Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform that provides services that span storage, security, networking and compute capabilities and is well suited for organisations who want the ability to leverage a vast array of intelligent services that can work at scale and at a cheaper cost than on-premises solutions.

Azure identity and governance services help you secure access to your resources by ensuring that the right people have the right access and by integrating your on-premises infrastructure with Azure Active Directory using Azure AD Connect, you can support that infrastructure while also leveraging the latest features the cloud has to offer.

Azure storage gives you the ability to create storage accounts, import and export data, configure Azure file shares and implement Azure Blob storage, while Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery provide comprehensive backup, restore and site recovery solutions.

The ability to create, deploy and maintain virtual machines is a key component of Azure’s Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering and the options available to create and manage virtual network components such as IP addresses, network interfaces, peering, Azure DNS, Azure load balancers and Azure Application Gateways are crucial elements that are needed to ensure secure, reliable interconnectivity.

It can become a challenge to keep track of this functionality however  but tools such as Azure Monitor can help to analyse areas such as spending, subscriptions, utilisation and consumption in order to manage and control resources more effectively.