Get to know Azure

Turn your ideas into innovation with trusted Azure products and services

Invent with purpose

Achieve your goals with the freedom and flexibility to build, manage, and deploy your applications anywhere. Use your preferred languages, frameworks, and infrastructure—even your own datacenter and other clouds—to solve challenges large and small.

With help from Azure, you have everything you need to build your next great solution.

Trust your cloud

Get security from the ground up, backed by a team of experts, and proactive compliance trusted by enterprises, governments, and startups.

Operate hybrid seamlessly

On-premises, across multiple clouds, and at the edge—we’ll meet you where you are. Integrate and manage your environments with tools and services designed for hybrid cloud.

Build on your terms

You have choices. With a commitment to open source, and support for all languages and frameworks, build how you want, and deploy where you want to.

Be future-ready

Continuous innovation from Microsoft supports your development today, and your product visions for tomorrow.

Meet any challenge with Azure—your partner in the cloud

Create your unique cloud strategy

Achieve your short- and long-term goals with a proven cloud adoption framework designed to help you create and align your business and technical strategies.

Invent and ship faster

Accelerate developer creativity and time to market by removing friction through Developer Velocity.

Improve your security

Help protect your business assets and data against evolving threats with built-in multilayered security and intelligent threat protection.

Optimize costs to save money

Get more value from Azure with tools, offers, and guidance to help you understand and forecast your bill, cost optimize your workloads, and control your spending with cloud governance.

Migrate with confidence

Get free resources, tools, and expert assistance to migrate your servers, apps, databases, and other workloads to Azure.

Gain deeper insights into your data

Transform your data into real-time insights with highly secure enterprise-scale analytics. And share data across your organization with dashboards and visualizations.

«We’ve used the Azure Migration Program as the engine of TINE’s cloud migration. In addition to the tools it provides, access to Microsoft subject matter experts was extremely useful.»

Jan Egil Ring, Lead Architect at Crayon | Azure Expert Managed Services Provider for TINE

Azure is global. Azure is local.

Create extraordinary experiences for all of your customers—whether they’re right next door or on the other side of the world. With datacenters in more global regions, the largest compliance portfolio of any cloud provider, and a bold commitment to sustainability, you don’t need to choose between quantity and quality when you build on Azure.

Pay less on Azure

Take advantage of unique savings programs and learn why AWS is 5 times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server.

What is Azure?

The Azure cloud platform is more than 200 products and cloud services designed to help you bring new solutions to life – to solve today’s challenges and create the future. Build, run and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises and at the edge, with the tools and frameworks of your choice.

Trust your cloud

Get security from the ground up, backed by a team of experts and proactive compliance trusted by enterprises, governments and start-ups.

Operate hybrid seamlessly

On-premises, across multiple clouds and at the edge – we’ll meet you where you are. Integrate and manage your environments with services designed for hybrid cloud.

Build on your terms

With a commitment to open source, and support for all languages and frameworks, build how you want and deploy where you want to.

Be future-ready

Continuous innovation from Microsoft supports your development today, and your product visions for tomorrow.

compliance offerings – the largest portfolio in the industry

of Fortune 500 companies trust their business on Azure

investment (US dollars) per year in security to protect customers’ data from cyberthreats

Solutions do the work for you

Find answers to the business challenges you face with an Azure solution that brings together everything you need – related products, services and third-party applications. From DevOps to business analytics to the Internet of Things, you’ll be up and running quickly with a scalable, cost-effective solution that works with your existing investments.

Healthcare

Develop solutions for proactive, personalised healthcare.

Financial services

Better serve customers, empower employees and optimise risk management.

Government

Build secure solutions to better serve and protect your citizens.

Retail

Deliver personal, seamless and differentiated experiences.

Manufacturing

Respond quicker to customer feedback and market trends.

Companies doing great things with Azure

«We did look at different platforms, including Azure, Google, Amazon, and VMware. If we wanted to put the whole city in the cloud, we needed Azure.»

Photo of Corona, CA by sergei.gussev / CC by 4.0

Creating better experiences for 15.4 million customers worldwide

ASOS, a top online fashion retailer, delivered a more personalised, mobile-first experience with Azure.

Onboarding developers in hours instead of weeks

Daimler AG quickly attracts and onboards top talent to innovate faster using the Azure development environment.

Providing a compliant analytics service for healthcare

After assessing multiple options, McKesson chose Azure to offer their customers cloud-based healthcare analytics.

Popular questions about Azure

Is Azure secure?

Yes, security and privacy are foundational for Azure. Microsoft is committed to the highest levels of trust, transparency, standards conformance and regulatory compliance – with the most comprehensive set of compliance offerings of any cloud service provider.

How can Azure help if I outsource my IT?

IT partners use Azure to deploy, manage and support customers’ existing solutions, and to offer ready-made or custom solutions. Ask your IT partner how your organisation can take advantage of Azure to meet your business goals. Or, find an Azure partner that fits your needs. Explore a wide network of partners with verified Azure capabilities.

What other customers are using Azure?

