What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and an online portal that allows you to access and manage cloud services and resources provided by Microsoft. These services and resources include storing your data and transforming it, depending on your requirements.

Some of the Azure services in the cloud computing platform is mentioned below:

• Compute services This includes Microsoft Azure Cloud Services (web and worker roles), Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Websites, and Azure Mobile Services.
• Data services This includes Microsoft Azure Storage (comprised of the Blob, Queue, Table, and Azure Files services), Azure SQL Database, and the Redis Cache.
• Application services This includes services that you can use to help build and operate your applications, such as the Azure Active Directory, Service Bus for connecting distributed systems, HDInsight for processing big data, the Azure Scheduler, and Azure Media Services.
• Network services This includes Azure features such as Virtual Networks, the Azure Content Delivery Network, and the Azure Traffic Manager.

An online management portal provides the easiest way to manage the resources you deploy into Azure. You can use this to create virtual networks, use cloud services, set up VMs, set up storage accounts, define websites, and so on. In order to deploy and manage the resources to the Azure portal, you would require a subscription.