There are many questions a company or individual must answer before initiating a cloud implementation project These include:

Which cloud deployment model is right for you?

There are three deployment models for cloud computing: public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud. Each deployment model has different aspects that you should consider as you plan your migration to the cloud.

Which cloud sevice model do you need?

PaaS, IaaS, and SaaS acronyms for the different cloud service models. These models define the different levels of shared responsibility that a cloud provider and cloud tenant are responsible for.

The following illustration demonstrates the services that might run in each of the cloud service models.

For more information on Azure, cloud fundamentals, cloud service models and how moving to the cloud might benefit your organization please drop us a line. Watch for our upcoming updates on this page as we delve deeper into Azure and provide insights into using the Aure Portal and Azure AD (Active directory).

Some cloud computing advantages

There are several advantages that a cloud environment has over an onsite physical environment.

High availability:

Depending on the service-level agreement (SLA) that you choose, your cloud-based apps can provide a continuous user experience with no apparent downtime, even when things go wrong.

Scalability: Apps in the cloud can scale vertically and horizontally:

Scale vertically to increase compute capacity by adding RAM or CPUs to a virtual machine.

Scaling horizontally increases compute capacity by adding instances of resources, such as adding VMs to the configuration.

Elasticity:

You can configure cloud-based apps to take advantage of autoscaling, so your apps always have the resources they need.

Agility: Deploy and configure cloud-based resources quickly as your app requirements change.

Geo-distribution:

You can deploy apps and data to regional datacenters around the globe, thereby ensuring that your customers always have the best performance in their region.

Disaster recovery:

By taking advantage of cloud-based backup services, data replication, and geo-distribution, you can deploy your apps with the confidence that comes from knowing that your data is safe in the event of disaster.

What can you do with Azure?

Remember, all service's (resources) in Azure use a 'pay per use' model. You may use (Consume) any or all of these resources. To choose which resources are required by your business model you will need a 'deep dive' into these services.