Speaker 1: Do you ever feel like you're just drowning in information,
Speaker 1: especially with the complex tech stuff like cloud computing, and
Speaker 1: you just wish someone would I don't know, handy the
Speaker 1: highlights reel. You want those aha moments, Yeah, bits that
Speaker 1: really matter. Well, you're in the right place. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the deep dove. Today we're taking a let's say, a
Speaker 1: high speed tour through Microsoft Azure. We're looking at how
Speaker 1: it's really this foundation for digital transformation. Our guide, the
Speaker 1: Azure Strategy and Implementation Guide, fourth edition. So our mission
Speaker 1: today is simple, cut through the noise. We want to
Speaker 1: get to the strategic heart of Azure, its core services,
Speaker 1: how you adopt it, different migration paths, automation, security, costs,
Speaker 1: all that good stuff. We're looking for the surprising facts,
Speaker 1: those practical nuggets that mean you walk away feeling genuinely
Speaker 1: clued in. Let's unpack how Azure really underpins so much
Speaker 1: of modern it and you know what that actually means.
Speaker 2: For you exactly, And we'll try to hit the y
Speaker 2: behind the what Yeah see, the strategy behind the tech.
Speaker 1: Perfect. Okay, so let's start right at the beginning when
Speaker 1: we say Microsoft Azure, what is it really beyond the buzzword.
Speaker 2: Well, at its core, Azure is Microsoft's big cloud computing platform.
Speaker 2: Think of it like a huge toolbox available whenever you
Speaker 2: need it, full of shared computing resources, so storage, servers, applications.
Speaker 3: The whole lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but the real game changer it's the speed rapid provisioning.
Speaker 2: You can spin up complex environments in minutes, literally minutes,
Speaker 2: not months. Forget waiting for physical hardware.
Speaker 1: Right, no more racking and stacking. And it's definitely not
Speaker 1: just one thing, is it? We hear is PAS, SAWS
Speaker 1: server lists. What's the key difference there for someone trying
Speaker 1: to make strategic choices.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's super important. The different models, it's really about
Speaker 2: where you want your team to focus. It's about that
Speaker 2: shared responsibility. But more strategically, it's about control versus convenience.
Speaker 2: So sas think Microsoft three sixty five. You basically buy
Speaker 2: the finished product. Microsoft handles pretty much everything. Your team
Speaker 2: just uses it. Simpole then pettys platform as a service.
Speaker 2: Microsoft manages the underlying infrastructure, the OS patching your developers
Speaker 2: they just focus on the application go. That means faster development, you.
Speaker 1: Know, boosts velocity exactly.
Speaker 2: Then there's ias infrastructure as a service. This is more
Speaker 2: like the raw building blocks. You get the virtual machines,
Speaker 2: the network, the storage, the book mentions. This is great
Speaker 2: for custom solutions because you have maximum control, but that
Speaker 2: control comes with more responsibility. You're managing the OS, the
Speaker 2: patching configurations, so as a trade off, you choose where
Speaker 2: your expertise adds the most value.
Speaker 1: That's a great way to frame it. So beyond just
Speaker 1: shifting where the work happens, what are those big tangible
Speaker 1: business benefits driving companies to Azure.
Speaker 2: Fundamentally, it's agility and efficiency. First, scalability, it's practically unlimited
Speaker 2: need more CPU memory, storage, network bandwidth. You get an
Speaker 2: on demand that's huge for handling peaks or even just
Speaker 2: testing new ideas without a massive upfront cost.
Speaker 1: Okay, it makes sense.
Speaker 2: Then cost savings. You're moving from CAPEX buying service to
Speaker 2: op x paying for what you use. That as you
Speaker 2: go model is attractive and for businesses already using Microsoft stuff.
Speaker 2: The Azure hybrid benefit lets you reuse existing licenses.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the hybrid benefit. That can be a massive saving, right, huge.
