While companies’ shift to the cloud has been gradual over the last decade, research shows that the pandemic has accelerated that move. Companies across all industries quickly learned they had to depend on cloud technologies to enable entire staffs to work from home, to ramp up digital commerce, and to provide telehealth, entertainment streaming, and more. Despite the enthusiasm for what cloud can do, executives across the C-suite have concerns. CEOs must now evaluate a changing business for the longer term and tackle tough questions. Read More...

Protect your apps, data, and IT workloads in Azure and get the benefit of the $1 billion investment in security Microsoft makes per year, resulting in faster performance and overall cost savings for SQL on Windows Server on Azure. You can easily migrate to Azure VMs and modernize with Azure Services such as Azure Arc, Windows Server on-premises, and Windows Admin Center. Take advantage of cloud innovations for on-premises workloads and the end-to-end hybrid infrastructure available that will help you take your organization to the next level. Read More...

Azure is the best place to host Windows Server, as it provides a range of cloud services including analytics, storage, and networking. It offers native support for SQL, .NET, Remote Desktop Services, and other Windows Server workloads. Upgrade digital processes and stay relevant by using Windows Server and Azure SQL Server. Save money with Azure Hybrid Benefit while staying complaint. Twenty years of Microsoft cloud innovation can’t be wrong. Review the infographic for more modern benefits from Azure and Windows Server. Read More...

One of the reasons why Microsoft Windows Server & SQL Server are popular among businesses is because of their proven security and compliance capabilities. Azure not only improves performance, but also provides multiple layers of security, like the secure foundation of its physical data centers, operational best practices, and engineering processes that meet industry standard guidelines. Sign up to say connected, we’ll help you learn more about migrating to Microsoft Windows SQL Server on Azure. Read More...

Microsoft Azure Arc is revolutionizing the cloud landscape in Africa. Kenya-based Africa’s Talking provides custom mobile, voice messaging, and payment APIs for organizations and developers. But the limited cloud reach and data sovereignty requirements in various regions makes it a challenge to offer containerized capabilities to its customers. Microsoft Azure Arc is enabling them to manage multiple Kubernetes clusters, as well as deploy data services anywhere—in the cloud, on-premises, and on the edge—from a central control point. Azure Arc provides standardized identity management, monitoring, logging, alerting, and policy capabilities—meaning new clusters that previously took a day to deploy now take minutes and deliver centralized management. Read More...

Energy service provider Petrofac needed to overcome the challenge of providing expensive specialized desktop hardware to their thousands of engineers, each working on bulky 3D image files. Then the pandemic hit, necessitating a platform that would enable their engineers to work from anywhere, anytime. The combination of Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop with Azure NetApp Files, deploying in just a few weeks, may have helped save the company during this trying time of multinational lockdown. The high-performance, low-latency, and scalable solution proved highly cost-effective for Petrofac’s demanding and fluid production needs—reducing hardware costs, overcoming bandwidth concerns, and winning over a geographically diverse group of engineers. Read More...

Rockefeller Capital Management provides financial services for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients. During a recent modernization initiative, the company moved its infrastructure to Microsoft Azure, facilitating the development of new cloud-centric security services and setting the stage for years of rapid growth. They took advantage of the scalability of the Microsoft cloud in its response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of its cloud-first infrastructure, the company was able to use Azure Virtual Desktop to triple the size of its virtual PC environment and remote access capabilities in just 48 hours. Read More...

When COVID-19 hit in 2020, New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP)—responsible for moving a billion gallons of fresh water in each day while taking storm and wastewater out—used Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop to shift roughly 2,000 employees to remote work in a matter of days. The move proved 90% faster than using traditional VPN connections, which it favored in the past. The choice paid off with faster connection speeds, more robust scalability, and multifactor authentication with access to both cloud and on-premises applications. Read More...

If you have a Microsoft Visual Studio subscription, make sure you explore the benefits that come with it—or you may be leaving value on the table. Use your monthly Microsoft Azure credits and Azure training, DevTest pricing, Azure DevOps, support, and more. Get an overview of all your benefits and even project ideas for how to use your credits. Read More...

Swedish company Arla Foods is the fifth-largest dairy company in the world. In its pursuit of modern digital transformation, Arla’s Senior Manager developed a leadership team focused on centralizing data across the company, making data more accessible and analytics easier to understand. The team developed an architecture on Azure that would create one centralized location for data anywhere in the company for ingestion and consumption—a real benefit for reporting in Power BI. Read More...