Which Azure Compute Service should you use for Enterprise Application Development?

Microsoft Azure is the second largest cloud infrastructure offering company with 13% of cloud market share in 2018 as per the Market Watch report. It is continuously getting momentum and acquiring market share from the Amazon and other competitors. The primary reasons are increased market growth and easy adoption of new services. Nowadays, more businesses are taking up the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) irrespective of their size to realize the true benefits of cloud.

Microsoft Azure offers various ranges of services like Azure App Services, Cloud Services, Azure Functions, and Virtual Machines (VMs) to help enterprises deploy applications in the cloud. And, it’s significantly important for you to choose the right product that meets the unique needs of your project. This blog explores the pros and cons of available Azure cloud computing services; for enterprises to choose viable service for their enterprise application development.

Azure App Service

It is a fully-managed platform for enterprise web applications, mobile applications, logic apps, and API apps development. You can easily build a workflow and integrate it with many well-liked SaaS applications like SalesForce, Dropbox, Twitter, Office 365, etc. In addition, Azure App service offer WebJobs to perform tasks in the background.

Pros

• Easy and quick deployment

• Deploy multiple applications or environments like staging and production and save the cost

• Include A/B testing feature

• Auto-scaling and scale up without redeployment

Cons

• No access to app configuration and servers

• Limited VM size and Windows Performance

Cloud Services

Cloud Services is one of the Azure cloud computing services that offers more flexibility for enterprise application development than Azure App Services. It offers the access of VMs along with easy automatic management and deployment. Furthermore, it handles all the Windows update and server initialization.

Pros

• Offer Remote Desktop access to servers

• Custom MSI installation

• Choose VMs of various size

• Ability to define start-up tasks

• Complete access of Event Tracing Windows

Cons

• Slow compared to Azure App Services

• Redeploy is mandatory for scaling up the resources

Azure Functions

Developers can execute the small and independent software or code in the cloud with Azure Functions. This software or codes are event-driven and execute on the demands. Azure Functions, one of the Azure cloud computing services, which are triggers executed on the specific event occurred in Azure applications or other third-party premises.

Pros

• Easy deployment

• Pay only for the resources you use

• No setup or maintenance cost

• No security cost

• Quickly scalable

Cons

• Limited memory and execution time

• Cannot store any data on the local machine

• The risk is associated to update the code, when framework, libraries, or OS needs an update

Virtual Machine (VMs)

The virtual machines offer a wide range of support for Windows, Linux, SQL Server, SAP, and IBM. It provides a complete control of application, development, deployment, and server for the developers. However, you need to agree to the full responsibility of managing server and deployment.

Pros

• Protect your application with a full set of security tools and services

• Create a hybrid cloud with your on-premises infrastructure

• Scale infrastructure quickly

• Seamless integration with other Azure services

Cons

• Additional cost and time for managing the server, updates, and deployment