploy. This comprises one aspect of the platform as a service (PaaS) offerings for the Microsoft Azure Platform. It was renamed Web Apps in April 2015. * WebJobs, applications that can be deployed to an App Service environment to implement background processing that can be invoked on a schedule, on demand, or run continuously. The Blob, Table and Queue services can be used to communicate between WebApps,XYZ,iOS Software and WebJobs and to provide state. * Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) allows you to quickly deploy a production ready kubernetes cluster in Azure. Azure is responsible for managing the control plane and customers get the flexibility to choose/scale the data place (kubernetes worker nodes).


Identity

* Azure Active Directory is used to synchronize on-premises directories and enable SSO (Single Sign On)

* Azure Active Directory B2C allows the use of consumer identity and access management in the cloud. * Azure Active Directory Domain Services is used to join Azure virtual machines to a domain without domain controllers. * Azure information protection can be used to protect sensitive information. * Azure Active Directory External Identities are set of capabilities which allow organizations to collaborate with external users including customers and partners.


Mobile services

* Mobile Engagement collects real-time analytics that highlight users’ behavior. It also provides push notifications to mobile devices. * HockeyApp can be used to develop, distribute, and beta-test mobile apps.


Storage services

* Storage Services provides REST and SDK APIs for storing and accessing data on the cloud. * Table Service lets programs store structured text in partitioned collections of entities that are accessed by partition key and primary key. Azure Table Service is a NoSQL non-relational database. * Blob Service allows programs to store unstructured text and binary data as blobs that can be accessed by an HTTP(S) path. Blob service also provides security mechanisms to control access to data. * Queue Service lets programs communicate asynchronously by message using queues. * File Service allows storing and access of data on the cloud using the REST APIs or the SMB protocol.


Communication services

*Azure Communication Services offers an SDK for creating web and mobile communications applications that include
SMS Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text ...
, video calling,
VOIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
and PSTN calling, and web based chat.


Data management

* Azure Data Explorer provides
big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...
analytics and data-exploration capabilities * Azure Search provides text search and a subset of
OData In computing, Open Data Protocol (OData) is an open protocol that allows the creation and consumption of queryable and interoperable REST APIs in a simple and standard way. Microsoft initiated OData in 2007. Versions 1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 are rele ...
's structured filters using REST or SDK APIs. *
Cosmos DB Azure Cosmos DB is Microsoft's proprietary globally distributed, multi-model database service "for managing data at planet-scale" launched in May 2017. It is schema-agnostic, horizontally scalable, and generally classified as a NoSQL database. ...
is a
NoSQL A NoSQL (originally referring to "non- SQL" or "non-relational") database provides a mechanism for storage and retrieval of data that is modeled in means other than the tabular relations used in relational databases. Such databases have existed ...
database service that implements a subset of the SQL SELECT statement on JSON documents. * Azure Cache for Redis is a managed implementation of Redis. *
StorSimple StorSimple was a privately held company based in Santa Clara, California, marketing cloud storage. History StorSimple was funded by venture capital from Index Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, Ignition Partners, and Mayfield Fund for a total of $31. ...
manages storage tasks between on-premises devices and cloud storage. * Azure SQL Database works to create, scale and extend applications into the cloud using
Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ...
technology. It also integrates with
Active Directory Active Directory (AD) is a directory service developed by Microsoft for Windows domain networks. It is included in most Windows Server operating systems as a set of processes and services. Initially, Active Directory was used only for centralize ...
,
Microsoft System Center Microsoft Servers (previously called Windows Server System) is a discontinued brand that encompasses Microsoft software products for server computers. This includes the Windows Server editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well a ...
and Hadoop. * Azure Synapse Analytics is a fully managed cloud data warehouse. * Azure Data Factory, is a data integration service that allows creation of data-driven workflows in the cloud for orchestrating and automating data movement and data transformation. *
Azure Data Lake Azure Data Lake is a scalable data storage and analytics service. The service is hosted in Azure, Microsoft's public cloud. History Azure Data Lake service was released on November 16, 2016. It is based on COSMOS, which is used to store and ...
is a scalable data storage and analytic service for
big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...
analytics workloads that require developers to run massively parallel queries. * Azure HDInsight is a big data relevant service, that deploys Hortonworks Hadoop on Microsoft Azure, and supports the creation of Hadoop clusters using Linux with Ubuntu. * Azure Stream Analytics is a Serverless scalable event processing engine that enables users to develop and run real-time analytics on multiple streams of data from sources such as devices, sensors, web sites, social media, and other applications.


