More about Azure

Compliance:

Microsoft understands the importance of compliance for businesses, hence in addition to residing data onshore in Australian data centres, Microsoft has built an extensible compliance framework to help Australian businesses meet their legal and regulatory requirements. Azure meets a broad set of international and industry-specific compliance standards, such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, SOC 1 and SOC 2, as well as country-specific standards, including Australia IRAP, UK G-Cloud, and Singapore MTCS. Rigorous third-party audits verify Azure’s adherence to the strict security controls these standards mandate. 

Security:

Microsoft is committed to supporting best-in-class security and encryption. By default, Azure uses industry-leading capabilities to encrypt content flowing over the internet between the customer and the Azure service. Customers can also encrypt stored data and enable additional encryption using third party solutions to prevent unauthorised access to data. Microsoft employs intrusion detection and prevention systems, denial of service attack prevention, and performs regular penetration testing. The Azure platform security is also aided with data analytics and machine learning tools, to help identify and mitigate threats to the Azure platform. This approach to security goes way beyond what most business are capable of delivering in their own IT environments, at a fraction of the cost of what it would take to even attempt this level of security in-house. 

Flexibility and Scalability:

The Azure platform is designed to scale quickly with no upfront server or operating system software costs. Scale your infrastructure needs up and down as your business work-load changes, with costs that scale to your business needs. This means the deployment of services like test and development servers can be achieved quickly and their operation managed as an on-demand and PAYG service. Additionally, regional redundancy can be added quickly, easily, and in a far more cost-effective manner than Private Data Centre Service Providers. 

Innovation Options:

Microsoft Azure brings a range of new technologies to customers at a fraction of the cost of typical in-house enterprise deployments. This allows businesses to rapidly adopt new innovative technologies. All of Microsoft’s business applications integrate with Azure out of the box. With Microsoft’s Cloud First mantra, many of Microsoft’s new innovations are available exclusively in the cloud. Business tools like Machine Learning, Business Intelligence, Automation, and new Mobile technologies are all available to any business without the need for expensive design, development, and installation. 

Cost effective, modern, and hybrid cloud capability:

All these benefits combined, and plenty more, provide a future proofed environment with much improved security and compliance for your Application. Hosting and fee structures provide a more creative approach to system operations with either on-demand enablement or Reserved Instance discounts. Further to this, application vendors are all providing modern Hybrid Cloud solutions designed to support whatever need you have with your data protection, data access, and systems reporting with Microsoft Azure, as well as integrations with your existing on-premises Infrastructure investments. 

PA Managed Services: what’s in the box?

If you elect to take up a fully managed service option, the following services will keep the Azure Environment running efficiently:

• Azure Locally Redundant Storage provides replication of your data to a secure backup at an alternate physical location in the same datacentre in the case of disaster.
• PA Server monitoring is the managed services element of your hosting package, which allows the ongoing maintenance, patching, antivirus, backup, and upgrading of your Virtual Machines.
• Storage for the high-performing requirements of SQL, including Solid State Disk for operating system and storage.
• Support Case allocation for ongoing assistance and technical enquiries. This allows our clients to access the support team for priority service with activities such as New AD User setup, VM configuration, adjustments to the Azure environment, and troubleshooting any unforeseen performance degradations.
• Azure Bandwidth charges are free for the first 5GB per month. However, these will be billed according to usage at the end of each month.

Frequently asked questions from IT Managers:

1. Is the Cloud version accessed via an Internet Browser or is it dependent upon specific software being installed on each device?
   The software does provide some functionality via browser, however a lot of functionality is still client server based. Therefore there is the requirement to use either RDS (Remote Desktop Services) or an Azure VDI solution. All the functionality will be installed on the servers in Azure then connected to via RDS or an RDS or VDI interface. 
2. Is the Cloud version the exact same as the In-House Server version, i.e. is the functionality/speed the same?  
   Yes.
   Speed cannot be guaranteed as it will be dependent on a range of factors including the performance of your existing on-premises server and Internet bandwidth for accessing the cloud server. File storage location also impacts on performance. Speed and functionality are the same providing you limit the traffic occurring over the WAN to Azure. Files used with the Query Analysis application and for import and exports should ideally be located on a file server or share located on a server in Azure to limit traffic across the WAN.
3. Often when migrating to a “Cloud based/Browser accessed” product, many of the features cannot be accommodated initially with change in graphical interface. Is this the case here?
   The cloud version and on-premises version are the same and RDS is what allows the same features to be achieved in Azure.
4. In which country will the cloud server or datacentre be located? 
   Australia.