While it doesn’t receive the attention that Office 365 does, Windows Azure is a great solution for SharePoint that’s worthy of careful consideration. Azure is Microsoft’s cloud solution and a competitor to Amazon Web Services (AWS), which people have been hosting SharePoint on for several years.
Now, after nearly a year in beta, Microsoft has announced the launch of Windows Azure Virtual Machines. Azure VMs are simple to deploy and configure, and “give you a data center in Microsoft’s cloud,” according to an article on the SharePoint Pro website.
The launch of Azure VMs shows that Microsoft is evolving and making a splash as a competitive alternative for hosting servers in the cloud. For businesses, more competition usually means lower prices over a longer period of time due to the commoditization of servers. Azure’s VM price per hour ranges from 2 cents to 72 cents, or about $15 to $536 per month, depending on the amount of memory used.
Azure VMs can be integrated with on-premises networks, “effectively linking them with VPN technology so that they are, in fact, one network,” the SharePoint Pro article explains. Azure VMs also offer users the ability to run several Microsoft servers and roles. Also, the Azure interface often is regarded as being easier to use than AWS.
In addition, as Azure matures, the single sign-on solution — logging in with Facebook, Gmail, etc. — should become available soon in the Office 365 cloud. And if Microsoft is creating virtual environments for SharePoint, it should in theory be able to better support them over the long term compared to other cloud providers that don’t have as intimate knowledge of the product.
Like other cloud solutions, it is possible to test the product for a short period of time, and companies should take advantage of Azure’s three-month trial. This will allow for a more clear-cut comparison with other solutions. Combining the usability and availability of templates with pricing considerations is the key to finding a long-term solution that your company can support.
Contributor: Adam Levithan, Senior Consultant at Portal Solutions
Source: SharePoint Pro, May 2013
