# Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform, offering over 600 services including computing, storage, and AI. Launched in 2010 as Windows Azure, it was renamed in 2014 and now supports a vast ecosystem for enterprises and governments.

Microsoft Azure, sometimes stylized Azure, and formerly Windows Azure, is the cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It offers management, access, and development of applications and services to individuals, companies, and governments through its global infrastructure. Azure supports multiple programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.

Azure was first introduced at the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in October 2008 under the code name "Project Red Dog". It was officially launched as Windows Azure in February 2010 and later renamed to Microsoft Azure on March 25, 2014. Since then, it has grown to encompass more than 600 services, ranging from virtual machines to advanced [artificial-intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence) tools.

## Infrastructure and Global Reach

Azure operates from data centers distributed across the world, organized into regions and availability zones. This global footprint allows customers to deploy applications close to their users, ensuring low latency and redundancy. The platform uses large-scale virtualization at these data centers to provide scalable and flexible resources. Microsoft guarantees a service level agreement (SLA) of 99.9% availability for applications and data hosted on Azure, subject to specific terms and conditions outlined in the SLA documentation.

## Compute Services

Azure offers a range of compute options, including virtual machines (VMs) that provide infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Users can launch general-purpose Windows and Linux virtual machines, as well as preconfigured machine images for popular software packages. Starting in 2022, these VMs are powered by Ampere Cloud-native processors, offering improved performance and energy efficiency. Most users run Linux on Azure, with many distributions available, including Microsoft's own Linux-based Azure Sphere.

For platform as a service (PaaS), Azure App Services provides an environment for publishing and managing websites. Azure Web Apps, formerly Azure Web Sites, allows developers to build and deploy websites using various programming languages and deployment tools; this PaaS feature was announced in June 2012 and renamed in April 2015. Web Jobs are applications that can be deployed to an App Service environment to implement background processing, invoked on a schedule, on-demand, or continuously. The Blob, Table, and Queue services can be used to communicate between Web Apps and Web Jobs and to provide state.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) enables the deployment of production-ready Kubernetes clusters, simplifying container orchestration. In July 2023, watermarking support on Azure Virtual Desktop was announced as an optional feature of Screen Capture to provide additional security against data leakage.

## Identity and Security

Azure provides comprehensive identity and access management solutions under the Microsoft Entra brand. Entra ID Connect synchronizes on-premises directories and enables single sign-on (SSO). Entra ID B2C allows consumer identity and access management in the cloud. Entra Domain Services joins Azure virtual machines to a domain without requiring domain controllers. Azure Information Protection helps protect sensitive information. Entra ID External Identities enables organizations to collaborate with external users, including customers and partners. On July 11, 2023, Microsoft announced the renaming of Azure AD to Microsoft Entra ID; the name change took effect four days later.

## Mobile and Communication Services

Azure Mobile Engagement collects real-time analytics that highlight user behavior and provides push notifications to mobile devices. HockeyApp is used for developing, distributing, and beta-testing mobile apps. Azure Communication Services offers an SDK for creating web and mobile communications applications that include SMS, video calling, VOIP and PSTN calling, and web-based chat.

## Storage and Data Management

Azure Storage Services provides REST and SDK APIs for storing and accessing data on the cloud. The Table Service lets programs store structured text in partitioned collections of entities accessed by partition key and primary key; it is a NoSQL non-relational database. The Blob Service allows programs to store unstructured text and binary data as object storage blobs accessed via HTTP(S) paths, with security mechanisms to control access. The Queue Service enables asynchronous communication between programs using messages. The File Service allows storing and accessing data on the cloud using REST APIs or the SMB protocol.

For data management, Azure Data Explorer provides big data analytics and data-exploration capabilities. Azure Search offers text search and a subset of OData's structured filters using REST or SDK APIs. Cosmos DB is a NoSQL database service that implements a subset of the SQL SELECT statement on JSON documents. Azure Cache for Redis is a managed implementation of Redis. StorSimple manages storage tasks between on-premises devices and cloud storage. Azure SQL Database works to create, scale, and extend applications into the cloud using Microsoft SQL Server technology, integrating with Active Directory, Microsoft System Center, and Hadoop. Azure Synapse Analytics is a fully managed cloud data warehouse. Azure Data Factory is a data integration service that allows creation of data-driven workflows for orchestrating and automating data movement and transformation. Azure Data Lake is a scalable data storage and analytic service for big data analytics workloads requiring massively parallel queries. Azure HDInsight deploys Hortonworks Hadoop on Azure and supports Hadoop clusters using Linux with Ubuntu. Azure Stream Analytics is a serverless scalable event-processing engine for real-time analytics on multiple data streams from devices, sensors, websites, social media, and other applications.

## Messaging and Integration

The Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows applications running on Azure premises or off-premises devices to communicate with Azure, helping to build scalable and reliable applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA). It supports four communication mechanisms: Event Hubs, which provides event and telemetry ingress at massive scale with low latency and high reliability (e.g., tracking data from cell phones with GPS in real time); Queues, which allows one-directional communication where a sender sends a message and a receiver reads it (only one receiver processes a single message); Topics, which provides one-directional communication using a subscriber pattern where each subscriber receives a copy of the message, optionally filtering based on criteria; and Relays, which provides bi-directional communication without storing in-flight messages, passing them directly to the destination application.

## AI and Enterprise Focus

Azure has become a major platform for [artificial-intelligence](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/artificial-intelligence) and [machine-learning](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/machine-learning) workloads, offering services like Azure Machine Learning and integration with [openai](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/openai) models. It provides enterprises with tools to build, train, and deploy models at scale, leveraging custom silicon such as the Maia series for AI acceleration. This focus on AI distinguishes Azure from other cloud providers, positioning it as a key player in the [generative-ai](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/generative-ai) landscape. Azure's AI services are used across industries, from healthcare to finance, and are a critical part of Microsoft's strategy to compete with [amazon-web-services](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/amazon-web-services) and [google-cloud](https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/google-cloud).

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Source: https://www.wikiprompt.org/wiki/azure
License: CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)
Last updated: 2026-09-05T13:21:26.603202+00:00