Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform with more than 200 products and cloud services designed to support your organisation's infrastructure and your applications. It enables you to build, run, and manage workloads seamlessly across multiple clouds - on-site, and at the edge - with the tools and frameworks of your choice. 

Azure is the preferred choice of 95% of Fortune 500 companies and is a proven cost-effective cloud solution. It’s extremely flexible and scales as businesses do, flexing up or down if and when required. With such a powerful suite of digital tools there is so much you can do.

Authored by Dan Hall, Technologist Data Centre & Cloud

Why do businesses want to start their journey to the cloud?

One way of keeping up with - or surpassing - your competition, is through utilising the latest technology. With so many businesses seeing huge advantages of moving to the cloud, it’s worth understanding more about the main benefits of cloud computing. 

One of the great things about the cloud is that it allows you to access and use resources on demand. So forget about the need or cost for physical data centres and costly infrastructures. For example, With the cloud you can store and process large amounts of data without being limited to the constraints of local storage. 

Flexibility is another key benefit of operating in the cloud. Not only does being flexible provide you with a competitive edge, it also allows you to scale up and down your resources on-demand, ensuring optimal performance without unnecessary expenses. Plus for businesses operating a hybrid working model, remote workers can access everything they need to collaborate with colleagues and clients without their physical presence being needed. 

“With cloud computing, companies create an average saving of 92% compared to companies without it, which, when surveyed by VentureBeat, only reported an average saving of 43%.”

How can Azure simplify your cloud journey process?

The size of your organisation will determine how you begin and carry out your cloud journey. To make the process as simple and user-friendly as possible, Azure offers a range of resources, tools, training, and guidance for both in-house and partner-assisted migrations, so help is never far away.

If you find, as many businesses do, the process of migrating to the cloud overwhelming, it’s crucial to find a trusted digital partner to help you navigate your journey. A good partner should also be a trusted advisor and someone to provide expert support, guidance and assistance. 

How can CAE support in the cloud journey?

Managing complex IT infrastructure is what we do, that’s why so many businesses choose to work with us as their cloud partner . While we enable them to implement and optimise their cloud computing, they can focus all their efforts on running their business operations. To ensure we understand where you are now, and where you want to go, we begin every customer cloud journey with a cloud assessment .

CAE is an official Microsoft Solutions Partner enabling us to specialise in Microsoft Azure. This partnership status strengthens our commitment to transform your business and your customer’s experiences through technology, by offering cutting-edge solutions to lead to great success. 

To learn more about how we can help you with your cloud journey, register for our webinar: Our approach to your cloud journey with Microsoft Azure.

"85% of organisations will embrace a cloud-first approach by 2025"1

"85% of respondents in a 2021 IDC survey noted that their organisation had modernised more than half of its legacy application - up from 65% in 2020"2

1] Gartner, “Top strategic technology trends for 2022: 12 trends shaping the future of digital business,” 2022. 2] IDC White Paper, sponsored by Microsoft, “The Business Value of Migrating and Modernising with Azure,” doc # US49616022, September 2022.