Speaker 2: It's often a key part of the business case. Then
Speaker 2: there's speed to market, no more waiting weeks for hardware,
Speaker 2: you provision infrastructure in minutes. Plus you get instant access
Speaker 2: to cutting edge tech like Azure, AI, machine learning, IoT services,
Speaker 2: stuff that's really hard and expensive to build yourself.
Speaker 1: So it boils down to businesses can move faster, innovate
Speaker 1: more easily, and potentially save a lot of money by
Speaker 1: just paying for what they actually consume.
Speaker 2: Precisely and crucially, it lets you build secure hybrid environments too,
Speaker 2: applying consistent security across both your own data center and
Speaker 2: the cloud.
Speaker 1: Okay, a really powerful foundation, but getting there adopting Azure
Speaker 1: it's not just one path. Is that there's a whole
Speaker 1: spectrum of choices. This is where it gets really interesting.
Speaker 2: I think you're absolutely right. The how is deeply strategic.
Speaker 2: It depends entirely on what you're organization needs, control, compliance, cost,
Speaker 2: maybe even where your data physically sits.
Speaker 1: Like you've got the public cloud that's where resources are
Speaker 1: owned by Microsoft Shared infrastructure I think Office three sixty five,
Speaker 1: lots of different companies using it. Great for reliability, scale,
Speaker 1: usually the lowest cost.
Speaker 2: Right, But then you contrast that with private cloud that's
Speaker 2: exclusive use for one organization, might be on site, might
Speaker 2: be hosted by someone else. You see this a lot
Speaker 2: with government finance places with really strict rules. They need
Speaker 2: that extra control, that flexibility, got it.
Speaker 1: And hybrid that seems like a really popular middle ground.
Speaker 2: It is hybrid cloud strategically blends your own data center
Speaker 2: with the public cloud. The classic example a tax company,
Speaker 2: they need huge amounts of compute power for just a
Speaker 2: few months a year. Hybrid lets them burst out to
Speaker 2: Azure for that peak, then scale right back down, keeps
Speaker 2: costs manageable, and it's a stable, integrated setup, not just
Speaker 2: a temporary fix.
Speaker 1: Okay. And then it gets even more complex or flexible,
Speaker 1: depending on how you look at it. Multi cloud.
Speaker 2: Yeah, multi cloud means using services from more than one
Speaker 2: cloud provider. Maybe you need data in a specific region
Speaker 2: one provider doesn't cover well, or there are regulatory reasons,
Speaker 2: or maybe it's for disaster recovery. Backing up data in
Speaker 2: two different public clouds as your ARC is a big
Speaker 2: help in managing that complexity, which we'll touch on right ARC.
Speaker 1: And the last one, edge computing.
Speaker 2: Edge computing pushes that cloud intelligence right out to where
Speaker 2: the data is generated. Think IoT devices, sensors like that
Speaker 2: UNDP fleet management example, using IoT trackers for real time, data,
Speaker 2: reduces latency, gives instant insights. It's cloud power, but you
Speaker 2: know right at the edge.
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, So a whole range of deployment models. And
Speaker 1: once you've picked a model, how do you actually get
Speaker 1: your applications there? The migration strategies the RS my.
Speaker 2: Yes, the three RS critical to understand the trade offs here.
Speaker 1: First up is rehosting. That's the lift and shift right.
Speaker 1: Just pick up a VM or an app from on
Speaker 1: prem and drop it into Azure.
Speaker 2: Pretty much minimal changes usually the fastest, easiest way to
Speaker 2: get some of the cloud. If speed is your absolute
Speaker 2: top priority, rehosting is often.
Speaker 1: The answer, but maybe not the most optimized often not.
Speaker 2: No, that leads to replatforming. Here, you're moving an application
Speaker 2: to a pain ass service in Azure. So maybe moving
Speaker 2: a web app running on an ISIS server on a
Speaker 2: VM to something like az your app service. You manage
Speaker 2: the app, Microsoft handles the underlying platform a good balance.
Speaker 1: Okay, and the most involved refactoring.
Speaker 2: Refactoring or modernization. This means actually rewriting parts of your
Speaker 2: application code to really take advantage of cloud native Azure services.
