Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. You can build applications using any language, tool or framework. And you can integrate your public cloud applications with your existing IT environment.
Solutions Offered
COMPUTE
Virtual Machines (VMs)
Virtual Machines deliver on-demand, scalable compute infrastructure when you need to quickly provision resources to meet your growing business needs. With Virtual Machines, you get choice of Windows Server and Linux operating systems in multiple configurations on top of the trustworthy Windows Azure foundation.
Provision compute infrastructure at the pace your business requires
Unlock the IT backlog and provision infrastructure at the pace your business requires. Simply choose your compute configuration (standard or high memory instances) and choose an image from the Virtual Machines image gallery.
Virtual Machines give your applications and systems full mobility, allowing you to move virtual hard disks (VHDs) back and forth between on-premises and the cloud.
Enterprise grade support with enterprise ready products
With 99.95% monthly SLA for multiple instances, Virtual Machines are ready to extend on-premises workloads to the cloud. Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint Server, BizTalk Server, and many moreserver applications are validated to run on Virtual Machines. Support for validated workloads is directly provided by Microsoft. You can select one of the many direct support options here.
Use the tools you know and be ready for tomorrow
If your app runs on Hyper-V, it runs on Windows Azure Virtual Machines. This means you can manage your entire infrastructure, on-premises or in the cloud, with System Center. In addition, you can combine your apps running in Virtual Machines with Windows Azure platform services - such as Service Bus or Media Services - and extend with new capabilities. With Virtual Machines, you can take advantage of what you already know to achieve new capabilities in the cloud.
Standard Instances
Provide optimal set of compute, memory and IO resources for running a vast array of applications. Detailed configuration of the instances is available here.
COMPUTE INSTANCE NAME
VIRTUAL CORES
RAM
PRICE PER HOUR
Extra Small (A0)
Shared
768 MB
$0.02
(~$15/month)
Small (A1)
1
1.75 GB
$0.09
(~$67/month)
Medium (A2)
2
3.5 GB
$0.18
(~$134/month)
Large (A3)
4
7 GB
$0.36
(~$268/month)
Extra Large (A4)
8
14 GB
$0.72
(~$536/month)
Memory Intensive Instances
Provide larger amounts of memory optimal for running high-throughput applications, such as databases or SharePoint server farms. Detailed configurations of these instances are available here.
COMPUTE INSTANCE NAME
VIRTUAL CORES
RAM
PRICE PER HOUR
A5
2
14 GB
$0.40
(~$298/month)
A6
4
28 GB
$0.80
(~$596/month)
A7
8
56 GB
$1.60
(~$1,191/month)
WEBSITES
Fastest way to build for the cloud
Windows Azure offers secure and flexible development, deployment and scaling options for any sized web application. Leverage your existing tools to create and deploy applications without the hassle of managing infrastructure.
Provision a production web application yourself in minutes from the Windows Azure Management Portal, from your favorite IDE or from scripts using PowerShell in Windows or CLI tools running on any OS. Easily deploy content created using your existing favorite development tool or deploy an existing site directly from source control with support for Git, GitHub, Bitbucket, CodePlex, TFS, and even DropBox. Once deployed keep your sites always up-to-date with support for continuous deployment.
Secure platform that scales automatically
Windows Azure Web Sites provides custom domain with both A and CNAME records support as well as support for SSL with both SNI and IP-based SSL certificates for sessions over HTTPS. Scale-up or scale-out your site in just seconds with zero code changes or effort. Sites scaled out to multiple instances are automatically load balanced. Set your site to scale up and down automatically providing the ultimate in cost efficiency and performance for your mission critical applications.
Great experience for Visual Studio developers
Developers using Visual Studio can right-click on any ASP.NET site in Solution Explorer to deploy their web site. Users can also associate their Azure Subscription within Visual Studio and deploy to any website in the subscription as well as manage any site right within Visual Studio to change configuration settings, stop/start the site or stream site logs directly to the output window in Visual Studio.
Open and flexible for everyone
Developers can create applications new applications from scratch or deploy existing ones built in ASP.NET, PHP, Node.js, Python or even Classic ASP. You can include a database when you provision a new site with a choice of SQL database or MySQL. Alternatively, developers can start by choosing from over 30 open source applications, frameworks and template from the Web Application Gallery including WordPress, Umbraco, DotNetNuke, Drupal, Django, CakePHP and Express.