Of the Fortune 500 companies, 95 per cent rely on Azure for trusted cloud services. Companies of all sizes and maturities use Azure in their digital transformation.

Is it only for Windows apps and services?

No. Azure supports open source technologies, so you can use the tools and technologies you prefer. Run virtually any application using your data source, with your operating system, on your device. With Azure, you have choices.

Will Azure really save me money?

With no upfront cost, you only pay for what you use. Azure provides flexible purchasing and pricing options for all your cloud scenarios, such as the Azure Hybrid Benefit, and offers extensive tools to help manage your cloud spend.

Can I try Azure services?

Yes. Create an Azure free account to experiment and build in the cloud. You’ll get access to free Azure products and services, plus a $200 credit to use in your first 30 days.

Will Azure work for my industry?

Azure provides solutions for all industries, through proven combinations of cloud products and services. Address your industry-specific business challenges today, and prepare for the future by innovating with Azure solutions.

How does Azure compare to other clouds?

Azure is the only consistent hybrid cloud, delivers unparalleled developer productivity, provides comprehensive, multilayered security, including the largest compliance coverage of any cloud service provider and you’ll pay less for Azure as AWS is five times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server.

What is Azure?

The Azure cloud platform is more than 200 products and cloud services designed to help you bring new solutions to life – to solve today’s challenges and create the future. Build, run and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises and at the edge, with the tools and frameworks of your choice.

Trust your cloud

Get security from the ground up, backed by a team of experts and proactive compliance trusted by enterprises, governments and start-ups.

Operate hybrid seamlessly

On-premises, across multiple clouds and at the edge – we’ll meet you where you are. Integrate and manage your environments with services designed for hybrid cloud.

Build on your terms

With a commitment to open source, and support for all languages and frameworks, build how you want and deploy where you want to.

Be future-ready

Continuous innovation from Microsoft supports your development today, and your product visions for tomorrow.

compliance offerings – the largest portfolio in the industry

of Fortune 500 companies trust their business on Azure

investment (US dollars) per year in security to protect customers’ data from cyberthreats

Solutions do the work for you

Find answers to the business challenges you face with an Azure solution that brings together everything you need – related products, services and third-party applications. From DevOps to business analytics to the Internet of Things, you’ll be up and running quickly with a scalable, cost-effective solution that works with your existing investments.

Healthcare

Develop solutions for proactive, personalised healthcare.

Financial services

Better serve customers, empower employees and optimise risk management.

Government

Build secure solutions to better serve and protect your citizens.

Retail

Deliver personal, seamless and differentiated experiences.

Manufacturing

Respond quicker to customer feedback and market trends.

Companies doing great things with Azure

«We did look at different platforms, including Azure, Google, Amazon, and VMware. If we wanted to put the whole city in the cloud, we needed Azure.»

Photo of Corona, CA by sergei.gussev / CC by 4.0

Creating better experiences for 15.4 million customers worldwide

ASOS, a top online fashion retailer, delivered a more personalised, mobile-first experience with Azure.

Onboarding developers in hours instead of weeks

Daimler AG quickly attracts and onboards top talent to innovate faster using the Azure development environment.

Providing a compliant analytics service for healthcare

After assessing multiple options, McKesson chose Azure to offer their customers cloud-based healthcare analytics.

Popular questions about Azure

Is Azure secure?

Yes, security and privacy are foundational for Azure. Microsoft is committed to the highest levels of trust, transparency, standards conformance and regulatory compliance – with the most comprehensive set of compliance offerings of any cloud service provider.

How can Azure help if I outsource my IT?

IT partners use Azure to deploy, manage and support customers’ existing solutions, and to offer ready-made or custom solutions. Ask your IT partner how your organisation can take advantage of Azure to meet your business goals. Or, find an Azure partner that fits your needs. Explore a wide network of partners with verified Azure capabilities.

What other customers are using Azure?

Of the Fortune 500 companies, 95 per cent rely on Azure for trusted cloud services. Companies of all sizes and maturities use Azure in their digital transformation.

Is it only for Windows apps and services?

No. Azure supports open source technologies, so you can use the tools and technologies you prefer. Run virtually any application using your data source, with your operating system, on your device. With Azure, you have choices.

Will Azure really save me money?

With no upfront cost, you only pay for what you use. Azure provides flexible purchasing and pricing options for all your cloud scenarios, such as the Azure Hybrid Benefit, and offers extensive tools to help manage your cloud spend.

Can I try Azure services?

Yes. Create an Azure free account to experiment and build in the cloud. You’ll get access to free Azure products and services, plus a $200 credit to use in your first 30 days.

Will Azure work for my industry?

Azure provides solutions for all industries, through proven combinations of cloud products and services. Address your industry-specific business challenges today, and prepare for the future by innovating with Azure solutions.

How does Azure compare to other clouds?

Azure is the only consistent hybrid cloud, delivers unparalleled developer productivity, provides comprehensive, multilayered security, including the largest compliance coverage of any cloud service provider and you’ll pay less for Azure as AWS is five times more expensive than Azure for Windows Server and SQL Server.