Azure Competency 15 | 08 | 2022

Azure Competency: why Microsoft Certification is necessary?

The use of cloud services today is among the most popular and safest ways of data storage. And we are discussing one of such services, namely, Azure, created by Microsoft.

The war in Ukraine showed that companies that utilized cloud solutions were more protected from the risks that organizations that didn’t use cloud encountered. The last had to swiftly relocate their data to the cloud since there was a huge risk of losing them. Therefore, to protect your business and clients, it is crucial to store all your data in a secure place and have access to them 24/7 from everywhere you may go.

In the article, Bohdan Dmytryshyn, CTO and Co-founder at Agiliway, talks about Azure, and its features and shares Agiliway’s experience in utilizing it in their projects.

About Azure

In 2017 the income from selling Azure services was equal to Google Cloud. However, Microsoft has put way more effort into growing its services to be competitive in the market. Today it overrun Google and is getting really close to the cloud market leader – Amazon.

For average users, Microsoft is usually associated with Windows OS. Yet, when it comes to cloud services, Microsoft promotes open-source solutions along with Linux OS. This was a huge step that streamlined the growth of MS and led to more new clients and partners.

Companies and clients all over the world focus on using cloud technologies. Today, it is difficult to find a project or service that doesn’t utilize Azure, Amazon or Google, or other smaller cloud solution providers.

Azure Competency

When building solutions with Azure, we apply years of experience, as well as requests that come from potential customers. Based on this, we can see the direction the market is progressing in, and which technologies are predominant. Accordingly, we select the necessary specialists and provide a full range of services from consulting to product implementation, promotion on the market, and more.

Obtaining international certificates is one of the steps that confirm the company’s professionalism and enable the implementation of complex solutions. Ihor Lysenko, Chief Engineering and Customer Support, is responsible for the development of competencies and certifications in the company. At the beginning of this year, the company confirmed its Microsoft certification and became a Gold Partner, and a number of our developers have certificates that confirm their qualifications and experience in working with .Net and Azure, which allows you to fully use the potential and help solve complex tasks.

Usually, when clients contact us, they already have a project idea or a partially built application with a specific technology stack. Among the most frequent requests would be the configuration and optimization on the database side. Having certified specialists and extensive experience working with databases at our disposal, our team analyzes the client’s existing problems. Sometimes simple changes such as database reconfiguration and adding an additional layer/level of caching on the application side, allow the client to solve the performance problem without making major changes to the project architecture. This way, the client continues to use his updated and optimized product without the need for a radical redesign.

Many customers want to transfer their on-premises (server located on the client side) solution to the cloud of a cloud service provider. To successfully implement an application using Azure, a high-level competency in this field is a must. A lack of understanding of particular services and their use as well as the availability of certified specialists can become a sticking point for the client. The selection of suitable services determines the further fate of a particular project. That is why it is extremely important to cooperate with certified specialists who have a professional approach and will advise what is necessary to cover your product needs. Owing to this approach, our clients receive the most optimal solutions.

Analysis of the client’s needs and plans for the future are among the main steps. Based on this, we offer solutions using only the services they need, and which will allow the future product to be flexible and easily adaptive to the changing market. Of course, if the project is small, then you can build solutions using other, smaller cloud solutions, and easily transfer your data to Azure when necessary.

Azure services for data storage: How do they work?

We want to briefly dwell on the topic of data storage and processing in Azure. The two main services that will help the company quickly transfer databases and files to the cloud and effectively use Azure functionality are as follows:

Azure database services. This service allows you to deploy a database in the cloud. Most of the tasks that required a DevOps engineer can be performed using Azure settings. For example, data backup, replication settings, an automatic increase of RAM or hard drive space, monitoring, etc.

Setting up multi-zoning is crucial for users who locate in different Geo zones and require immediate access to data. Azure allows you to set up automatic data exchange and synchronization between different zones and locations, seamless and instant access to data for customers.

Azure BLOB storage. A great solution for storing large volumes of data, files, videos, etc. The cost of storing files that are rarely used can be significantly reduced by changing the type of BLOB storage, i.e., by restricting access, backing up data, etc. And this is a significant advantage, as it allows you to store files at a low price and easily control costs.

As you can see, the use of Azure services is the best option for projects of various levels of complexity and size. However, it is also important to find qualified specialists who understand the operation of this cloud service, who will help not only to configure its operation, but also to choose the most suitable option from among hundreds. If we are talking about an MVP (Minimum Viable Product – a minimum viable product or a product with a minimum set of functions), then you should not use all existing or available features as this will significantly affect the price of the hosting solution. We recommend connecting only the necessary features at the right time. This, first of all, optimizes costs for hosts without losing the performance of the application.

The development of Azure competencies and certifications is an important direction for the company’s growth. The application of best practices in working with Azure allows our specialists to consult clients and build optimal solutions to implement their ideas. Working with the company’s certified specialists, Agiliway clients are confident in a high-quality and wide range of software development and support services.

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