New developments in hybrid cloud management capabilities continue to drive agility and innovation. Customers are realizing the tremendous value of outsourcing some, or ALL, of their hybrid cloud management needs to an experienced Managed Services Provider with comprehensive hybrid cloud infrastructure expertise. Microsoft Ignite offered the perfect opportunity to announce Azure Arc – a new set of capabilities developed to complement the Microsoft Azure family of services.
Microsoft’s Azure Arc, a multi cloud management platform, allows customers to simplify their complex distributed environments by extending Azure data management and security capabilities beyond the cloud to on-premise equipment, multi-cloud environments, and edge devices. In short, Microsoft Arc allows management beyond the hybrid cloud, to “Azure anywhere.” This extension allows customers to more easily control devices such as a physical server in a data center or managed databases – even if they are behind a firewall or proxy. Most appealingly, Azure Arc offers a means to manage customer resources through a single control plane, whether those resources are deployed within or outside Azure.
So, what does this mean for enabling the connected workforce and customers on their Digital Transformation journey?
Arc’s ability to seamlessly connect resources in a hybrid environment aligns fortuitously with recent years’ mass migration to the cloud – a significant factor in the larger story of Digital Transformation and the increasing role of monitoring and management in AI and IoT.
Many businesses are still in a stage of transition in their Digital Transformation journey. They have a hybrid mix of on-premises equipment and cloud-based applications, and there is often an unfortunate disconnect between these two different architecture arrangements. This disconnect can hamper monitoring and management efforts, which can have costly consequences and impede a strategic transition to the cloud.
Azure Arc seamlessly connects hybrid cloud infrastructure scenarios by eliminating the limitations legacy equipment might impose during this transition and providing centralized, role-based access control and security policies. This centralized management offers countless opportunities to leverage Azure’s bells and whistles uniformly across a distributed multi cloud environment AND on-premises equipment, enabling innovation across the technology ecosystem.
Azure Arc complements the multitude of other Microsoft Azure services, for truly comprehensive “azure anywhere” management. Administrators can streamline operations such as enabling compliance across all registered resources and define and distribute policies at the touch of a button. Customers can leverage automation features to generate efficiencies through unified data management. AI-enabled threat protection empowers users to patch an operating system immediately upon discovering a vulnerability and quickly enforce tagging and identity policies. These are just a few benefits Azure Arc can bring to your Microsoft environment.
Working with a Managed Services provider who understands the capabilities of solutions such as Azure Arc can ensure customers incorporate all the features and functionality the solution has to offer. It’s best so seek a Managed Services Provider who has a strong Microsoft Partnership alliance backed by consultative technical experts on the Modern Workplace and Modern Desktop. The ideal Managed Service Provider can leverage Azure Arc to access comprehensive device management at a granular level and extend those critical management capabilities to end-users across the hybrid cloud infrastructure, as well as on the ground, for a truly seamless multi cloud environment experience.
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