MOBILE SERVICES
Create a scalable and secure backend for your Windows, Android, and iOS apps
Mobile Services allows you to accelerate your mobile app development by providing a turnkey way to structure storage, authenticate users, and send push notifications. With SDKs for Windows, Android, iOS, and HTML as well as a powerful and flexible REST API, Mobile Services lets you to build connected applications for any platform and deliver a consistent experience across devices.
Use Mobile Services to:
Store data in the cloud
Mobile Services offers a straightforward way to store data in the cloud using Windows Azure SQL database, blob storage, table storage or third party data services like Mongo DB. Mobile Services and Service Bus Relay also provide the option to connect to on-premises databases so that sensitive data can be accessed on mobile devices without saving that data in the cloud. This wide variety of data options makes it easy to add a global leaderboard to cross-platform games, maintain a friends list, store user-generated images and videos, and even transactional information.
Easily authenticate users
Mobile Services eliminates the need to write, configure, and test custom authentication systems. By copying over the App ID and Secret for Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, or Google account, you can authenticate your users with only a few lines of code. Implementing an app-specific authentication system is of course supported, as is connecting to Windows Azure Active Directory for employee-facing mobile apps.
Send push notifications
Sending push notifications is as simple as uploading your developer credentials for a given platform and typing push.apns.send for iOS, push.gcm.send for Android, etc. You can also connect to Notification Hubs to broadcast push notifications to millions of devices across a variety of popular platforms.
Consume your favorite services
Simple server-side code allows you to enhance your data operations with custom logic. Using server-side code, you can send push notifications, SMS, or email, connect to other Windows Azure services, utilize add-ons from the Windows Azure Store, and consume any third party services with an exposed API. You can also set this code to run on a fixed schedule, which allows you to periodically purge old or duplicate data from tables, process and resize user submitted images, as well as query aggregate data from an external web service.
CLOUD SERVICES
Create highly-available, infinitely scalable applications and API’s
Quickly deploy and manage powerful applications and services with Windows Azure Cloud Services. Simply upload your application and Windows Azure handles the deployment details - from provisioning and load balancing to health monitoring for continuous availability. Your application is backed by an industry leading 99.95% monthly SLA. You just focus on the application and not the infrastructure. It’s that good.
Use Cloud Services to:
Focus on your application, not the infrastructure
Never worry about patching, hardware failures, or network issues again. Windows Azure Cloud Services is designed to let you build applications that are continuously available even during system upgrades and hardware failures. Now you can just work on the code – the part that matters.
Develop internet-scale API’s for a world of devices
Every new mobile application needs a powerful set of server side services to power it. With Windows Azure Cloud Services you have everything you need to build the most robust, scalable APIs you can dream up. Take advantage of instant access to infinite scale so you can handle huge success without having to write any new code.
Build modern, cloud architectures
Windows Azure Cloud Services provides the most effective application environment for building the most modern, distributed, computing applications on the planet. Your customers will benefit from apps that respond faster and never go down.
DATA SERVICES
Storage
Windows Azure provides scalable, durable cloud storage, backup, and recovery solutions for any data, big and small. It works with the infrastructure you already have to cost-effectively enhance your existing applications and business continuity strategy, as well as provide storage required by your cloud applications including unstructured text or binary data such as video, audio and images.
Currently, we offer these storage services:
Blob (Binary Large Object) storage
Blobs are the simplest way to store large amounts of unstructured text or binary data such as video, audio and images. Blobs are an ISO 27001 certified managed service which can auto scale to meet massive volume of up to 200 terabytes and throughput for all accounts created after June 7th, 2012 (100TB previously). Blobs are accessible from virtually anywhere via REST and managed APIs.
Use Blobs to:
Easily mount blobs as drives
Windows Azure Drive allows applications to mount a BLOB formatted as a single volume NTFS VM. You can move your VMs between private and public clouds using Windows Azure Drive.
Redundant Storage
We support the following types of storage redundancy:
Locally redundant storage (LRS): we maintain multiple replicas of data within a single region to provide high durability.
Geographically redundant storage (GRS): we provide additional data durability by asynchronously replicating between two regions hundreds of miles apart within the same geo. In both regions, we maintain multiple replicas of data.
Read-Access Geographically redundant storage (RA-GRS): Customers can use this service to access their data when the storage account in the primary region is unavailable allowing higher read availability over GRS.
Import/Export
Windows Azure Import/Export enables you to move large amounts of your data into and out of Windows Azure Blob Storage. Transporting your data from your hard disk drives to Azure is simple and easy. It can be completed by using secure transport to our datacenters and Microsoft’s high-speed secure internal network to transfer the data.
Windows Azure Import/Export makes data transfer easy and less costly than buying more bandwidth, saving you time and money.
Currently, Windows Azure Import/Export is available for preview in the United States.
Windows Azure Import/Export can be used for the following scenarios:
Data Migration – If you have large amounts of data that you want to upload to Windows Azure, our Import/Export service is often much faster than transferring over the internet.
Content Distribution – If you want to send data to your customers, Import/Export makes it easy to transfer data on HDD (Hard Disk Drives) enabling data availability through Windows Azure Blob Storage.
Data Recovery – if you want to retrieve large amounts of data stored in Windows Azure Blob Storage, you can use Import/Export to transfer the data to a storage device and have it delivered to you at your desired location.
StorSimple cloud-integrated storage
Hybrid cloud storage provides an optimal combination of data control and cloud economics. StorSimple cloud-integrated storage provides an on-premises enterprise-grade storage area network (SAN) that integrates seamlessly with Windows Azure Blob storage to enable unlimited capacity scaling, significantly lower cost of ownership and automated data protection in the cloud.
Tables
Tables offer NoSQL capabilities for applications that require storage of large amounts of unstructured data. Tables are an ISO 27001 certified managed service which can auto scale to meet massive volume of up to 200 terabytes and throughput for all accounts created after June 7th, 2012 (100TB previously). Tables are accessible from virtually anywhere via REST and managed APIs.
SQL Database
Windows Azure SQL Database, formerly SQL Azure, is a fully managed relational database service that delivers flexible manageability, includes built-in high availability, offers predictable performance, and supports massive scale-out.
Offered in different service tiers to meet basic and high-end needs, SQL Database enables organizations to rapidly build, extend, and scale relational applications in the cloud with familiar tools.
Drive innovative cloud-based data management scenarios
Business apps: Scale business apps for burst and global reach by removing the high costs of building an infrastructure which would accommodate occasional peak loads.
Web & mobile apps: Remove the security risks and hassles associated with hosting public-facing apps & websites from within a datacenter.
Hybrid apps: Customers with existing on-premises investments can get the best of both worlds by keeping current investments on-premises, including policy-constrained data, while extending parts of their application to the cloud for added innovation, scale, global reach and agility.
Visit the Data Management solutions page to discover more data management scenarios and customer success stories.
Unlock a new class of business-critical apps
Incorporating proven SQL Server technology, SQL Database delivers the capabilities required to support today’s emerging class of cloud applications.
Flexible & built-in manageability: Increase productivity by using your choice of SQL Server Management Studio, the Azure Management Portal with HTML5 support, PowerShell, or REST APIs to easily create and manage databases. Additionally, SQL Database service removes the need for patching and OS updates and maintenance. Learn how Samsung stays competitive with their global SmartTV business.
Built-in high availability: Two datacenter replicas built-in for every SQL database regardless of edition plus a 99.9% SLA. Learn how BetOnSoft leverages data protection for their business-critical monitoring app.
Predictable performance: Gain powerful and predictable performance for performance-intensive apps through reserved resources offered with Premium edition. Learn how MYOB enables mission-critical performance.
Scale-out: Support peak workloads with quick scale-out to thousands of distributed databases. Learn how Flavorous unlocked new business with massive scale.
Integrate the right SQL Database service tier for your app
As customers continue to push the boundaries of modern app innovation, there are distinct classes of cloud applications emerging. Based on these patterns, SQL Database offers two tiers of service.
Web and Business editions: Offers a cost-effective, scalable, and managed database service that includes built-in HA for customers looking to remove much of the database management overhead. Web edition scales to 10 MB while Business edition scales to 150 GB.
HDInsight Service
Where Big Data meets the Cloud
HDInsight is a Hadoop-based service from Microsoft that brings a 100 percent Apache Hadoop solution to the cloud. A modern, cloud-based data platform that manages data of any type, whether structured or unstructured, and of any size, HDInsight makes it possible for you to gain the full value of big data.
With HDInsight you can seamlessly process data of all types through Microsoft’s modern data platform, which provides simplicity, ease of management, and an open Enterprise-ready Hadoop service all running in the cloud. You can analyze your Hadoop data with PowerPivot, Power View and other Microsoft BI tools, thanks to integration with Microsoft data platform.
Insights with familiar tools
Through deep integration with Microsoft BI tools such as PowerPivot, Power View, HDInsight enables you to easily analyze Hadoop data for insights. Seamlessly combine data from several sources, including HDInsight, with Power Query. Easily map your data with the new Power Map, a 3D mapping tool in Excel 2013.
Deployment agility
HDInsight offers agility to meet the changing needs of your organization. With a rich library of Powershell scripts you can deploy and provision a Hadoop cluster in minutes instead of hours or days. If you need a larger cluster you can simply delete your cluster and create a bigger one in minutes without losing any data.
Enterprise-ready Hadoop
HDInsight offers enterprise-class security, scalability and manageability. Thanks to a dedicated Secure Node, HDInsight helps you secure your Hadoop cluster. You can also take full advantage of the elastic scalability of Windows Azure. In addition, we simplify manageability of your Hadoop cluster through extensive support for PowerShell scripting.
Rich Developer Experience
HDInsight offers powerful programming capabilities with a choice of languages including .NET, Java and other languages. .NET developers can exploit the full power of language-integrated query with LINQ to Hive. And Database Developers can use existing skills to query and transform data through Hive.
Windows Azure Cache
High throughput, low latency data access for your application to build fast, scalable cloud applications
Windows Azure Cache is a distributed, in-memory, scalable solution that enables you to build highly scalable and responsive applications by providing super-fast access to data.
Windows Azure Cache is available as a managed service, Cache Service (Preview). Or create and manage yourself using the Azure SDK (In-Role Cache).
High Performance
Windows Azure Cache helps your application become more responsive even as user load increases. The separate distributed cache layer allows your data tier to scale independently for more efficient use of compute resources in your application layer. No transaction limits means you only need to focus on your application, not scaling.
Great Features
Windows Azure Cache provides greater control and complete isolation of your cache with custom configurable options including creating up to 10 named caches for Standard and Premium caches with different expiration and eviction policies. Easily monitor the health and performance of your cache through the Windows Azure portal. Optionally configure high availability on individual caches for added resiliency for your cached data.
Easy to Use
Windows Azure SDK Cache API makes it easy to add cache to ASP.NET applications for Windows Azure Cache. Deploying Azure SDK 1.8 or later allows you to easily migrate between In-Role Cache and the Cache Service. Easily migrate applications using on-premises AppFabric Cache or Windows Azure Shared Caching to the new Cache Service. Or configure existing applications that use Memcached to Windows Azure Cache with no code changes.
In-Role Cache
Allows you to perform caching by using a portion of the memory for the web or worker role instances that host an application or with a dedicated web or worker role instance in an application deployed to Windows Azure Cloud Services. This provides flexibility in terms of deployment options and size but you manage the cache yourself. Read more on In-Role Cache.
Windows Azure Backup
Simple and reliable server backup to the cloud
Windows Azure Backup helps you protect important server data off-site with automated backup to Windows Azure.
Reliable offsite data protection
Backups are encrypted before transmission and stored encrypted in Windows Azure. These backups are off-site, safely away from your datacenter, protected by reliable Windows Azure storage, reducing the need to secure and protect on-site backup media, .
A simple and integrated solution
Manage cloud backups from the familiar backup tools in Windows Server, Windows Server Essentials, or System Center Data Protection Manager. These tools provide similar experiences configuring, monitoring, and recovering backups whether to local disk or Windows Azure storage. Or you can use the agent software itself. After data is backed up to the cloud, authorized users can easily recover backups to any server.
Efficient and flexible backup and recovery
With incremental backups, only changes to files are transferred to the cloud. This helps ensure efficient use of storage and reduced bandwidth consumption, while enabling point-in-time recovery of multiple versions of the data. Configurable data retention policies, data compression, and data transfer throttling offer added flexibility and help boost efficiency.
Hyper-V Recovery Manager
Orchestrate protection and recovery of private clouds
Windows Azure Hyper-V Recovery Manager can help you protect important services by coordinating the replication and recovery of System Center 2012 private clouds at a secondary location.
Automated protection
System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager clouds can be protected through automating the replication of the virtual machines that compose them at a secondary location. The ongoing asynchronous replication of each VM is provided by Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Replica and is monitored and coordinated by Hyper-V Recovery Manager.
