Migrating to Azure: What Would It Mean in 2024

Welcome to yet another post from our weekly series, which is usually based on how cloud computing helps different verticals in meeting industry-specific challenges and emerging as the winner of the time. In our previous post, we covered cloud migrations for the Automotive Industry (LINK: How Does Cloud Migration Help your Automotive Business: Migrate to Cloud with LogicEra!) and discussed how Automotive companies are leveraging the power of the cloud to achieve improved scalability, better vehicle engineering, faster time to market, uninterrupted network services, reduced costs, etc. In this post, we will discuss how cloud migration is helping manufacturing businesses not just transform their design, production, and supply chain processes but also in driving innovation, enhancing customer experience, accelerating growth, reducing costs, and much more.

With manufacturing companies experiencing organic growth caused by pent-up demand from consumers & businesses, greater geographic reach, new product categories, and more product diversity, the following two things are guaranteed for them:

• Increasing acquisitions & mergers
• Increasing need for better data management to analyze business better

These two factors alone are driving them towards digital transformation and cloud adoption, though there is a whole list of reasons why manufacturing companies should move to the cloud. The cloud has led to the true arrival of the modern manufacturing era by revolutionizing the design, production, & supply chain processes, and by truly driving innovation. It has led to the influx of productivity & workplace applications & tools that are designed to meet almost every need. All these reasons account for the rapid growth in the manufacturing cloud computing market size.

As depicted by a recent report, the global cloud-based manufacturing market is expected to reach $131.15 billion by 2024 at a CAGR of 22.9%. Propelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturing companies’ need for the cloud has increased even more.

Here are the top seven ways cloud migration is helping manufacturing businesses in reaching multiple targets while reducing costs at the same time.

Microsoft Azure may have hit the market a little late in comparison to some of its rivals but has become the fastest-growing Cloud Service Provider on the planet. A whopping 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies at present are using Microsoft’s Azure for their cloud solutions. Not just that, if you look at the cloud computing market statistics in 2019, with 11.7 percent as its share Microsoft lead the cloud market worth 246 billion U.S. dollars.

The significant advances Azure has made over the years are coercing businesses to not only migrate from on-premises to it but also from other cloud platforms. All these consumers’ preference for Azure is attributed to the features & capabilities the CSP offers. If you have already made up your mind to migrate to Azure and looking for more concrete reasons to implement your decision, here are a few ways Azure can benefit your business in 2024. So, check them out one by one.

#1: Global Presence

Available in 140 countries, Azure covers over 60 regions, which is the maximum in comparison to any other CSP on Earth. This global footprint allows you to achieve the scale you would have needed to make your applications available to users irrespective of the part of the world they are working from, as such. With two regions already located in South Africa, Azure has become the first hyper-scale CSP that has built facilities on the African continent.

#2: Robust Security

With multilayered security across operations, infrastructure, and data centers, as well as industry-leading physical security systems and a wide-ranging portfolio of privacy standards and compliance offerings, Azure ensures your data and business assets are safe. Despite arriving late in the cloud market, Azure became the first CSP that got approved by the European Union’s data protection authorities for meeting European privacy laws standards. That’s not all, the new international standard of cloud privacy, ISO 27018 was first embraced by Azure itself. Moreover, apart from embracing HIPAA and ISO 27001 compliance, the CSP also meets several country-specific standards like UK’s G-Cloud and Australia’s IRAP.

#3: Application Innovation

With Azure, you can utilize your data in multiple ways through a variety of options it offers for developing innovative applications. Whether it is about creating functions or running them serverless in the cloud, all these are possible with Azure. The CSP also allows you to make changes to your database or add anything to it if you want. Utilizing Power BI to generate reports, running an Azure-offered AI model on your data, or performing other application innovation activities like these are something you could easily do with Azure.

#4: Hybrid Cloud Compatibility

While most of its rivals are still testing the waters with it, Azure offered the hybrid cloud model long back. The CSP allows you to connect your data centers seamlessly to the cloud. You can easily move your database, applications, and workloads from on-premises to the cloud through the consistent platforms it offers. Moreover, hybrid applications could be developed on Azure, which can utilize resources that data centers contain at both ends. Not just that, Azure also offers a wide range of hybrid connections that can be utilized for improving usability and performance. A few examples of hybrid connections it offers are content delivery networks (CDNs), virtual private networks (VPNs), ExpressRoute connections, and caches.

#5: Language Compatibility

Not all cloud solutions are compatible with .NET and various other languages, however, Microsoft Azure is. It is compatible with a comprehensive list of languages that include Python, .NET, Node.js, Java, PHP, etc. This is how Azure is helping businesses easily shift their Windows applications to the cloud.

However!

There is no rose without thorns! With all the goodies it offers, there is two disadvantage of Azure that are:

• It is complex to handle, especially for those who lack cloud expertise
• Comprehending the free support services offered by Azure is not easy for those who lack cloud expertise

The Solution:

You can get a cloud consultant on board or outsource cloud services to a Managed Services Provider (MSP). They have years of experience in managing cloud migration and maintenance for different clients across different sectors. They are more exposed to issues that occur frequently during cloud migration and management and so can deal with them easily. Besides, most MSPs provide 24*7 support services.

Wrapping UP

So, in this article, we discussed how moving to Azure can benefit your business in 2024 and also what are the major two challenges of Azure & how to overcome them. Hopefully, the article helps you in your research on Microsoft Azure. However, if you are looking for cloud migration companies in Dubai that provide cloud monitoring & management services apart from cloud migration services, there are several MSPs you can rely on. Most MSPs that provide cloud IT services in Dubai have collaborated with Azure and are Azure’s trusted partners.