How Azure Data Services help your business innovate faster and smarter

Data underpins everything. It fuels the modern internet and, without it, there are no applications. This constant, ever-increasing hunger for data means there’s now more and more of it — along with a need for solutions that help businesses work with data in a more efficient and effective manner.

For many organizations, Microsoft® Azure® is an excellent answer to this problem, providing a full suite of end-to-end data services that cover every need: databases and data management; real-time data collection and processing; business intelligence, data insight and analytics; and cutting-edge AI and machine learning.

AI + Azure Data Services = a business transformed

AI and machine learning in particular radically transform how people do business, and are infused into every facet of a business’s lifecycle. Azure bakes AI and machine learning deep, democratizing their use. For example, you can run machine-learning models from within SQL Server using existing Python or R based models working off data in SQL Server.

There’s the visual developer no-code designer within Azure Machine Learning, where you use an intuitive interface to create models, build pipelines, deploy your solution and take it to production — all from within that one platform. And Azure Cognitive Service APIs enable app developers to more easily leverage AI and machine learning.

This mix of immediacy, power and integration is what sets Microsoft apart. What you do in Microsoft’s other clouds — Office 365 (productivity) and Dynamics 365 (CRM/ERP) — is also data-related. Through well-integrated and straightforward connectors from those systems into Azure Data Services, you can efficiently work up predictions and improve planning. With Microsoft Power Platform on Azure, you can quickly build apps and automate business processes and integrate with data across the ecosystem.

Interested? Here are four key benefits of Azure Data Services that help you be more efficient, innovate and take advantage of the latest technologies.

1. Azure Data Services support a range of needs

Databases. Analytics workloads. Machine learning. Data is the foundation of them all — and Microsoft’s got everything covered. Whether you favor a SQL Server or an open source alternative, you’ll find support in Azure Data Services. Azure Cosmos DB provides a singular, globally distributed, multi-model database supporting different APIs and data formats. For end users it's easy to adopt and build scalable mission-critical applications without the worry of managing infrastructure, capacity and integrations. By contrast, other providers split all of these out into different database services.

2. Azure Data Services are built for efficiency

Microsoft has long focused on UI-based services and platforms going back to Visual Basic. Today, the notion of low code is increasingly popular. Often, there's little value in getting bogged down with software development for business applications, when it can be easily achieved with low code solutions. Instead, companies can tap into the power of Azure Data Services and Power Platform, leveraging the integrations to build solutions quickly and efficiently and use the time and cost savings to focus on critical business needs and use cases.

3. Maintainability is at the core of Azure Data Services

It’s a one-time effort to build an app or data solution, but companies don’t always account for the cost and effort involved in maintaining and expanding the solution. With code-heavy solutions, a lot of time ends up being spent in busy work and keeping integrations up to date — and that’s time and money that could be better put to use elsewhere. But Microsoft makes things easy for you with a low-code approach, through the likes of Data Factory’s prebuilt connectors, which are always updated to ensure you can continue integrating data from hundreds of source and target services, as those services keep updating their APIs and integration points.

4. Azure Data Services prize integration

Data is vital throughout the healthcare industry — in patient management, collaboration and teams, managing customer and patient relationships, business applications, analytics and AI. Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare is an excellent demonstration of Microsoft’s comprehensive service integration. This industry-specific cloud leverages Azure Data Services, Dynamics 365, Office 365 and Microsoft Power Platform on Azure, showing how these apps can combine to help businesses be more efficient and innovative.

This line of thinking can be a boon to your organization, too.

Get the most from Azure Data Services with Rackspace Technology

Working with the right partner can help you get more from Azure Data Services. Rackspace Technology is a tier-one expert Azure partner — and we also support Dynamics 365 and Office 365. This means, like Microsoft, we are all about integrating solutions to cater to your entire business needs.

Rather than only solving a specific data services problem or zeroing in on a single solution area, we look at your business from a holistic viewpoint and figure out which integrations can make your life easier — always with the goal of maintainability.

This is infused into our DNA. In being able to understand the bigger picture — defining strategies, building architecture, implementing services, support and updates, and leveraging the latest Azure tools — we can work with you to create the kind of high-quality solution that will always be up to date and set your company up for success.