Cloud computing is when you access computing services—like servers, storage, networking, software—over the internet (“the cloud”) from a provider like Azure. For example, instead of storing personal documents and photos on your personal computer’s hard drive, most people now store them online: that’s cloud computing.

Cloud computing platforms, like Azure, tend to be less expensive and more secure, reliable, and flexible than on-premises servers. With the cloud, equipment downtime due to maintenance, theft, or damage is almost non-existent. You can scale your compute and storage resources—up or down—almost instantly when your needs change on Azure. Also, you typically pay only for the services you use, which provides a level of convenience and cost-control that’s almost impossible to achieve with on-site infrastructure.

Azure is an ever-expanding set of cloud computing services to help your organization meet its business challenges. Azure gives you the freedom to build, manage, and deploy applications on a massive, global network using your preferred tools and frameworks.

With Azure, you can:

Security is a given in the cloud industry, but Azure’s proactive approach to security, compliance, and privacy is unique. Microsoft leads the industry in establishing and consistently meeting clear security and privacy requirements.

Between its industry-leading compliance and privacy certifications to built-in security controls and unique threat intelligence, Azure has everything you need to identify and protect against rapidly evolving threats.

With datacenters in more regions than any other cloud provider, Azure provides a global reach with local presence that many businesses and organizations need, allowing them to reduce the cost, the time, and the complexity of operating a global infrastructure while meeting local data residency needs.

Organizations all over the world recognize Microsoft Azure over Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the most trusted cloud for enterprise and hybrid infrastructure for many reasons:

The advent of the cloud and smart technologies is revealing new scenarios that were simply not possible until now. Smart sensors and connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices now allow us to capture new data from industrial equipment: from factories to farms, from smart cities to homes. And whether it’s a car or even a refrigerator, new devices are increasingly cloud connected by default.

Simultaneously, hybrid cloud is evolving from being the integration of on-premises datacenters with the public cloud, to becoming units of computing that are accessible even in the world’s most remote destinations.

By bringing these two new realities together—and with artificial intelligence running across all systems—we have entered the era of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge.

The intelligent edge is a continually expanding set of connected systems and devices that gather and analyze data—close to your users, the data, or both. Users get real-time insights and experiences, delivered by highly responsive and contextually aware apps. The Azure platform is built to provide an agile and secure experience across the intelligent cloud/intelligent edge in alignment with these enduring principles: