Author: Howard M. Cohen
Business critical applications require the best possible security, non-stop reliability and availability. Here are some of the ways Idenxt leverages the Azure service to assure all these and more.
Azure is well known as one of the top three “hyperscaler” cloud computing services, a description which emphasizes its sheer scale. Hundreds of data centers worldwide hosting an untold number of “virtual machine” (VM) server instances on an untold number of server-class computers with enormous storage and memory capacity.
What many don’t think of when describing Azure are the over 200 services spanning more than 20 categories that it makes available to those developing, testing, piloting, and running applications on the platform. Some of these are fundamental services including compute, databases, migration, mobile, networking, and security services. Others support developers with tools, DevOps to connect developers and operators to each other, Internet of Things (IoT), mixed reality, AI and machine learning, and more.
It’s All About Applications
To begin with the ends in mind, we first focus on the applications we wish to run on Azure. The real beginning of any Azure project is the business objective we wish to fulfill. It might involve accelerating or automating various processes or gathering and analyzing large bodies of data. The range of goals we begin with is as broad as business itself. But once we’ve identified our objective we begin the process of application development, deployment, and operation.
Applications Live in a Complex, Dangerous World
In a time when artificial intelligence is exploding all around us, it is far easier to envision applications having a life of their own. Even when they live in the Azure platform, they also live on the internet. There, competitors are trying to figure out how to achieve advantages. Nation states are scheming to disrupt many operations. Bad actors and cybercriminals are plotting to steal everything from trade secrets to actual funds.
At the same time, a large proportion of threats come from within organizations. An internal bad actor armed with the necessary credentials can stealthily wreak havoc on your applications and the data they work with.
The Application Protection Industry
Applications must be protected from this myriad of threats. The goal of application protection is to provide maximum, preferably continuous, availability of the application to its users without interruption so as to avoid business disruption.
An enormous industry has grown up around the need to protect applications, the networks they run on, and the data they process. Each of the companies in this industry has their own approach, their own operating philosophy, and their own inventions dedicated to providing the best possible protection. Businesses are challenged to evaluate and identify the platform most desirable and effective for their application protection needs.
Perhaps the Most Reliable Protection Provider
Of the more than 200 services provided on the Azure platform, fully 20% of them are devoted to application protection and data security, including storage protection services, database protection services, identity and access management services, backup, disaster recovery, networking and more.
All these services are furnished by the most highly reputed software developers in the business, Microsoft.
If you examine the application protection platforms provided by other manufacturers, they all operate in place of Microsoft’s Azure-provided services. These companies have been busily reinventing many of the wheels Microsoft has already put on this sleek vehicle.
Idenxt Works With Microsoft’s Azure Services
Most IT industry service providers are accustomed to integrating their own solutions by choosing best-of-breed products from various sources and making them work well together. It stands to reason that a company that is the best in storage technologies won’t likely also be best in networking, or servers. So, they choose the best from each technology category and integrate them into a greater solution.
This is the approach Idenxt has taken with Azure application protection.
The Idenxt team is composed of experts with deep experience working in the Azure environment. They know how to best implement the various services available directly from Microsoft. At the same time, they have developed their own AI-powered automation services to add even more efficiency to the use of those services.
Making Azure Operation Transparent
The simple fact is that many Azure customers do not have Azure expertise on staff. Even their best IT professionals may simply have never worked in the Azure environment.
Idenxt eliminates the need for customers to staff Azure expertise by providing it for them. The combination of human experience and expertise with innovative automation yields a solution any company can take immediate advantage of to get their most business-critical applications running on the Azure platform and keep them protected and productive.
For many new Azure users, this is the hurdle they must overcome first, and engaging Idenxt makes it easy for them to do so. For more information about how to put Idenxt to work making Azure work for you.
To learn more, contact us here.