Messaging

The Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows applications running on Azure premises or off-premises devices to communicate with Azure. This helps to build scalable and reliable applications in a
service-oriented architecture In software engineering, service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that focuses on discrete services instead of a monolithic design. By consequence, it is also applied in the field of software design where services are provid ...
(SOA). The Azure service bus supports four different types of communication mechanisms: * Event Hubs, which provide event and telemetry ingress to the cloud at massive scale, with low latency and high reliability. For example, an event hub can be used to track data from cell phones such as coordinating with a GPS in real time. * Queues, which allow one-directional communication. A sender application would send the message to the service bus queue, and a receiver would read from the queue. Though there can be multiple readers for the queue only one would process a single message. * Topics, which provide one-directional communication using a subscriber pattern. It is similar to a queue, however, each subscriber will receive a copy of the message sent to a Topic. Optionally the subscriber can filter out messages based on specific criteria defined by the subscriber. * Relays, which provide bi-directional communication. Unlike queues and topics, a relay doesn't store in-flight messages in its own memory. Instead, it just passes them on to the destination application.


Media services

A PaaS offering that can be used for encoding,
content protection Copy protection, also known as content protection, copy prevention and copy restriction, describes measures to enforce copyright by preventing the reproduction of software, films, music, and other media. Copy protection is most commonly found on ...
, streaming, or
analytics Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It ...
.


CDN

A global content delivery network (CDN) for audio, video, applications, images, and other static files. It can be used to cache static assets of websites geographically closer to users to increase performance. The network can be managed by a REST-based HTTP API. Azure has 94 point of presence locations worldwide (also known as Edge locations) as of April 2020.


Developer

* Application Insights * Azure DevOps


Management

* Azure Automation provides a way for users to automate the manual, long-running, error-prone, and frequently repeated tasks that are commonly performed in a cloud and enterprise environment. It saves time and increases the reliability of regular administrative tasks and even schedules them to be automatically performed at regular intervals. You can automate processes using runbooks or automate configuration management using Desired State Configuration. * Microsoft SMA


Azure AI

* Microsoft Azure Machine Learning (Azure ML) provides tools and ML frameworks for developers to create their own machine learning and
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...
(AI) services. * Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services are a set of prebuilt APIs, SDKs and customizable services for developers, including perceptual and cognitive intelligence covering speech recognition, speaker recognition, neural speech synthesis, face recognition, computer vision, OCR/form understanding, natural language processing, machine translation, and business decision services. Most AI features appeared in Microsoft’s own products and services (Bing, Office, Teams, Xbox, and Windows) are powered by Azure Cognitive Services.


Azure Blockchain Workbench

Through Azure Blockchain Workbench, Microsoft is providing the required infrastructure to set up a consortium network in multiple topologies using a variety of consensus mechanisms. Microsoft provides integration from these blockchain platforms to other Microsoft services to streamline the development of distributed applications. Microsoft supports many general-purpose blockchains including Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric and purpose-built blockchains like Corda.


Functions

Azure functions are used in serverless computing architectures where subscribers can execute code as an event driven Function-as-a-Service (
FaaS Function as a service (FaaS) is a category of cloud computing services that provides a platform allowing customers to develop, run, and manage application functionalities without the complexity of building and maintaining the infrastructure typical ...
) without managing the underlying server resources. Customers using Azure functions are billed based on per-second resource consumption and executions.