Speaker 2: I think micro services serverleist functions. It offers the highest
Speaker 2: potential for long term benefits optimization, innovation, but it's also
Speaker 2: the riskiest in terms of time and cost if you
Speaker 2: don't plan it well.
Speaker 1: Here's something interesting from the guide though. While lift and
Speaker 1: shift is fastest, initially delaying that replatforming or refactoring can
Speaker 1: actually cost you more down the line you miss out
Speaker 1: on optimization.
Speaker 2: It's a crucial point, so strategic trap some fall into
Speaker 2: just getting to the cloud, isn't the end goal. Aligning
Speaker 2: your migration strategy with your long term business objectives is
Speaker 2: absolutely key. There's no single right answer, just the best
Speaker 2: fit for your needs.
Speaker 1: Right, So you've picked your path, You've migrated some apps.
Speaker 1: Now you need to build and govern this environment effectively.
Speaker 1: Sounds like automation and control become really important here, especially
Speaker 1: at scale.
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely critical. Without strong automation and governance, things can
Speaker 2: get messy, fast, cost spiral security gaps appear, it becomes unmanageable.
Speaker 1: And that's where something like as your DevOps comes in.
Speaker 1: It seems like more than just tools, it's a whole
Speaker 1: integrated platform.
Speaker 3: It really is.
Speaker 2: As your DevOps provides that end to end life cycle management.
Speaker 2: You've got as your repots for source control yeah, but
Speaker 2: then as your pipelines for CICD, as your boards for planning,
Speaker 2: test plans, artifacts for packages.
Speaker 3: The power is how they all work together.
Speaker 1: Creates that traceable, slow from code to deployment.
Speaker 2: Exactly a high speed, audible process. And it's worth noting
Speaker 2: it's free for up to five users, which is great
Speaker 2: for smaller teams starting out nice.
Speaker 1: And alongside DevOps for the process. You've got air M
Speaker 1: templates for the infrastructure itself, infrastructure as code.
Speaker 2: Correct as your resource manager templates. Think of them like
Speaker 2: blueprints for your Azure environment. You write down in code
Speaker 2: usually JSON, exactly what you want deployed, maybe through web servers,
Speaker 2: a specific database configuration, a load balancer declarative.
Speaker 1: You say what you want, not how to build it.
Speaker 2: Step by step precisely, you define the desired state, and
Speaker 2: as your resource manager figures out how to make it
Speaker 2: happen consistently every single time. No more Snowslake servers built
Speaker 2: slightly differently by hand. It guarantees repeatability.
Speaker 1: Huge for consistency, massive and a key best practice.
Speaker 2: The guide mentions you secure strings for passwords and secrets
Speaker 2: in your templates, never ever hardcode them.
Speaker 3: Seems obvious, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd be surprised. Okay, so automation is sorted. What
Speaker 1: about controlling who can do what and making sure everything
Speaker 1: meets company standards? Governance and identity non negotiable.
Speaker 2: Azure Active Directory Azure AD is the heart of identity
Speaker 2: and access control, the absolute best practice. Integrate it with
Speaker 2: your on premises AD using Azure AD connect if you
Speaker 2: have one, and enable multi factor authentication, Just do it.
Speaker 1: MFA is crucial, right, MFA everywhere. And for managing the
Speaker 1: broader environment policies and stuff, that's where you.
Speaker 2: Get into Azure management groups, Azure Policy and Azure blueprints.
Speaker 2: Management groups let you organize your subscriptions hierarchically, maybe prod
Speaker 2: versus nonprod, and apply policies across them.
Speaker 1: Policies like rules.
Speaker 2: Exactly, rules that enforce standards, maybe restricting what VM sizes
Speaker 2: can be deployed, or requiring certain tags on resources. The
Speaker 2: advice is usually to start with audit policies, just report
Speaker 2: violations before moving to deny policies that actually block things. Yeah,
Speaker 2: let's use the impact first.
Speaker 1: Smart and blueprints.
Speaker 2: Blueprints buddle everything together, role assignments, policies, AARM templates, resource
Speaker 2: groups into a repeatable pathckage so you can stamp out
Speaker 2: standard compliant environments really easily. And underpinning all this, you
Speaker 2: need Azure cost management and billing to track, analyze and
Speaker 2: optimize your spending. So connecting it all solid identity, strong governance.
Speaker 2: It's not just security theater. It's about efficiency, compliance at
Speaker 2: scale and making sure your cloud use actually aligns with
Speaker 2: what the business needs.
Speaker 1: Okay, Now, lots of organizations aren't just in Azure, right,
Speaker 1: They've got stuff on prem maybe other clouds, edge devices.
Speaker 1: It's complex. How does Azure help unify that kind of
Speaker 1: sprawling setup.
Speaker 3: That's a huge challenge.
Speaker 2: And Azure ARC and the Azure Stack family are Microsoft's
Speaker 2: big answers here. They're really key enablers for hybrid and
Speaker 2: multi cloud.
Speaker 1: Let's start with ARC. You described it as like a
Speaker 1: universal remote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good analogy. Azure ARC provides a single
Speaker 2: control plane, a single pane of glass to manage resources
Speaker 2: no matter where they live. It tackles that problem of
Speaker 2: having dozens of different management tools for different environments. It
Speaker 2: essentially projects your non Azure resources vms on prem Ubernet's
Speaker 2: clusters in another cloud, databases, running elseware into Azure Resource
Speaker 2: Manager so you can manage them using familiar Azure tools policies,
Speaker 2: security as if they were native Azure resources.
Speaker 1: So you can extend Azure management to any infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Pretty much any location other clouds, your data center, edge sites.
Speaker 2: It helps unify operations for both IOPs and DevOps teams.
Speaker 2: You can manage Windows and Linux servers, use getops for
Speaker 2: Kubernetes applications anywhere. Even run Azure data services like Azure
Speaker 2: SQL or postgressfil hyperscale on your own hardware.
Speaker 1: Wow, Okay, that sounds powerful.
Speaker 2: It is, and it works in different connectivity modes too,
Speaker 2: directly connected for resources with Internet access, indirectly connected for
Speaker 2: places with intermitt links or compliance needs. Though fully air
Speaker 2: gapped isn't quite there yet.
Speaker 1: Gotcha. So ARC extends Azure management outwards. What about bringing
Speaker 1: a your inwards into your own data center.
Speaker 2: That's Azure Stack exactly. The Azure stack family extends Azure
Speaker 2: services and capabilities to your environments. Back Hub is the
Speaker 2: big one here. It's an integrated system, hardware and software
Speaker 2: that lets you run actual Azure services on premises.
Speaker 1: Why would you do that?
Speaker 2: Disconnected environments are a major use case thing. Ships Remote
Speaker 2: sites also app modernization where you need Azure pass services
Speaker 2: locally or really strict data sovereignty or regulatory rules where
Speaker 2: data absolutely cannot leave your building, finance, health, common scenarios.
Speaker 2: Stack up brings that Azure experience as your pass apps
Speaker 2: right into your controlled space.
Speaker 1: Okay, so stack hub runs Azur services on prem what's
Speaker 1: Azure stack HCI, then.
Speaker 2: Azure stack HCI. Hyperconverged infrastructure is different. It's focused on
Speaker 2: modernizing your on premises virtualization. It replaces traditional servers and
Speaker 2: sands with industry standard servers running software defined compute, storage
Speaker 2: and networking. It's ideal for running your existing virtualized Windows
Speaker 2: and Linux workloads on prem maybe refreshing aging hardware, but
Speaker 2: doing it in a way that deeply integrates with Azure
Speaker 2: hybrid services. So you run your vms locally on each
Speaker 2: but easily connect to Azure for backup, disaster recovery monitoring.
Speaker 2: Maybe even run Azure Kubernetes service on HCI.
Speaker 1: So hub brings Azur services in HCI, modernizes virtualization and
Speaker 1: connects it to Azure services.
