Businesses across the world are already benefiting from cloud computing. Whether they’ve integrated cloud solutions with existing on-premise infrastructure or have moved to a fully cloud environment, the beauty of the cloud is that it is so flexible and there isn’t a one size fits all model. The cloud can work exactly how you want it to.
Business owners will want to know whether systems are able to save them and their staff time and money. The cloud may not be the right fit for all businesses, and we wouldn’t necessarily recommend every business removes their servers, elements of cloud computing can certainly help most businesses.
Microsoft’s cloud computing solution, Microsoft Azure, is one of the most popular cloud computing platforms on the market. So this begs the question, can Azure save your business time and money?
Why consider Microsoft Azure
No in house servers
Moving to Azure means you need no longer manage your own servers. As a result, you don’t need to find physical space to store servers, you don’t need to perform maintenance on servers to keep them running, you won’t need to replace them every few years when they go unsupported. This will save a significant amount of space that could be put to better use and you’ll also save on electricity and the upfront costs of purchasing and setting up servers, which are generally more expensive than using a cloud solution.
Pay as you go
The majority of cloud services on the market are pay as you go. This means that when you need a service you start paying for it. When you no longer need that service you can stop paying for it. Now imagine that was a server. It wouldn’t make sense to buy a new server because you needed one for 8 short period of time, two then get rid of it because you no longer need it. With Microsoft Azure you simply purchased the packages the work for you now, rather than what you think you might need in the future.
Scale up and scale down
Similar to pay as you go, with Microsoft Azure it is easy to scale up and scale down services as and when you need them. On premise infrastructure is all about planning for the worst. Resources are allocated based on maximum demand, so that your systems will always have enough resources for you. This often means you’ll have to expensive resource is that are idle for significant periods of time. In the cloud you pay for what you need.
Turn off when not using
Go even further with scaling up and scaling down by switching off resources when they’re not in use. By default resources will run 24/7. But if your operation runs nine to five Monday to Friday, and nobody needs to work outside of those hours, then you will have considerable amounts of time when you’re paying for resource is that are not needed. If you can turn off the resource is when they’re not needed you can make significant savings. This process can be automated so you don’t need to rely on individuals remembering to turn off and turn on resources.
Tags
In Microsoft Azure, you can add tags to various resources, as metadata. Tags themselves won’t save you money but they will allow you to identify who has created resources, which department or projects a resource belongs to and which cost centre the resource should be billed to. Tags mean that the ownership of resources can be identified easily. This tends to focus people, and deploy resources more carefully, being less likely to deploy unnecessary resources. Tags can be applied manually, but you can also set up auto tagging using various policies.
Azure Cost Management and Billing
Optimise your cloud efficiency and decrease overall spending within your Azure subscription. Azure cost management and billing allows organisations to analyse their previous and current months Azure spend to check for correct invoice amounts, estimate for upcoming months and check whether various cost entries are within their budget. You can set a budget and if this is likely to be exceeded it will automatically shut down or change service tiers to ensure billing is correct and within budget.
Save Time and Money With Microsoft Azure
These are just some of the ways you can save time and money with Microsoft Azure. Throw in the other benefits of cloud computing and it would be tricky not to consider the cloud within your business.
