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Microsoft Azure is a public cloud computing platform providing a range of cloud services such as, storage, analytics and networking. Providing users with a flexibility to use their preferred tools and technologies, Azure also offers 4 different forms of cloud computing; Infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, software as a service and serverless. 

Microsoft sorts Azure cloud services into nearly two dozen categories, including including

Compute

These services enable a user to deploy and manage VMs, containers and batch jobs, as well as support remote application access. Compute resources created within the Azure cloud can be configured with either public IP addresses or private IP addresses, depending on whether the resource needs to be accessible to the outside world.

Mobile

These products help developers build cloud applications for mobile devices, providing notification services, support for back-end tasks, tools for building application program interfaces (APIs) and the ability to couple geo-spatial context with data.

Networking

This group includes virtual networks, dedicated connections and gateways, as well as services for traffic management and diagnostics, load balancing, DNS hosting and network protection against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.

Storage

This category of services provides scalable cloud storage for structured and unstructured data. It also supports big data projects, persistent storage and archival storage.

Analytics

These services provide distributed analytics and storage, as well as features for real-time analytics, big data analytics, data lakes, machine learning (ML), business intelligence (BI), internet of things (IoT) data streams and data warehousing.

Web

These services support the development and deployment of web applications. They also offer features for search, content delivery, API management, notification and reporting.

Security

These products provide capabilities to identify and respond to cloud security threats, as well as manage encryption keys and other sensitive assets.

Integration

These are services for server backup, site recovery and connecting private and public clouds.

Identity

These offerings ensure only authorised users can access Azure services and help protect encryption keys and other sensitive information in the cloud. Services include support for Azure Active Directory and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Internet of things

These services help users capture, monitor and analyse IoT data from sensors and other devices. Services include notifications, analytics, monitoring and support for coding and execution.

DevOps

This group provides project and collaboration tools, such as Azure DevOps — formerly Visual Studio Team Services — that facilitate DevOps software development processes. It also offers features for application diagnostics, DevOps tool integrations and test labs for build tests and experimentation.

Containers

These services help an enterprise create, register, orchestrate and manage huge volumes of containers in the Azure cloud, using common platforms.

Media and content delivery network (CDN)

These CDN services include on-demand streaming, digital rights protection, encoding and media playback and indexing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning

This is a wide range of services that a developer can use to infuse artificial intelligence, machine learning and cognitive computing capabilities into applications and data sets.

Management and governance

These services provide a range of backup, recovery, compliance, automation, scheduling and monitoring tools that can help a cloud administrator manage an Azure deployment.

Databases

This category includes Database as a Service (DBaaS) offerings for SQL and NoSQL, as well as other database instances — such as Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Database for PostgreSQL. It also includes Azure SQL Data Warehouse support, caching and hybrid database integration and migration features. Azure SQL is the platform’s flagship database service. It is a relational database that provides SQL functionality without the need for deploying a SQL server.

Intune

Microsoft Intune can be used to enroll user devices, thereby making it possible to push security policies and mobile apps to those devices. Mobile apps can be deployed either to groups of users or to a collection of devices. Intune also provides tools for tracking which apps are being used. A remote wipe feature allows the organisation’s data to be securely removed from devices without removing a user’s mobile apps in the process.

Development

These services help application developers share code, test applications and track potential issues. Azure supports a range of application programming languages, including JavaScript, Python, .NET and Node.js. Tools in this category also include support for Azure DevOps, software development kits (SDKs) and block-chain.

Mixed reality

These services are designed to help developers create content for the Windows Mixed Reality environment.

Blockchain

The Azure Blockchain Service allows you to join a blockchain consortium or to create your own.

Migration

This suite of tools helps an organisation estimate workload migration costs and perform the actual migration of workloads from local data centres to the Azure cloud.