Speaker 3: You got it together.
Speaker 2: The Stack family gives organizations real flexibility for true hybrid
Speaker 2: and multi cloud tackling things like latency or specific compliance needs.
Speaker 2: By bringing the cloud experience right where they.
Speaker 1: Need it makes sense. Okay, shifting gear slightly, but staying
Speaker 1: with modern challenges secure remote work. It's not a trend anymore,
Speaker 1: it's just how business is done for many. How does
Speaker 1: Azure equip organizations for this?
Speaker 2: Azure has a really comprehensive toolkit here. It's not just
Speaker 2: about enabling access, it's about making it deeply secure. And
Speaker 2: the absolute cornerstone again is Azure Active Directory. That's your
Speaker 2: foundation for identity and.
Speaker 1: Access and securing that foundation. The book mentions several key things.
Speaker 2: MFA obviously absolutely, multi factor authentication non negotiable. It stops
Speaker 2: what ninety nine point nine percent of identity attacks just require.
Speaker 2: Is that extra proof something you know have are Then
Speaker 2: there's Azure AD Identity Protection. It uses Microsoft's Cloud intelligence
Speaker 2: machine learning to spot risky sign ins or user behavior
Speaker 2: and can trigger protective actions like forcing an MFA prompt
Speaker 2: or even blocking.
Speaker 1: Access right risk based access exactly.
Speaker 2: And for your admin accounts, your privileged accounts, Privileged Identity
Speaker 2: Management or pretty M this enforces just in time.
Speaker 1: Access, so temporary admin writes only when.
Speaker 2: Needed, precisely and just enough access only the specific permissions
Speaker 2: needed for the task. You have to request elevation often
Speaker 2: with MFA and justification. It's audited, grastically reduces the risk
Speaker 2: from compromised admin accounts. It's like getting the master key
Speaker 2: for just ten minutes for one specific door.
Speaker 1: Love that analogy. Okay, identity secured? What about actually connecting
Speaker 1: remote users securely?
Speaker 2: Several options. Azure Virtual Wan provides a kind of unified
Speaker 2: hub for networking and security, connecting branches remote users via
Speaker 2: point to site VPNs across regions as your VPN gateway.
Speaker 2: Is maybe more common for standard site to site encrypted
Speaker 2: tunnels between on prem and Azure or point to site
Speaker 2: for individual remote users.
Speaker 1: And for the really high performance needs.
Speaker 2: Express rep that's your private, dedicated high bandwidth connection straight
Speaker 2: into Azure by passing the public Internet. More complex, more costly,
Speaker 2: but essential for some workloads.
Speaker 1: Okay, so users are connected securely, how do we protect
Speaker 1: the actual applications they're accessing?
Speaker 2: Layered security always as your Web application firewall or waf
Speaker 2: sits in front of your web apps, protecting against common
Speaker 2: web exploits like the USB top ten as your firewall
Speaker 2: provides centralized network security policy management. Think traditional firewall rules,
Speaker 2: threat intelligence filtering across your virtual networks. It can even
Speaker 2: protect things like Windows Virtual desktop environments right.
Speaker 1: Filtering the traffic.
Speaker 3: Yeah, an Azure.
Speaker 2: Load balancer is key for distributing traffic for high availability
Speaker 2: and scale. And what I really like, Azurebastion lets you
Speaker 2: securely RDP or SSH into your Azure vms directly through
Speaker 2: the Azure portal without needing to expose any public IP
Speaker 2: addresses on those vms. Huge reduction in attack surface.
Speaker 1: That sounds incredibly useful. And you mentioned Windows Virtual Desktop
Speaker 1: WVD that seems purpose built for remote work scenarios.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is weved now Azure Virtual Desktop. They renamed it.
Speaker 2: It's Microsoft's desktop and app virtualization service, all running on
Speaker 2: Azure supports Windows ten eleven. Multi Session integrates fully with
Speaker 2: Azure AD for access and security. And the big advantage
Speaker 2: Microsoft manages the complex back end infrastructure, the brokers, gateways,
Speaker 2: web access. Your team just manages the actual desktop, images
Speaker 2: and applications massively simplifies deploying virtual desktops at scale.