Internet of Things (

IoT The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...
)

*Azure IoT Hub lets you connect, monitor, and manage billions of IoT assets. On February 4, 2016, Microsoft announced the General Availability of the Azure IoT Hub service. *Azure IoT Edge is a fully managed service built on IoT Hub that allows for cloud intelligence deployed locally on IoT edge devices. *Azure IoT Central is a fully managed
SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is co ...
app that makes it easy to connect, monitor, and manage IoT assets at scale. On December 5, 2017, Microsoft announced the Public Preview of Azure IoT Central; its Azure IoT
SaaS Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is co ...
service. * On October 4, 2017, Microsoft began shipping GA versions of the official Microsoft Azure IoT Developer Kit (DevKit) board; manufactured by MXChip. * On April 16, 2018, Microsoft announced the launch of the
Azure Sphere 'Azure Sphere is a secure, world-class application platform with built-in communication and security capabilities for Internet-connected devices- IoT. The platform consists of integrated hardware built around a secure silicon chip, the ''Azure Sph ...
, an end-to-end IoT product that focuses on microcontroller-based devices and uses Linux. * On June 27, 2018, Microsoft launched Azure IoT Edge, used to run Azure services and artificial intelligence on IoT devices. *On November 20, 2018, Microsoft launched the Open Enclave SDK for cross-platform systems such as
ARM TrustZone ARM (stylised in lowercase as arm, formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures for computer processors, configured ...
and Intel SGX.


Azure Orbital

Launched in September 2020, Azure Orbital is a ground station service to help customers move satellite data to the cloud and to provide global cloud connectivity. Private industries and government agencies that use data collected by satellites can directly connect satellites to the cloud computing networks to process and analyse the data. Mobile cloud computing ground stations for customers that operate where there is no existing ground infrastructure (such as energy, agricultural and military) will provide point-to-point cloud connectivity to remote locations using third party
satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioiso ...
systems – SpaceX’s Starlink constellations in low Earth orbit (LEO) and SES’
O3b O3b is a satellite constellation in Medium Earth orbit (MEO) owned and operated by SES, and designed to provide low-latency broadband connectivity to remote locations for mobile network operators and internet service providers, maritime, aviat ...
medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellation. SES will be deploying satellite control and uplink ground stations for its next-generation O3b mPOWER MEO satellites alongside Microsoft's data centers to provide single-hop connectivity to the cloud from remote sites. The O3b mPOWER satellites are scheduled to launch 2022-2024 and the initial service start in Q3 2023. Microsoft suggests that satellite routing to the cloud can offer a speed advantage. For example, a connection from the home to a cloud data center for online media, entertainment or gaming, currently may use complex fibre routes that are longer than one hop up to a satellite and down again. Microsoft’s experiments using Xbox cloud have found there are parts of the world (including parts of the USA) where it is faster via satellite than over terrestrial networks.


Regional expansion

In 2018, Azure was available in 54 regions, with 12 new regions being developed. Microsoft became the first large cloud provider that built facilities in Africa, with two regions in
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring coun ...
. An Azure geography contains multiple Azure Regions, such as for example "North Europe" (Dublin, Ireland), "West Europe" (Amsterdam, Netherlands). Where a location represents the city or area of the Azure Region. Each Azure Region is paired with another region within the same geography; this makes them a regional pair. In this example, Amsterdam and Dublin are the locations which form the regional pair.


Middle East cloud data centers

On June 19th 2019, Microsoft announced the launch of two new cloud regions in the
United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (Middle East, The Middle East). It is ...
– Microsoft’s first in the
Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabian Peninsula, Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Anatolia, Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Pro ...
. Microsoft's management stated that these new datacenters will empower customers and partners to embrace the benefits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and achieve more using cloud technologies.