Continuous Health Monitoring
Hyper-V Recovery Manager monitors the state of Virtual Machine Manage clouds continuously and remotely from Windows Azure. Only the System Center Virtual Machine Manager servers communicate directly with Windows Azure - your data and its replication remains on your networks.
Orchestrated Recovery
The service helps automate the orderly recovery in the event of a site outage at the primary data center. VMs can be brought up in an orchestrated fashion to help restore service quickly. This process can also be used for testing recovery, or temporarily transferring services.
APP SERVICES
Media Services
Build workflows for the creation, management, and distribution of media with windows azure Media Services
Media Services offer the flexibility, scalability and reliability of a cloud platform to handle high quality media experiences for a global audience. Media Services includes cloud-based versions of many existing technologies from the Microsoft Media Platform and our media partners, including ingest, encoding, format conversion, content protection and both on-demand and live streaming capabilities. Whether enhancing existing solutions or creating new workflows, you can easily combine and manage Media Services to create custom workflows that fit every need.
Use Media Services to:
Build end to end workflows
Build comprehensive media workflows entirely in the cloud. From uploading media to distributing content, Media Services provide a range of pre-build, ready-to-use, first and third-party components that can be combined to meet your specific needs. Capabilities include upload, storage, encoding, format conversion, content protection, and delivery.
Develop hybrid workflows
Easily integrate Media Services with tools and processes you already use. For example, encode content on-site then upload to Media Services for transcoding into multiple formats and deliver through a third-party CDN. Media Services can be called individually via standard REST API’s for easy integration with external applications and services.
Provide cloud support for multiple devices and platforms
Creating, managing and delivering media across multiple devices has never been easier. Media Services provide everything you need to deliver content to a variety of devices, from Xbox and Windows PCs, to MacOS, iOS and Android.
Messaging
Keep your apps connected across private and public cloud environments
Windows Azure Service Bus provides the messaging channel for connecting your cloud applications to your on-premises applications, services and systems.
Windows Azure Service Bus
Service Bus is messaging infrastructure that sits between applications allowing them to exchange messages in a loosely coupled way for improved scale and resiliency. Service Bus is managed and operated by Microsoft with a 99.9% monthly SLA.
Use Service Bus to:
Manage message delivery in the cloud
Service Bus Queues offer simple first in, first out guaranteed message delivery and supports a range of standard protocols (REST, AMQP, WS*) and API’s to put/pull messages on/off a queue. Service Bus Topics deliver messages to multiple subscriptions and easily fan out message delivery at scale to downstream systems.
Connect on-premises applications to the cloud
Service Bus Relay solves the challenges of communicating between on-premises applications and the outside world by allowing on-premises web services to project public endpoints. Systems can then access these web services, which continue to run on-premises from anywhere on the planet.
Push notifications at scale to mobile devices
Notification Hubs provide a simple, scalable way to send out push notifications to apps on popular mobile platforms without needing to understand or directly interface with the many notification mechanisms for each platform.
Queues
Windows Azure Queue service is used for reliable, persistent messaging between applications. You can use Queues to transfer messages between applications or services in Windows Azure. Queues store messages that may be read by any client who has access to the storage account. A queue can contain an unlimited number of messages, each of which can be up to 64KB in size. Queues are assessable via REST services from anywhere via the internet, and supports .NET, Java and Node.JS client libraries.
Notification Hubs
Notification Hubs provide a highly scalable, cross-platform push notification infrastructure that enables you to either broadcast push notifications to millions of users at once or tailor notifications to individual users.
On every mobile platform, push notifications are a critical element of any application. Push Notifications are simply the most immediate means through which to engage and empower your users. Building and maintaining the infrastructure for a push notification system capable of reaching millions of users within minutes, however, is far from simple. On your own, delivering millions of push notifications within minutes would require tens of virtual machines running in parallel. We created Notification Hubs to give developers an easy and reliable way to reach their users on any platform and from any connected application backend.
Use Notification Hubs to:
Broadcast cross-platform push notifications to millions of devices in minutes
Notification Hubs supply a common API to send push notifications to a variety of mobile platforms, including Windows Store, Windows Phone, iOS and Android. You can choose to send platform-specific notifications or broadcast a single platform-agnostic notification to all users. A few lines of code gives you the power to reach either all devices on a single platform or all iOS, Android and Windows devices at once.
