Christmas decorations have been packed. Trees that used to bear the seasonal ornaments and a glory of colored lights have been thrown out, and their artificial counterparts folded up and stored away for another year. While no known magic is at work, you step outside into a new day, a new year — 2021; and you can't help but feel like this year is going to be different. It feels different. Brighter. Stronger. Hope filled.
It's usually in this euphoric atmosphere that one's mind begins to fill with ideas of what to do differently, goals to accomplish, new year's resolutions. That's great. You and I both need that magical renewal of energy, invigoration, and encouragement to face another year of challenges. But in addition to personal goals and strategies, I want you to think about introducing something new to your organization — The Microsoft Cloud.
Why am I talking to you about the cloud? Because I'm passionate about it. I'm a Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect Expert — not because I have to be, but because the cloud has captivated me and I want to show the world how they can benefit from it. So yes, I am very biased, just as biased as a New York toy store is on its opinion of Christmas — yes there is money to be made, but there is something magical to be experienced at the same time. I want to share the magical experience of the cloud with you.
What Is the Microsoft Cloud?
The concept of the cloud can be rather obscure to many people, but it actually is a simple idea. Because of a technology called a hypervisor, one physical computer and its hardware can act like several separate computers. For instance, you can buy a traditional server — one tower, a single large hard drive, one physical CPU and motherboard, and a couple of sticks of RAM — and use it as a file storage server, a SQL server, or a web server.
Now introduce hypervisor technology and that one server can instead act like four separate computers, each independent from the others. You can build a virtual machine (VM) designated as a file storage server, a second VM as a SQL Database server, a third VM as a web server — all without buying any more hardware. You just used the existing hardware of your single server and through hypervisor technology split it into four independently virtualized computers.
Microsoft has taken this technology and built entire datacenters — essentially warehouses — filled with hundreds of thousands of physical computer hardware. Through hypervisor technology, organizations can create and use virtualized resources on this physical hardware, all without the time, money, and space that goes into buying that hardware and installing and maintaining it themselves.
This has also grown to include entire services like Microsoft Exchange Server for email and SharePoint for file management — services that used to require a sizeable physical footprint of dozens of servers and the people to install, configure, operate, and maintain them. Now, Microsoft has built these environments in their own datacenters where they do all the maintenance and management of the systems and simply make them available to you as a service.
So Where Should You Even Start?
There are a thousand ways you could probably approach the cloud, but why not just keep it simple? Below are six practical starting points — real use cases that organizations of all sizes are using today to get meaningful value from the Microsoft Cloud.
Disaster Recovery for Active Directory
For many organizations, there is no disaster recovery solution for their Active Directory environment. Build a virtual network in Azure and stand up a domain controller that is offsite and replicated locally three times for redundancy. If your office network goes down, you still have a live working domain controller in the cloud that is completely unaffected.
Cloud Backup & Disaster Recovery
Back up your servers to the cloud so that if your local network environment were to go down, you would have all your latest backups available instantly from Azure. Take it a step further with actual disaster recovery replication and have to-the-minute replicas of your existing servers ready to come online in Azure just minutes after your local network goes down.
Secure Remote Work with Windows Virtual Desktop
Azure's Windows Virtual Desktop provides secure Windows 10 desktops complete with all the necessary work applications, accessible remotely from practically any device — Android, iPhone, Mac, or Windows — via a native application or HTML5-capable browser. Instantly give your users the tools they need on a secure and protected virtual environment that they can access from anywhere, including home.
Modern Email with Exchange Online
Get rid of that clunky old Exchange or Domino environment and instead use Microsoft Exchange Online email — part of Office 365 — that is cutting edge, extremely secure, and well maintained. No more managing on-premises Exchange servers or worrying about patching and capacity planning.
Application Development with Microservices
If your organization wants to develop a new application that uses microservices and serverless databases, Azure is the place to do it. Azure provides a rich set of platform services — Azure Functions, Cosmos DB, API Management, Service Bus, and more — that make it easier to build modern, scalable, cloud-native applications.
Expand Server Infrastructure Without New Hardware
Instead of buying new hardware and adding new servers into your office network, spin up your additional server needs in Azure where your domain controller already lives. Scale compute, storage, and networking resources on demand without the capital expense, lead time, or physical space requirements of traditional hardware procurement.
We're Here to Help You Get Started
The cloud is here to make some things in your professional life much, much better — and the Safari Micro team is here to help you get on to it. Over the coming weeks, we'll be going more in depth on Microsoft Azure — Microsoft's enterprise cloud environment — and the exciting capabilities and features of its offerings.
Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions about Azure or would like to start the conversation about how we can help you get started in the cloud.
Jeremy Wallace
Principal Cloud Architect — Safari Micro
Jeremy is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Architect Expert with deep expertise in Azure infrastructure, identity, and cloud strategy. He helps organizations of all sizes plan and execute their cloud journey with confidence.