Speaker 1: Ok, that covers remote work enablement. Let's zeomo ount to
Speaker 1: broader cybersecurity. What's the core philosophy Azure promotes now.
Speaker 2: It's all about zero trust. The mantra is never trust,
Speaker 2: always verify. You have to assume breaches will happen or
Speaker 2: are already happening, so you can't rely on just a
Speaker 2: strong perimeter anymore. Every access request, every can needs to
Speaker 2: be verified.
Speaker 1: Continuously assumed breach mentality exactly.
Speaker 2: And azur Security Center is your central dashboard for this.
Speaker 2: It gives you visibility into your security posture across Azure
Speaker 2: and even hybrid resources. It provides that secure score basically
Speaker 2: a grade with recommendations on how to improve, plus a
Speaker 2: dashboard for checking regulatory compliance.
Speaker 1: And for the actual threat detection and protection.
Speaker 2: That's where Azure Defender comes in. It's integrated within Security
Speaker 2: Center and provides advanced intelligent threat protection for various Azure
Speaker 2: services VMS, SQL, databases, storage containers, and even for servers
Speaker 2: running outside Azure using Azure Arc.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Defender protects specific resources. What about seeing the
Speaker 1: bigger picture correlating events?
Speaker 2: Sign right, that's Azure Sentinel. It's Microsoft's Cloud Dative SIME
Speaker 2: Security Information and Event Management and SR Security Orchestration, Automation
Speaker 2: and Response solution. It pulls in data from across your
Speaker 2: entire enterprise. Microsoft sources third party sources on prem other clouds,
Speaker 2: uses AI and analytics to detect threats, helps you investigate
Speaker 2: incidents and automate responses. It's really powerful and it all
Speaker 2: ties back to that zero trust philosophy. You need a
Speaker 2: network segmentation ideally micro segmentation to stop attackers moving. Laterally,
Speaker 2: you need threat protection, scanning traffic. You need encryption everywhere,
Speaker 2: data at rest, data and transit. It's a fundamental shift
Speaker 2: from this building walls to assuming threats are inside and
Speaker 2: verifying everything.
Speaker 1: Makes total sense. Okay, last major area, but a hugely
Speaker 1: important one. Cost. Cloud costs can escalate quickly if you're
Speaker 1: not careful. How does Azure help you optimize spending. It's
Speaker 1: not just about cutting.
Speaker 2: Is it.
Speaker 3: No, not at all.
Speaker 2: It's about strategic financial management for your cloud investment. Cloud economics.
Speaker 2: You need to really analyze the ROI compared to on premises,
Speaker 2: understand your total cost including things like maintenance, licensing, get
Speaker 2: the full picture and.
Speaker 1: What tools does Azure provide to get a handle on
Speaker 1: those costs.
Speaker 2: As your cost management and billing is the main one.
Speaker 2: It gives you that unified view across Azure and even
Speaker 2: other clouds. If you can figure it to analyze spending,
Speaker 2: track costs against budgets, set alerts. You can really drill down.
Speaker 2: Tags are super important here for allocating costs right.
Speaker 1: Tagging resources properly absolutely essential.
Speaker 2: Then you've got the Azure Pricing Calculator. Great for estimating
Speaker 2: costs for new deployments. But a key tip don't forget
Speaker 2: networking costs and try to write size vms from the start.
Speaker 2: Don't just over provision just in case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, avoid that sprawl and.
Speaker 2: The total cost of ownership TCO calculator helps compare on
Speaker 2: prem costs to a potential Azure migration even asure Migrate.
Speaker 2: The migration tool helps with assessment, which feeds into cost understanding.
Speaker 1: Okay, tools help you understand. What about the actual pricing models?
Speaker 1: How do you choose?
