Microsoft Azure, or just Azure (/ˈæʒər, ˈeɪʒər/ AZH-ər, AY-zhər, UK also /ˈæzjʊər, ˈeɪzjʊər/ AZ-ure, AY-zure), is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It has management, access and development of applications and services to individuals, companies, and governments through its global infrastructure. It also provides capabilities that are usually not included within other cloud platforms, including software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Microsoft Azure supports many programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems. Azure was first introduced at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October 2008 under the codename "Project Red Dog". It was officially launched as Windows Azure in February 2010 and later renamed to Microsoft Azure on March 25, 2014.

Services

Microsoft Azure uses large-scale virtualization at Microsoft data centers worldwide and offers more than 600 services.

Computer services

Identity

Mobile services

Storage services

Communication services

Data management

Messaging

The Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows applications running on Azure premises or off-premises devices to communicate with Azure. This helps to build scalable and reliable applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). The Azure service bus supports four different types of communication mechanisms:

Media services

A PaaS offering that can be used for encoding, content protection, streaming, or analytics.

CDN

Azure has a worldwide content delivery network (CDN) designed to efficiently deliver audio, video, applications, images, and other static files. It improves the performance of websites by caching static files closer to users, based on their geographic location. Users can manage the network using a REST-based HTTP API. Azure has 118 point-of-presence locations across 100 cities worldwide (also known as Edge locations) as of January 2023.

Developer

Managements

Azure AI

Azure Blockchain Workbench

Through Azure Blockchain Workbench, Microsoft is providing the required infrastructure to set up a consortium network in multiple topologies using a variety of consensus mechanisms. Microsoft provides integration from these blockchain platforms to other Microsoft services to streamline the development of distributed applications. Microsoft supports many general-purpose blockchains, including Ethereum and Hyperledger Fabric and purpose-built blockchains like Corda.

Function

Azure functions are used in serverless computing architectures, where subscribers can execute code as an event-driven Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) without managing the underlying server resources. Customers using Azure functions are billed based on per-second resource consumption and executions.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Azure Stack HCI

Azure Stack HCI is a hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) product that uses validated hardware to run virtualized workloads on-premises to consolidate aging infrastructure and connect to Azure for cloud services.

Azure Orbital

Launched in September 2020, Azure Orbital lets private industries and government agencies process satellite data quickly by connecting directly to cloud computing networks. Mobile cloud computing ground stations are also available to provide connectivity to remote locations without ground infrastructure. Third-party satellite systems, like SpaceX's Starlink and SES' O3b constellation, can be employed. SES plans to use Microsoft's data centers to provide cloud connectivity to remote areas through its next generation O3b mPOWER MEO satellites alongside Microsoft's data centers. The company will deploy satellite control and uplink ground stations to achieve this. SES launched the first two O3b mPOWER satellites in December 2022; nine more are scheduled between 2023 and 2024. The service should begin in Q3 2023. According to Microsoft, using satellites to connect to cloud data centers may provide faster speeds than complex fiber routes. For online media, entertainment, or gaming activities, connecting from home to the cloud can involve longer routes with multiple hops. Through their experiments with Xbox Cloud, Microsoft has discovered that satellite connections are faster than terrestrial networks in certain parts of the world, including specific locations in the USA.

Azure Container Storage

In August 2024, Azure introduced the industry’s first platform-managed container-native storage solution in the public cloud. This service supports Ephemeral Disks (Local NVMe/Temp SSD) and Azure Disks, offering a robust storage solution tailored for containerized applications.

Azure Quantum

Released for public preview in 2021. Azure Quantum provides access to quantum hardware and software. The public cloud computing platform includes multiple quantum hardware modalities including trapped ion, neutral atom, and superconducting systems. Azure Quantum Elements software for computational chemistry and materials science combines AI, high-performance computing and quantum processors to run molecular simulations and calculations. The service includes Copilot, a GPT-4 based large language model tool to query and visualize data, write code, and initiate simulations. In 2021, Microsoft developed the quantum programming language Q# (pronounced Q Sharp) and an open-source quantum development kit for algorithm development and simulation. In 2023, Microsoft developed Quantum Intermediate Representation (QIR) from LLVM as a common interface between programming languages and target quantum processors. The Azure Quantum Resource Estimator estimates the resources required to execute a given quantum algorithm on a fault-tolerant quantum computer. It can also show how future quantum computers will impact today’s encryption algorithms.

Regional expansion

As of 2018, Azure was available in 54 regions, and Microsoft was the first primary cloud provider to establish facilities in Africa, with two regions in South Africa. Azure geographies consist of multiple Azure Regions, like "North Europe" (located in Dublin, Ireland) and "West Europe" (located in Amsterdam, Netherlands). On June 19, 2019, Microsoft announced the launch of two new cloud regions in the United Arab Emirates – Microsoft's first in the Middle East.

Research partnerships

Microsoft has partners that sell its products. In August 2018, Toyota Tsusho began a partnership with Microsoft to create fish farming tools using the Microsoft Azure application suite for IoT technologies related to water management. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University, the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. The specific computer programs used in the process fall under the Azure Machine Learning and the Azure IoT Hub platforms.

Design

Microsoft Azure utilizes a specialized operating system with the same name to power its "fabric layer". This cluster is hosted at Microsoft's data centers and is responsible for managing computing and storage resources and allocating them to applications running on the Microsoft Azure platform. It is a "cloud layer" built upon various Windows Server systems, including the customized Microsoft Azure Hypervisor, which is based on Windows Server 2008 and enables the virtualization of services. The Microsoft Azure Fabric Controller maintains the scalability and dependability of services and environments in the data center. It prevents failure in server malfunction and manages users' web applications, including memory allocation and load balancing. Azure provides an API built on REST, HTTP, and XML that allows a developer to interact with the services offered by Microsoft Azure. Microsoft also provides a client-side managed class library that encapsulates the functions of interacting with the services. It also integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio, Git, and Eclipse. Users can manage Azure services in multiple ways, one of which is through the Web-based Azure Portal, which became generally available in December 2015. Apart from accessing services via API, users can browse active resources, adjust settings, launch new resources, and view primary monitoring data of functional virtual machines and services using the portal.

Deployment models

Regarding cloud resources, Microsoft Azure offers two deployment models: the "classic" model and the Azure Resource Manager. In the classic model, each resource, like a virtual machine or SQL database, had to be managed separately, but in 2014, Azure introduced the Azure Resource Manager, which allows users to group related services. This update makes it easier and more efficient to deploy, manage, and monitor resources that work closely together. The classic model will eventually be phased out.

History and timeline

In 2005, Microsoft took over Groove Networks, and Bill Gates made Groove's founder Ray Ozzie one of his 5 direct reports as one of 3 chief technology officers. Ozzie met with Amitabh Srivastava, which let Srivastava change course. They convinced Dave Cutler to postpone his retirement, and their teams developed a cloud operating system.

Privacy

According to the Patriot Act, Microsoft has acknowledged that the U.S. government can access data even if the hosting company is not American and the data is outside the U.S. To address concerns related to privacy and security, Microsoft has established the Microsoft Azure Trust Center. Microsoft Azure offers services that comply with multiple compliance programs, including ISO 27001:2005 and HIPAA. A comprehensive and up-to-date list of these services is available on the Microsoft Azure Trust Center Compliance page. Microsoft Azure received JAB Provisional Authority to Operate (P-ATO) from the U.S. government under the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) guidelines. This program provides a standardized approach to security assessment, authorization, and continuous monitoring for cloud services used by the federal government.

Significant outages

The following is a list of Microsoft Azure outages and service disruptions.

Certifications

A large variety of Azure certifications can be attained, each requiring one or multiple successfully completed examinations. Certification levels range from beginner, intermediate to expert. Examples of common certifications include:

Key people

Issues

Microsoft Azure's services can have varied and complex pricing models. The Azure Portal can be slow and prone to user errors.

Security

In August 2021, researchers from Wiz Research claimed to have discovered a vulnerability in the Azure Cosmos DB database, referred to as "ChaosDB." They claimed that they had gained complete unrestricted access to the accounts and databases of several thousand Microsoft Azure customers. In August 2021, Microsoft claimed they mitigated the vulnerability and no customer data was accessed. In September 2021, researchers from Palo Alto Networks claimed to discover a significant cross-account takeover vulnerability in Azure Container Instances, named "Azurescape". According to Palo Alto Networks' researchers, this vulnerability is the first known instance that allows one user of a public cloud service to escape their environment and execute code on other users' environments within the same service. Although Microsoft quickly patched the issue, Palo Alto Networks advised Azure customers to revoke any privileged credentials deployed before August 31, 2021, as a precaution. In September 2021, Microsoft claimed they fixed the vulnerability. In September 2021, researchers from Wiz Research claimed they found four critical vulnerabilities in the Open Management Infrastructure (OMI), which is Azure's software agent deployed on a large portion of Linux VMs in Azure. The researchers named it "OMIGOD" and claimed that these vulnerabilities allowed for remote code execution within the Azure network and could escalate privileges to root. They claimed that the vulnerabilities affected various Azure services, including Azure Log Analytics, Azure Diagnostics, and Azure Security Center. In response, Microsoft announced that it had released fixes for the aforementioned vulnerabilities in September 2021. In July 2023, U.S. Senator Ron Wyden called on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Justice Department, and the Federal Trade Commission to hold Microsoft accountable for what he described as "negligent cybersecurity practices." This came in the wake of an alleged cyberattack orchestrated by Chinese hackers, who exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft's software to compromise U.S. government email systems. Similarly, Amit Yoran, the CEO of cybersecurity firm Tenable, Inc., lambasted Microsoft for what he termed "grossly irresponsible" actions, accusing the company of fostering a "culture of toxic obfuscation." The Cyber Safety Review Board produced a report that blamed Microsoft about a cascade of security failures that allowed the intrusion to succeed. Microsoft's security culture was called inadequate.

Citations

Sources