A large amount of money made in Information Technology comes from business (aka B2B) markets and consumer (aka B2C) markets. Additionally, an emerging market is individuals building Information Technology based tools for other consumers (aka C2C).
A significant portion of this market is the devices that these tools operate on/from (aka hardware). These can include physical servers, storage area networks, routers, switches, network area storage, firewalls, and much more. Keep in mind — these devices are primarily located in datacenters or ‘network closets.’
As the Azure computing generation continues to move forward and expand in the marketplace, Azure cloud computing costs continually reduce. The cost reductions increasingly spawn more opportunities for more businesses to afford to build profits from running in Azure.
This presents a problem: How can Azure be used when these Information Technology solutions are running in datacenters?
The answer is simple: MIGRATE TO AZURE!
When a datacenter or network closet is migrated to Azure, it is a similar structure to how the datacenter is currently constructed. Using virtualized devices (i.e., software that does the same functions as the relative physical devices), you are able to recreate the current datacenter in Azure using some of the many tools that Azure offers.
The next stage is to copy the applications and data currently running in the datacenter to Azure. As the data and applications that are shared are moved, application experts are on standby to properly reconfigure and later test these applications.
At this time, a group of ‘power users’ (i.e., clients who use the software and have a deep understanding of how it should work and operate) are engaged to use the software.
Finally, all the customers who use these applications are told to use the Azure cloud implementation; and shortly afterward, the old datacenter’s copy of the software is backed-up and then the old instance is deleted (called “retired”).
This process is known as migrating to Azure cloud … full of opportunity and increasingly in demand in the marketplace.