Notification Hubs send out push notifications to millions of users within minutes, not hours. That makes this service a particularly good partner for when speed matters most—such as with breaking news.
Notification Hubs can be used with any connected application—whether it’s built on Virtual Machines, Cloud Services, Web Sites, or Mobile Services. This makes it easy to update any of your mobile apps right away and start engaging your users on their terms.
Target content to specific user segments
With Notification Hubs, you not only have the ability to broadcast notifications to all your users at once (regardless of their mobile platform). You also have the ability to subscribe users to any number of tags when you register them with a Notification Hub. Those tags give you an easy way to define and target user segments based on activity, interests, location, etc. with a single API call. By using those tags effectively, you never have to store and manage device tokens or Ids in your app’s backend in order to route notifications to particular users.
Use templates to tailor each user’s notifications
Templates provide a way for developers to specify the exact format of the notification that each user receives based on each of their preferences. By using templates, there is no need to store the localization settings for each of your customers or to create hundreds of tags. You just need to register the templates that specify the correct language with a Notification Hub and send a single message with all the localized content. Once your Notification Hub receives that single message, it will extract the correct localized message for each targeted user from the message.
Achieve extreme scale
Notification Hubs are optimized for massive scale. With Notification Hubs, you can quickly scale to millions of devices and billions of push notifications without ever having to re-architect or shard your application. The Notification Hub you configure for a given application will automatically handle the pub/sub scale-out infrastructure necessary to scale your message to every active device with incredibly low latency. All it takes is one message from your connect app’s backend to the Notification Hub and millions of push notifications will be fired off to your users.
Windows Azure BizTalk Services
Seamlessly integrate the enterprise and the cloud
Windows Azure BizTalk Services is a simple, powerful, and extensible cloud-based integration service that provides Business-to-Business (B2B) and Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) capabilities for delivering cloud and hybrid integration solutions. The service runs in a secure, dedicated, per-tenant environment that you can provision on demand.
Use BizTalk Services for:
Cloud-based EDI Processing
BizTalk Services provides a robust and extensible solution for trading partner management and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) processing, which can lower the cost of business partner collaboration for enterprise and EDI service providers.
Enterprise Application Integration
BizTalk Services provides a flexible integration platform for enterprises and systems integrators to build EAI solutions for integrating on-premises, SaaS, and cloud services with easy to use config-driven interfaces.
Building Hybrid Applications
BizTalk Services provides out-of-the box, cloud to on-premises, line-of-business applications integration for SAP, Oracle EBS, SQL Server, and PeopleSoft. It allows you to connect with any HTTP, FTP, SFTP, or REST data sources. You can route messages by using various Windows Azure artifacts such as Service Bus Queues, Topics, SQL Database, and Blob store.
Enterprise-level identity and access management for the cloud
Windows Azure Active Directory is a comprehensive identity and access management cloud solution. It combines core directory services, advanced identity governance, security and application access management. Windows Azure Active Directory also offers to developers an identity management platform to deliver access control to their applications, based on centralized policy and rules. For enterprises with more demanding needs an advanced offering, Windows Azure Active Directory Premium, currently in preview, helps complete the set of capabilities that this identity and access management solution delivers.
Use Windows Azure AD to:
Effectively manage users and access to cloud resources.
Manage user account and attributes through the Windows Azure management portal. Centrally manage users’ access to Windows Azure and other Microsoft online services like Microsoft Office 365 and a world of non-Microsoft SaaS applications. Set up provisioning and de-provisioning of user accounts stored in your cloud directory to the SaaS application that your organization uses. Monitor inconsistent access patterns to mitigate potential threats.
Extend your on-premises Active Directory to the cloud
Extend your on-premises directory to Windows Azure Active Directory so that users can authenticate with one set of corporate credentials to their cloud-based resources. User attributes can be automatically synchronized to your cloud directory using a free downloadable tool, DirSync. Authentication is accomplished either through federation or password synchronization.
Provide single sign-on across your cloud applications
Deliver a seamless, single sign-on experience to your users across Microsoft online services, applications built on Windows Azure and hundreds of popular non-Microsoft cloud applications. Make it easier for end users to quickly and effectively launch cloud applications from within their personalized web-based Access Panel.
