Businesses in today’s digital era are facing fierce global competition amidst increasing costs, reducing margins and demanding customers. Statistics reveal that in 2018, around 45% of the SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) in the US found it difficult to maintain profitability, while 19% experienced uncertainty over economic conditions. Around 21% faced hard times complying with tax laws and rules and 19% found difficulties to comply with other government regulations. On the other hand, SMBs (Small and Medium Businesses) in the US was a target of 43% cyber-attacks in 2015.
To summarize, some of the main challenges faced by SMBs in the US are
- Increasing revenue
- Changing customer behavior
- Enhancing profitability
- Increasing data security
- Digitalization
- Legal/Government compliance
- Changing business needs
With a multitude of challenges, SMBs in the US are searching for secure and profitable options to combat these challenges and increase revenue quickly and effectively. Microsoft Azure with its inherent architecture and features, helps businesses manage infrastructure and data with robust security, cost savings and efficiency.
What features make Microsoft Azure Cloud adoption ideal for SMBs?
Following are some reasons why Microsoft Azure Solutions and Services adoption is crucial for your business.
- ScalabilityWith Azure Cloud, your business can quickly scale up or down necessary resources when needed. Thus, in case of growing data needs or requirements of new functionality, it’s as easy as to select it from Azure’s menu and deploy it quickly. To take an example, while using Azure App services, depending on the number of website visitors, usage of memory and CPU, on-demand infrastructure requirement, etc., the website can be auto-scaled horizontally (add additional load-balanced servers) or vertically (additional resources to a single server) to manage extra traffic during specific timings.
- Cost benefitsAs Azure is a Cloud platform, you can access servers, networking, storage and software over the internet. It saves you from buying expensive software. You have to pay for the Cloud services you use each month without any upfront commitment, resulting in significant cost-savings. Further, you can cancel or change it based on your business needs. This feature is ideal for SMBs where the infrastructure capacity demand keeps fluctuating.
- No downtimeWith Azure Availability Zones, Azure offers its clients 99.99% service-level agreement (SLA) assurance of uptime. Thus, Azure ensures that there is no downtime, saving you from the need to purchase secondary infrastructure as a backup.
- Robust security and complianceAzure offers unmatched security management and threat protection with a proactive approach to security, compliance, and privacy. Azure Security Center helps you protect your data by preventing, detecting and responding to security threats in time. Azure holds more certifications than any other Cloud service provider and offers comprehensive compliance coverage.
- Disaster recoveryDisaster recovery is vital for business continuity. The Azure Site Recovery (ASR) service provides businesses with the necessary protection from disasters. The ASR ensures the availability of servers and data when a disaster strikes, offering you the much needed competitive advantage. Azure’s DRaaS (Disaster Recovery as a Service) enables business continuity during natural or artificial catastrophes by assuring low Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs) for every business-critical instance at affordable price.
- IntegrationWhether it’s an existing application or the onsite IT infrastructure, Microsoft Azure gets integrated with the same ease. Most of the operating systems, databases, application frameworks, programming languages and tools are compatible with Azure Cloud services. You can either develop your application using .Net, JavaScript, PHP or build services for mobile apps. Further, Azure can easily integrate with your existing data centers through a hybrid database and storage options to take advantage of onsite and cloud computing.
- Azure insightAzure Monitor offers you a hassle-free way to manage your resource groups and maximizes the performance and availability of your services and applications by collecting, analyzing and acting on the telemetry from your cloud environments. It also provides detailed metrics and real-time alerts that make it easy to keep a check on the health and performance of the resources and in turn, your application as a whole.
Besides these impeccable features, there are some out of many ready-to-use solutions offered by Azure that can prove to be a great resource for SMBs.
Ready-to-use Azure Solutions for SMBs
- Azure insightAzure offers a flexible and open e-commerce platform with built-in tools to analyze conversion optimization, site traffic, customer behavior and history and abandonment zones. Azure extends these functionalities to customer service and supply chain sectors.
- Digital MarketingAzure provides businesses with tools to manage Digital Marketing functions that act on real-time data and analytics.
- Business IntelligenceAzure offers a broad range of predictive analytics services to enable businesses to make smarter data-driven and better-informed decisions in real-time.
- AppsIt offers various functionalities in this category. With machine learning and predictive analytics, you can scale your SaaS app. You can deliver interactive and rich visualizations by using ‘Power BI Embedded”.
With 29.4% of the total public cloud installed base measured by application workloads, Microsoft Azure is increasingly gaining popularity with its cost-effectivity and other features. With the right expertise and experience, WaferWire Cloud Technology can help your business gain the competitive advantage associated with Microsoft Azure Cloud adoption. For more information or queries related to Microsoft Azure Solutions and Services, feel free to contact us.
