Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) Market to Exceed $71 billion by 2021

Technology research firm Gartner forecasts over 29% IaaS annual growth through 2021, hitting a whopping $71 billion. Over the next decade, IaaS is predicted to surpass software-as-a-services (SaaS) to become the second largest segment of the cloud industry.

What is driving this exponential growth in the cloud infrastructure market? Digital transformation projects have fueled the adoption of new technologies and a wide-variety of cloud services. Infrastructure and Operations professionals face increasing obstacles managing this exponentially diverse digital environment. Because of this, enterprises are gradually divesting from their data centers and moving applications workloads to the public cloud or hybrid solutions. Growing confidence in improved provider technologies is also spurring this growth, as infrastructures continue to gain speed, stability, and enhanced security.

Among the leading providers, Microsoft Azure has risen above the competition in terms of practical business solutions. Not only does it provide pure increases in productivity, it also offers quantifiable services including analytics, mobile apps, computing, databases, networking, and storage. This fully integrated infrastructure is the impetus for an Azure growth rate that doubled that of Amazon Web Services at the end of 2017.

While Azure’s integrated services may seem ubiquitous among cloud infrastructure providers, the unique benefits become evident when diving deeper into the Azure infrastructure offering. Microsoft Azure’s integrated tools, DevOps, and marketplace empower developers and IT professionals to efficiently build anything from simple mobile apps to internet-scale solutions.

How does Microsoft Azure deliver best-in-class business solutions?

1. Overall Speed – Microsoft Azure increases the speed of deployment, operation, and scalability versus on-premises solutions.
2. Faster Development Cycles – Getting more responsive feedback enables business agility and faster growth without setting up complex infrastructures.
3. Global Reach – Dynamically adapts to changing utilization and performance requirements.
4. Integrated Development Environment – With integrated Visual Studio, dev teams can deploy quickly and without a learning curve.
5. End-to-End Solution – The integrated delivery pipeline includes source control, unit testing, integration testing, delivery, and go live tools. You’ll reduce integration issues and improve continuity.
6. Enhanced Disaster Recovery –  Regional and global failover options, rolling reboot capabilities, and hot and cold standby models reduce business interruptions and their legal consequences.
7. Flexible Expenditure – ROI is increased while eliminating costs for unused resources. Enterprises have the ability to change with demand fluctuations.
8. Deploy Anywhere – The Microsoft Azure Stack offering allows for a hybrid solution that utilizes a range of proven hardware providers for any on-premises requirements.

Is Microsoft Azure right for your enterprise?

While you may be on board with adopting Infrastructure-as-a-service for your enterprise, your team may still have questions about the benefits of Microsoft Azure. In the abstract, it can be a challenge to insure that your enterprises’ unique infrastructure requirements will be met by the Azure solution. Experiential learning is a proven method by which these concerns can be addressed. Guided, hands-on experience within an application or platform allows IT professionals to visualize the benefits as they apply to their specific business needs.   

To facilitate a personalized, hands-on approach to learning about Azure, Microsoft has selected iT1 as a Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller and Cloud Solutions Provider. iT1 has carefully developed a customized workshop program to teach the fundamentals of the Microsoft Azure platform, the infrastructure services, and how to develop and deploy applications on the platform. When your team interacts with the Microsoft Azure platform in a live, lab environment questions are quickly answered. In this in-depth workshop, you’ll discover the versatility of Microsoft Azure through a mix of demonstrations, discussions, and practical, applicable, hands-on learning. By the end of the advanced course, IT Managers and teams will have enough real-life experience and technical skills with Azure to be able to create and deploy their own scalable infrastructure. With questions answered, and technical experience within Microsoft Azure, you’ll now be equipped to determine if Azure is right for your enterprise.

Learn more about how to bring a full-funded, Microsoft Azure workshop to your location, or view a sample agenda for a workshop held at the iT1 Learning Center, visit: https://www.it1.com/azure-workshop/.