Enable Multi-factor Authentication for enhanced security
Windows Azure Multi-Factor Authentication can be enabled for Windows Azure AD users to help improve access protection to hundreds of cloud services and applications. Convenient authentication options (mobile apps, phone calls, and text messages) allow for a simple sign-on experience while providing the strong security procedures that organizations require.
Offer authentication and access management solution for developers
Windows Azure Active Directory offers developers an effective way to integrate identity management in their applications. Ensure that a consistent and appropriate access to your organization’s applications is maintained to help you meet critical internal security and compliance needs. Enable centralized authentication and authorization using identities hosted in Windows Azure Active Directory or social logins like Microsoft account, Facebook, Yahoo! and Google. Query directory objects’ details and relationships with Graph API.
Windows Azure Multi-Factor Authentication
Windows Azure Multi-Factor Authentication reduces organizational risk and helps enable regulatory compliance by providing an extra layer of authentication, in addition to a user’s account credentials, to secure employee, customer, and partner access. Windows Azure Multi-Factor Authentication can be used for both on-premises and cloud applications.
Get security and convenience
Windows Azure Multi-Factor Authentication helps safeguard access to your data and applications while addressing user demand for a simple sign-in process. The service offers enhanced protection from malware threats, and real-time alerts notify your IT department of potentially compromised account credentials. Multi-Factor Authentication delivers strong authentication via a range of easy options, including mobile apps, phone calls, and text messages, allowing users to choose the method that works best for them. Support for multiple methods ensures that users can always be reached for additional authentication.
Add it to on-premises applications
Use the Multi-Factor Authentication Server to enable additional authentication for on-premises applications such as remote access VPNs and web applications, as well as cloud applications using Active Directory Federation Services. Sync with Windows Server Active Directory or another LDAP directory to streamline user management. Run the Multi-Factor Authentication Server on your existing hardware or in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine. Multiple, redundant servers can be configured for high availability and fail-over.
Turn it on for Windows Azure Active Directory (Windows Azure AD)
Use Multi-Factor Authentication to secure access to Windows Azure, Microsoft Online Services like Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online, as well as third party cloud services that integrate Windows Azure AD. Simply enable Multi-Factor Authentication for Windows Azure AD identities, and users will be prompted to set up additional verification the next time they sign in.
Build it into your applications
A Software Development Kit (SDK) enables direct integration with your cloud services. Build Multi-Factor Authentication phone call and text message verification methods into your application’s sign-in or transaction processes and leverage your application’s existing user database.
NETWORK
Windows Azure Virtual Network
Windows Azure Virtual Network enables you to create a logically isolated section in Windows Azure and securely connect it to your on-premises datacenter or a single client machine using an IPsec connection. Virtual Network makes it easy for you to take advantage of Windows Azure’s scalable, on-demand infrastructure while providing connectivity to data and applications on-premises, including systems running on Windows Server, mainframes and UNIX.
When using Virtual Network you are backed by a 99.9% monthly SLA and have flexibility to enable a range of hybrid IT scenarios.
Use Virtual Network to:
Extend your datacenter
Virtual Network makes it easy to extend your datacenter using Windows Azure much in the same way that you would set up and connect to a remote branch office. You retain control over the network topology and configuration, and manage it in the same way you would your on-premises infrastructure.
Build distributed applications
Virtual Network makes it easier to build cloud applications hosted in a hybrid environment, maintaining secure connections with on-premises infrastructure without the creation of custom codes. For example, a web application hosted in Windows Azure can securely access an on-premise SQL Server database server or authenticate users against an on-premise Active Directory service.
Remotely debug your applications
With Virtual Network, you can create a direct connection between your local development machine and virtual machines hosted in Windows Azure, which allows you to troubleshoot and debug them using the same tools you would use for on-premises applications.
Traffic Manager
Traffic Manager allows you to load balance incoming traffic across multiple hosted Windows Azure services whether they’re running in the same datacenter or across different datacenters around the world. By effectively managing traffic, you can ensure high performance, availability and resiliency of your applications. Traffic Manager provides you a choice of three load balancing methods: performance, failover, or round robin.
Use Traffic Manager to:
Ensure high availability for your applications
Traffic Manager enables you to improve the availability of your critical applications by monitoring your hosted services in Windows Azure and providing automatic failover capabilities when a service goes down.
Run responsive applications
Windows Azure allows you to run services in datacenters located around the globe. By serving end-users with the hosted service that is closest to them in terms of network latency, Traffic Manager can improve the responsiveness of your applications and content delivery times.