Speaker 2: Mostly it's a mix. You've got pay as you go
Speaker 2: the consumption model super flexible, pay only for what you
Speaker 2: use second by second or a minute by minute. Great
Speaker 2: for things like serverlist functions or databases like Cosmos dB
Speaker 2: where demand fluctuates. Costs can be variable though, so you
Speaker 2: need things like autoscaling to manage.
Speaker 1: It and the alternative fixed price.
Speaker 2: Yeah, things like Azure reservations you commit to using a
Speaker 2: certain amount of a resource like specific VM types for
Speaker 2: a one year or three year term. You pay for
Speaker 2: it whether you use it fully or not, but you
Speaker 2: get significant discounts in return, much more predictable costs best
Speaker 2: for stable, known workloads. Most organizations end up using a
Speaker 2: blend of both.
Speaker 1: Makes sense. So how do you actively drive down those costs?
Speaker 1: What are the big optimization levers?
Speaker 3: As Your advisor is a great start.
Speaker 2: It gives personalized recommendations, Hey, you've got these idle vms,
Speaker 2: or you could downsize this database. Listen to advisor. Then
Speaker 2: the azur hybrid benefit we mentioned earlier seriously, if you
Speaker 2: have eligible on prem licenses, use it. Savings can be
Speaker 2: forty percent, even up to eighty five percent for things
Speaker 2: like SQL managed instance.
Speaker 1: That's incredible worth investigating for anyone with existing Microsoft licenses.
Speaker 2: Absolutely as your reservations, that fixed price commitment can save
Speaker 2: up to seventy two percent compared to pay as you
Speaker 2: go for vms and other services.
Speaker 3: Huge savings for predictable.
Speaker 1: Workloads, Okay, any other big ones.
Speaker 2: Spot virtual machines. This lets you use Azure's spare compute
Speaker 2: capacity and massive discounts like ninety percent off. Sometimes the
Speaker 2: catch as you can kick you off with little notice
Speaker 2: if they need the capacity back.
Speaker 3: So great for.
Speaker 2: Fault tolerant, interruptible workloads, batch jobs, dev tests, rendering, but
Speaker 2: not for production systems needing an SLA right.
Speaker 1: Use cases are specific there.
Speaker 2: Definitely, and dev test pricing offers discounted rates and features
Speaker 2: specifically for development and testing environments, like auto shutdown schedules
Speaker 2: to save cost overnight.
Speaker 1: So pulling it all together, it's about being smart using
Speaker 1: the right tools, choosing the right pricing models, leveraging discounts
Speaker 1: like hybrid benefit and reservations, shutting down unused stuff, continuous optimization.
Speaker 3: That's exactly it.
Speaker 2: It's strategic resource management, moving from that capax mindset to
Speaker 2: opex and constantly asking are we getting the most value
Speaker 2: where we wasting anything? Cost optimization in the cloud isn't
Speaker 2: a one off project. It's an ongoing discipline that needs
Speaker 2: to align with your business goals.
Speaker 1: Wow, we have covered a lot of ground from the
Speaker 1: absolute basics of Azure and the different ways to adopt
Speaker 1: it through automation with DevOps and ARM, robust governance and identity,
Speaker 1: then unifying hybrid and multi cloud with ARC and STACK.
Speaker 1: Then securing remote work, the fundamentals of zero trust, cybersecurity,
Speaker 1: and finally getting smart about managing and optimizing costs. It's
Speaker 1: clear Azure is way more than just renting servers. It's
Speaker 1: this huge, interconnected ecosystem.
Speaker 2: It really is, which leads to a final thought. Maybe,
Speaker 2: having seen this comprehensive ecosystem, consider this, what untapped potential?
Speaker 2: What innovation could your organization unlock if you fully embraced
Speaker 2: Azure not just as tech, but as a strategic partner
Speaker 2: for ongoing transformation and efficiency.
Speaker 1: That's definitely something to chew on, A really powerful question.
Speaker 1: We hope this deep dive has given you some valuable insights.
Speaker 1: We encourage you to think about your own it challenges
Speaker 1: your goals and how some of these Azure solutions might
Speaker 1: just be the right fit. Thanks for joining us today.