Computing is getting farther from the old approach of storing software and data in your tower of server. The devices are shrinking and becoming more mobile. In fact, they are transforming into portals that are used even for distant applications and files.  The cloud is useful as private or even as a third-party datacenter. A lot of cloud providers now provide that comes in software subscriptions or SaaS that represents Software as a Service, identical to the Microsoft’s Office 365 suite.  However, if you wish to host or create applications in the cloud, you need azure service.

Developers may use Azure as a platform to deploy and build applications. They can create the code using the tools provided by Azure portal, and then the virtual machines will execute the application rules using Windows Server. Right from the development, the Azure hosting tools are bought through a subscription.

Virtual Machines (IaaS)

Azure offers the ability of creating VMs and this is done by merely specifying the (VHD) Virtual Hard Disk and the size you wish to use. The VHD in a hard drive is the virtual version on a computer. In fact, it is the storage unit having all the saved files and applications. The Microsoft Azure offers access to Linux and Windows VHDs, such that it accommodates with expertise. Thus, you can pay for the actual time the VM is running.

The biggest VM advantage is that developers may use them to test and build applications at a low cost. It can also be used to augment the datacenters on-site and promote the application power like SharePoint. As Azure Virtual Machines offer you the computing substrate through service subscription for applications, it falls in the Infrastructure of a Service category referred to as (IaaS).

Web Sites

Using Azure as a platform to host and create websites or even the web applications is possible. The websites support different content management systems and developmental tools. It makes your site easily available to many visitors that there is no need to upgrade or maintain the on-site servers. Thus, having the website hosted on Azure you can enjoy autoscaling and it means the capacity of the server will be augmented automatically to accommodate any traffic spike and will return to normal. Note that, again you pay only for the capacity you use.

Mobile Services (mBaaS): 

Azure’s Mobile Services, like Cloud Services, offers the tools to users to create and deploy applications such that the apps are targeting the mobile devices. The information on your device by the running app is stored in a back-end database and the Mobile services is known as mobile Back-end as a service represented as mBaaS. You can build now with Azure apps for Android, HTML, iOS, Windows Phone, and Java Script.

The basic three advantages of using the cloud infrastructure and platform is opposed to the on-site machines:

• Faster development: Azure allows quick setting up of an application and starting within few minutes, ruling out the old system of buying server, configuring, and integrating that is time-consuming and expensive.
• Autoscaling: The autoscaling feature of Azure helps scaling with your on-site servers and ensuring to accommodate growth.