Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is Microsoft's public cloud, launched as Windows Azure in February 2010 and renamed in 2014. It provides virtual machines, App Service for web apps, Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Functions, Blob and File storage, managed databases such as Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL and MySQL, a CDN, identity through Microsoft Entra ID, and a large AI portfolio including Azure Machine Learning and Microsoft Foundry. Microsoft reported more than 400 datacenters across 70 regions at fiscal year-end 2025. Pricing is usage-based with no upfront commitment: new customers can open a free account with a 200 dollar credit valid for 30 days, 12 months of free amounts on 20+ services such as 750 hours of selected B-series VMs, and 65+ always-free services such as 1 million Azure Functions requests and Azure DevOps for 5 users. Savings plans and reservations lower costs for steady workloads. Paid support is separate, from 29 dollars a month for Developer to 1,000 dollars a month for Professional Direct. Azure suits enterprises and mid-market firms already invested in Microsoft 365, Windows Server, SQL Server and Entra, since licensing benefits and identity carry over. Its main limitation, repeated across Capterra, TrustRadius and PeerSpot reviews, is complexity: many similarly named services, a steep learning curve, and bills that are hard to predict, with some users also reporting slow ticket resolution.