Are you on your way to building a complex cloud solution with a high-load back-end architecture? Do you want to migrate your existing solution to the cloud, or are you looking to store, manage, and analyze any amount of data in the cloud? If so, you may get overwhelmed by the number of cloud service providers available and the avalanche of tools they offer. We get it. Since our choice often falls on Azure, we thought we’d share our own experience of leveraging this powerful cloud platform.
By working with Azure, we can enjoy all the advantages of being a Microsoft partner network member. Members get insider information, continuous support, and exclusive access to resources and tools. That’s why we applied to become an official Microsoft Azure Partner, which allows us to serve our customers’ cloud needs even better. Moreover, we made sure our engineers passed the Azure exams to gain “gold competencies” in app development and app integration.
If you want to jumpstart your cloud journey or redefine the way you do business, Azure may be your best bet.
When our clients turn to us for help in solving problems through cloud services, some of their most pressing needs are as follows:
- Accelerate development with the use of ready-made cloud services
- Enhance their systems’ effectiveness by integrating cloud services
- Make their solution more scalable
- Optimize the back-end performance of their existing solution
- Redesign a legacy system to make it more robust
- Transfer data to a cloud-based back end
- Make app-to-device communication more reliable
- Reduce database connections
- Distribute application traffic to optimize performance
All those tasks can be accomplished effectively with the Azure technology stack and services. Let’s explore how Azure can become a game-changer in your connected solution optimization strategy.
What Are Azure Cloud Services Good At?
With over 90,000 services, we consider Azure one of the most attractive service providers. It can tackle any cloud challenge, but, from our experience, Azure is particularly good at solving the following:
IoT Development
We address our customers’ IoT challenges with the help of Azure IoT Hub. This is a flexible and scalable service hosted in the cloud. It acts as a central message hub for communication between an IoT application and its attached devices. With the Azure IoT Hub, you can easily connect, monitor, provision, configure, and communicate with IoT devices from within Azure.
One of our clients built a connected dog collar to help owners keep their dogs within a safe distance. When developing the solution’s back end, we utilized Azure’s IoT hub. It helped make the communication between the collar and mobile app stable and reliable and made data transfer secure and seamless. In addition, it improved customer experience and boosted client satisfaction.
Web and Mobile Apps, Cloud Native Development, and Hosting
If your goals are easier cloud-native web and mobile app development and better performance, use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and Azure API Management. With Azure, your solutions will be autonomous, scalable, and adaptive. For example, we might use AKS to accelerate application development when the client wants to cut their time to market.
So, how does Kubernetes improve and speed up application development? Kubernetes enables a “microservices” approach to creating solutions. You can now break up your development team into smaller teams. Each team will focus on a single, smaller microservice, making them more agile. APIs between these microservices minimize the cross-team communication required to build and deploy.
Disaster Recovery
Using Azure, you’ll have strong disaster recovery (DR) capabilities. Their solutions are flexible and offer advanced site recovery and built-in integration. You can back up your data in almost any programming language and on any OS when needed. Moreover, you’re able to set up your backup schedule yourself, manually trigger the DR process, and configure alerts.
For example, we apply the Azure SignalR DR service so that our customers’ systems achieve 99.9% availability. Recently, we used Azure SignalR to solve a back-end failure affecting a client’s AR glasses. The system crashed because of an increasing number of data requests. Azure SignalR helped reduce the load on the back end. The service allowed us to forward the signal from the AR glasses directly to the right addressee with no data syncing or cache.
Security Capabilities
Azure can safeguard your digital transformation and become a trusted advisor with new security capabilities. It’s the most trusted cloud platform in the US as it complies with most international standards for cloud privacy. As a result, the provider guarantees the best service in terms of safety for all operations with your data.
What’s more, the Security Development Lifecycle, an industry-standard security process designed by Microsoft itself, helps you get licenses, boost your operations’ reliability, security, and stability, and reduce risks.
Some time ago, we helped our client scale their business and developed an online multimedia platform for remote coaching. The resulting solution, which features virtual coaches for debriefing sessions, consists of two parts: the Admin Portal for user management and the User Portal for debriefing sessions with virtual coaches. To make the app 100% secure, we located its infrastructure in the Microsoft Azure cloud. This allowed us to generate application keys and authentication credentials dynamically at the deployment stage, encrypting sensitive data and storing it in the Azure Key Vault.
App Migration and Modernization
App modernization can accelerate your digital transformation journey and migration to the cloud. It can also reduce the costs associated with legacy technologies. For example, we modernize .NET, Java and Linux web apps through Azure App Services and Azure SQL Database to scale them and improve cost efficiency.
Our customer wanted to redesign their web image/media labeling solution’s architecture and migrate it to the cloud. Their data was stored on the customer’s local servers, which affected client–server communication and caused regular delays. To solve this issue, we migrated their system and its media storage to the Azure Cloud. This enhanced the system’s consistency, reduced the server response time, and made the whole system more effective.
DevOps
Modern applications require the regular release of new features. Azure offers DevOps best practices and tools to save you time, ensure security, and enable continuous innovation. They also provide DevOps Assessment Frameworks to develop, test, and release new features. As a result, you get a set of prioritized recommendations with robust and efficient DevOps roadmaps.
Why Should I Choose to Work With an Azure Partner?
Each Microsoft partner automatically gains notable privileges like having exclusive access to Microsoft tools, utilities, and toolkits to provide Microsoft-based IT services and products to other businesses. They also receive continuous online technical support and actionable updates from Microsoft.
This is what motivated us to join the Azure partner network, and we can now offer all of those advantages to our customers. If Azure is the best solution for solving your challenges, we’ll leverage it to improve operational efficiency, optimize cloud processes, and scale your business.
Direct Access To Azure Resources and Services
As an Azure cloud partner, we get special access to Microsoft resources and product licenses. This means we can help you build awesome products and experiences for your customers. Working with us, you won't need to spend a lot on in-house hardware and software. You'll only pay for what you use.
Cost Efficiency
The cloud grants the flexibility to adjust the infrastructure to ever-changing needs. While this can provide great value for businesses, it can become very costly.
One of the greatest benefits of partnering with Azure is its cost-efficiency—you gain access to an unlimited number of resources, all at a reasonable price. Azure is practical because you won’t have to
- Invest in on-premise or remote data centers as data is stored in the cloud
- Buy additional software and hardware for development or increased workloads
- Spend budget on service calls and warranty renewals
- Pay for any resources other than those you need
As a partner, we help our customers plan and manage their long-term cloud implementations, which reduces their expenses.
Technical Support and Guidance
When there’s an urgent support issue, the Azure support team knows where to look. We’re in contact with them 24/7. Our team will help you with support, billing, subscription management, and account management. If your issue requires further attention, we’ll escalate it to Microsoft Premier Support.
Together, we’ll gain fresh perspectives on your Azure environment by recommending cloud services. We also tailor our recommendations to your specific business requirements.
Afterword
The Azure cloud has proven to be one of the most secure and reliable platforms for company productivity, disruption-free scalability, and growth opportunities. As a partner, Softeq helps customers select necessary Azure services and incorporate them into their products. Turn to us to achieve even more by making the most of your cloud services.
