Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure, formerly called Windows Azure, is Microsoft's public cloud computing platform. Launched in February 2010, Microsoft Azure provides cloud offerings, including virtual machines, object storage, and content delivery networks, with clients on Windows, Mac OS, Android, or iOS. The platform was renamed Microsoft Azure on March 25, 2014. The platform's solutions include infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS).

Customers of Microsoft Azure have included Chevron, Inventec, Lumen, Colorado State University, Woolworths, Tangiblee, Make-A-Wish, iHeartMedia, Alpine F1 Team, 3M, NHS, NBA, GE, Pepsico, and the American Cancer Society. Microsoft Azure uses a partnership ecosystem to help users find integrations and to integrate Microsoft Azure into other solutions across industries. Some partners in the Microsoft Azure partner ecosystem have included Everseen, Envision, Munich RE, ShookIOT, CentralLogic, ToolsGroup, MongoDB, and Episerver.

Microsoft Azure provides more than 200 services, broadly divided into eighteen categories. The categories include computing, networking, storage, IoT, migration, mobile, analytics, containers, artificial intelligence, and other machine learning, integration, management tools, developer tools, security, databases, DevOps, media identity, and web services.

Azure Communication Services is the platform that underlies Microsoft Teams and is available to users as a communication platform as a service (CPaaS), with a set of rich communication APIs, video APIs, and SMS APIs to deploy applications across devices and platforms. The platform is designed to be scalable and provide reliable calling, chat, and messaging with low latency on networks developed to be reliable for users. Communication workflows to applications can be connected through SDKs and APIs for common platforms, such as iOS, Android, Web, .NET, and JavaScript.

The platform is developed with security, including security controls for networks and encryption, and offers tools to meet compliance needs, such as HIPAA and GDPR. And Microsoft offers the Azure Communication Services with flexible pricing based on deployment and usage, allowing users to choose the communication services they want and to control those services to meet the organization's needs.

Microsoft Azure offers Linux and Windows virtual machines for users to migrate workloads to the Azure infrastructure. Users can run SQL Server, SAP, Oracle software, and high-performance computing applications on Azure Virtual Machines. Users are capable of deploying virtual machines featuring up to 416 vCPUs and 12 TB of memory, including 3.7 million local storage IOPS per VM.

Azure SQL is a family of SQL cloud databases providing options for application migration, modernization, and development. Azure SQL is designed to provide a unified experience across an SQL portfolio and a range of deployment options from edge to cloud. The platform is intended to allow users to migrate SQL workloads, modernize existing applications, and support modern cloud applications with Azure SQL database.

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) is a service allowing users to deploy and scale containers on managed Kubernetes, used to develop and deploy cloud-native apps. The Kubernetes service provides users with built-in code-to-cloud pipelines and guardrails. The service also offers users unified management and governance for Kubernetes clusters and is interoperable with Azure security, identity, cost management, and migration services.

Cognitive Services offers APIs to users to integrate artificial intelligence services into applications. The service comes with various models for a variety of use cases and is built to enable developers and data scientists to add artificial intelligence capabilities to their applications.

Azure PlayFab is a cloud-based service for game developers, giving users the tools they need to build and operate live games on a single platform, including game services, data analytics, and live operations tools.

Azure Quantum is a provider of cloud-based quantum hardware, software, and solutions through a single cloud service. It offers an open ecosystem to write and run code on quantum hardware, with preferred development tools, and is built to be future-proofed for the development of durable applications for quantum hardware.

Azure Arc is a tool to help extend the Azure platform to help build applications and services with the flexibility to run across data centers, at the edge, and in multicloud environments. This is developed to help users secure, develop, and operate infrastructure and Azure services anywhere, including offering cloud-native applications able to run on new and existing hardware, virtualization, Kubernetes platforms, IoT devices, and integrated systems.

In July 2019, Microsoft invested in AI research company OpenAI with Azure becoming the company's exclusive cloud provider. As part of the new partnership, the two companies began working together to develop a hardware and software platform within Azure to scale large AI systems. In November 2021, Microsoft debuted Azure OpenAI service, enabling users to access large-scale generative AI models for enterprise-grade applications. Use cases include writing assistance, content generation, code generation, summarization, conversational AI, knowledge mining and more.

Azure OpenAI Services provides REST API access to OpenAI's models, including GPT-4, GPT-3, Codex, and DALL-E, with the security of Azure. These APIs are co-developed by Azure and OpenAI to ensure compatibility. Additionally, Azure provides private networking, regional availability, and AI content filtering. Users access the service through REST APIs, Python SDK, or the web-based interface in the Azure OpenAI Studio. Access was initially limited, with Microsoft first working only with existing customers. Next, Microsoft opened access to users through an application form that included a use case review before products could be released for production use. Azure OpenAI Services is now generally available upon registration. Microsoft can still limit access based on eligibility criteria and availability. Pricing is based on a pay-as-you-go consumption model with a price per unit for each model.

On March 21, 2023, Microsoft announced OpenAI's multi-modal model GPT-4 is available in preview in Azure OpenAI Service. Users can begin applying for access with billing for GPT-4 usage starting on April 1, 2023, based on the number of prompts and completions.