Research partnerships

Microsoft has partners that sell its products. In August 2018,
Toyota Tsusho is a sōgō shōsha (trading company), a member of the Toyota Group. Toyota Tsusho has a worldwide presence through its many subsidiaries and operating divisions, including over 150 offices, and 900 subsidiaries and affiliates around the world. ...
began a partnership with Microsoft to create
fish farming upright=1.3, Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture) at Loch Ainort, Isle of Skye">mariculture.html" ;"title="Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture">Salmon farming in the sea (mariculture) at Loch Ainort, Isle of Skye, Scotland Fish farming o ...
tools using the Microsoft Azure application suite for
IoT The Internet of things (IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other comm ...
technologies related to water management. Developed in part by researchers from
Kindai University is a private non-sectarian and coeducational university based in Higashiosaka, Osaka, Japan with campuses in five other locations: Nara, Nara; Ōsakasayama, Osaka; Uchita, Wakayama; Higashihiroshima, Hiroshima; and Iizuka, Fukuoka. T ...
, the water pump mechanisms use
artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech ...
to count the number of fish on a
conveyor belt A conveyor belt is the carrying medium of a belt conveyor system (often shortened to belt conveyor). A belt conveyor system is one of many types of conveyor systems. A belt conveyor system consists of two or more pulleys (sometimes referred t ...
, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. The specific
computer programs A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer prog ...
used in the process fall under the Azure Machine Learning and the Azure IoT Hub platforms.


Design

Microsoft Azure uses a specialized operating system, also called Microsoft Azure, to run its "fabric layer": a cluster hosted at Microsoft's data centers that manage computing and storage resources of the computers and provisions the resources (or a subset of them) to applications running on top of Microsoft Azure. Microsoft Azure has been described as a "cloud layer" on top of a number of Windows Server systems, which use Windows Server 2008 and a customized version of Hyper-V, known as the Microsoft Azure Hypervisor to provide virtualization of services. Scaling and reliability are controlled by the Microsoft Azure Fabric Controller, which ensures the services and environment do not fail if one or more of the servers fails within the Microsoft
data center A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommun ...
, and which also provides the management of the user's Web application such as memory allocation and load balancing. Azure provides an API built on REST,
HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide We ...
, and
XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. T ...
that allows a developer to interact with the services provided by Microsoft Azure. Microsoft also provides a client-side managed class library that encapsulates the functions of interacting with the services. It also integrates with
Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such ...
, Git, and
Eclipse An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three c ...
. In addition to interacting with services via API, users can manage Azure services using the Web-based Azure Portal, which reached General Availability in December 2015. The portal allows users to browse active resources, modify settings, launch new resources, and view basic monitoring data from active virtual machines and services.


Deployment models

Microsoft Azure offers two deployment models for cloud resources: the "classic" deployment model and the Azure Resource Manager. In the classic model, each Azure resource (virtual machine, SQL database, etc.) was managed individually. The Azure Resource Manager, introduced in 2014, enables users to create groups of related services so that closely coupled resources can be deployed, managed, and monitored together. The classic model is slated to be phased out in future.


