How to maximise value with Azure infrastructure

COVID-19 has transformed the way we work and live. Businesses around the globe have been adjusting IT priorities to enable remote work and optimise costs and efficiencies while investing in smart ways to prepare for recovery and future growth. Accelerating the adoption of cloud computing and taking advantage of modern cloud infrastructure with Azure will help you achieve these goals.

1. Enable productivity from anywhere

Provide a consistent work experience with desktops and apps – accessible from virtually anywhere – with Windows Virtual Desktop. Give employees secure access to any resource they need through Azure VPN Gateway.

• Deploy and scale in minutes with a cloud Virtualised Desktop Infrastructure solution and take advantage of all the cloud benefits.
• Significantly reduce operational costs with the only virtualised multi-session Windows 10 desktop optimized to deliver the best Office 365 experience.
• Migrate Remote Desktop Services (RDS) environment with simplified management and deployment experience on Azure.
• Ensure secure connectivity for remote workers so they can access business apps and data in Azure or on-premises from any device—all with an improved user experience.

2. Maintain business continuity

Deploy simple, cost-effective, and efficient cloud backup and disaster recovery solutions with Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery to minimise business disruption. To ensure always-on connectivity that sustains remote work, consider using Azure Virtual WAN, along with supported partner SD-WAN devices.

• Reduce infrastructure and management costs by eliminating the hassle and expense of secondary datacenters. Plus, only pay for the compute resources you need.
• Minimise downtime with dependable recovery that complies with industry regulations, such as ISO 27001, by enabling disaster recovery between separate Azure regions.
• Protect your data against ransomware attacks and human errors with multifactor authentication and default encryption.
• Scale existing networks and achieve high availability by taking advantage of the Azure global backbone and highly scalable connectivity services.

3. Help secure workloads from cyber attacks

Help secure your hybrid workloads and networks with industry leading intelligence and built-in security controls like Azure Sentinel, Azure Security Center, Azure DDoS Protection, and Azure Firewall.

• Get AI-enabled threat protection with Azure Sentinel—a cloud-native solution for security information event management (SIEM) and security orchestration automated response (SOAR).
• Continually improve security postures with vulnerability assessments, security risk alerts, and threat prevention recommendations that comply with industry standards.
• Protect your web workloads with Zero Trust security, which includes verifying identities on every access attempt and ensuring your networks are correctly segmented.
• Defend against distributed denial-of service (DDoS) attacks with always-on traffic monitoring and real-time mitigation of common network-level attacks.

4. Manage and govern hybrid environments

Extend Azure management to any infrastructure across on-premises, and multi-cloud. Bring Azure data services to any cloud and any Kubernetes clusters, with Azure Arc enabled data services.

• Centrally organise, govern, and secure IT resources across hybrid environments with a single control plane, including Windows and Linux servers, Kubernetes clusters, and applications.
• Deploy and manage Kubernetes applications at scale across hybrid environments using DevOps techniques and consistent developer tools.
• Run Azure data services anywhere and get the latest Azure innovations, elastic scale, and unified management for data workloads with or without direct cloud connection.
• Implement Azure security anywhere with access to unique Azure security capabilities such as Azure Advanced Threat Protection. Set security policies, resource boundaries, and role-based access control for your workloads.

5. Increase return on investment by migrating to the cloud

Accelerate cloud migration to Azure to reduce capital expenditure, realise cost savings, and speed up time to value.

• Achieve cost savings and more performance with Windows Server and SQL Server with Azure Hybrid Benefit and free extended security updates. SQL IaaS has the best performance on Azure.
• Get performance, flexibility, and integrated support for Linux. Azure supports common Linux distributions, including Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Oracle, Linux, and CoreOS.
• Scale business critical workloads on Azure without compromising performance. Increase operational agility and take advantage of compliance and security certifications for your most critical applications.
• Accelerate cloud migration to Azure with our Cloud Pleaser and Azure 360 migration solutions. We’ll structure your data to ensure you get the best value from your investment.

6 Simplify and accelerate SAP migration

Bring the intelligence, security, and reliability of Azure to your mission-critical SAP applications. Accelerate cloud migration of SAP ERP and SAP S/4HANA workloads through a well-defined path.

• Run on the cloud platform optimised for SAP with the performance, scale, and agility you count on.
• Gain unmatched security, compliance, and business continuity for your SAP workloads in the cloud and on-premises.
• Access continuous innovation and insights, tapping into Azure services, SAP Cloud Platform, and integration with Microsoft 365, Teams, Power Apps, and Power BI.

7. Modernise on-premises infrastructure

Bring the cloud to your on-premises data center with Azure Stack Hub to build and deploy consistent hybrid applications. Use Azure Stack HCI to consolidate on-premises applications on cloud-connected infrastructure—and get the best price and performance.

• Build and run cloud-native applications on-premises in connected or disconnected scenarios. Use consistent tools, experiences, and app models across Azure and Azure Stack Hub.
• Take advantage of efficiencies for highly virtualised compute, storage, and networking on industry-standard x86 servers and components.
• Easily manage virtualised applications with your choice of command-line automation or Windows Admin Center to access cloud management services.
• Deploy the most affordable HCI solution to branch offices, retail stores, and field sites with a minimal hardware footprint and enjoy benefits such as high availability and resiliency.

8. Continuously optimise the cost of your workloads

Get clear visibility into cloud resource usage, identify new opportunities to optimise usage, and increase cost savings with Kocho’s Cloud control dashboards.

• Monitor and forecast cloud spending, set budget, and allocate costs to teams and projects with Cloud control dashboards
• Optimise cloud resources and architecture with Azure best practices.
• Save with Azure licensing as we’ll identify the best options for your business