History and timeline

In 2005, Microsoft took over Groove Networks, and Bill Gates made Groove's founder
Ray Ozzie Raymond "Ray" Ozzie (born November 20, 1955) is an American software industry entrepreneur who held the positions of Chief Technical Officer and Chief Software Architect at Microsoft between 2005 and 2010. Before Microsoft, he was best known for ...
one of his 5 direct reports as one of 3 chief technology officers. Ozzie met with Amitabh Srivastava, which let Srivastava change course. They convinced Dave Cutler to postpone his retirement and their teams developed a cloud operating system. * October 2008 ( PDC LA) – Announced the Windows Azure Platform. * March 2009 – Announced SQL Azure Relational Database. * November 2009 – Updated Windows Azure CTP, Enabled full trust, PHP, Java, CDN CTP and more. * February 1, 2010 – Windows Azure Platform commercially available. * * June 2010 – Windows Azure Update, .NET Framework 4, OS Versioning, CDN, SQL Azure Update. * October 2010 (PDC) – Platform enhancements, Windows Azure Connect, improved Dev / IT Pro Experience. * December 2011 – Traffic manager, SQL Azure reporting, HPC scheduler. * June 2012 – Websites, Virtual machines for Windows and Linux, Python SDK, new portal, locally redundant storage. * April 2014 – Windows Azure renamed Microsoft Azure, ARM Portal introduced at Build 2014. * July 2014 – Azure Machine Learning public preview. * November 2014 – Outage affecting major websites including MSN.com. * September 2015 – Azure Cloud Switch introduced as a cross-platform Linux distribution. Currently known as
SONiC Sonic or Sonics may refer to: Companies *Sonic Drive-In, an American drive-in fast-food restaurant chain * Sonic (ISP), an Internet provider and CLEC, serving more than 100 California communities * Sonic Foundry, a computer software company wh ...
* December, 2015 – Azure ARM Portal (codename "Ibiza") released. * March, 2016 – Azure Service Fabric is Generally Available (GA) * September 2017 – Microsoft Azure gets a new logo and a Manifesto * July 16, 2018 – Azure Service Fabric Mesh public preview * September 24, 2018 – Microsoft Azure IoT Central is Generally Available (GA) * October 10, 2018 – Microsoft joins the Linux-oriented group Open Invention Network. * April 17, 2019 – Azure Front Door Service is now available. * March 2020 – Microsoft said that there was a 775% increase in Microsoft Teams usage in Italy due to the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...
. The company estimates there are now 44 million daily active users of Teams worldwide.


Privacy

Microsoft has stated that, per the
USA Patriot Act The USA PATRIOT Act (commonly known as the Patriot Act) was a landmark Act of the United States Congress, signed into law by President George W. Bush. The formal name of the statute is the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appro ...
, the US government could have access to the data even if the hosted company is not American and the data resides outside the USA. To manage privacy and security-related concerns, Microsoft has created a Microsoft Azure Trust Center, and Microsoft Azure has several of its services compliant with several compliance programs including ISO 27001:2005 and HIPAA. A full and current listing can be found on the Microsoft Azure Trust Center Compliance page. Of special note, Microsoft Azure has been granted JAB Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) from the U.S. government in accordance with guidelines spelled out under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a U.S. government program that provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud services used by the federal government.


Significant outages

The following is a list of Microsoft Azure outages and service disruptions.


Certifications

A large variety of Azure certifications can be attained, each requiring one or multiple successfully completed examinations. Certification levels range from beginner, intermediate to expert. Examples of common certifications include: * Azure Fundamentals * Azure Developer Associate * Azure Administrator Associate * Azure Data Engineers Associate * Azure Security Engineer Associate * Azure Solutions Architect Expert * Azure DevOps Engineer Expert


Key people

* Dave Cutler, Lead Developer, Microsoft Azure *
Mark Russinovich Mark Eugene Russinovich (born December 22, 1966) is a Spanish-born American software engineer and author who serves as CTO of Microsoft Azure. He was a cofounder of software producers Winternals before it was acquired by Microsoft in 2006. Ea ...
, CTO, Microsoft Azure * Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of the Cloud and AI group in Microsoft * Jason Zander, Executive Vice President, Microsoft Azure * Julia White, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Azure


See also

* Cloud-computing comparison *
Comparison of file hosting services This is a comparison of file hosting services which are currently active. File hosting services are a particular kind of online file storage; however, various products that are designed for online file storage may not have features or characteri ...
* Microsoft Azure Dev Tools for Teaching *
CBL-Mariner CBL-Mariner (in which CBL stands for Common Base Linux) is a free and open-source Linux distribution that Microsoft has developed. It is the base container OS for Microsoft Azure services and the graphical component of WSL 2. Overview CBL-Marine ...


References


Citations


Sources


Azure Documentation

Microsoft Azure


Further reading

* * * * *


External links

* {{Authority control Cloud computing providers Cloud computing Cloud infrastructure Cloud platforms Cloud storage Computer-related introductions in 2010 Microsoft cloud services