Azure

Three strengths

• Connects to Microsoft 365. Microsoft Graph gives software one doorway into data from services such as Outlook, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive. 3
• Serverless built in. Azure Functions runs code in response to events, without servers to deploy or maintain. 2
• Widely used. 26.3% of developers surveyed in 2025 said they use it, second only to AWS among the three big clouds. 5

What it is

Cloud computing, as the US standards body NIST defines it, is on-demand network access to a shared pool of computing resources that can be set up and released with minimal management effort. 6 In plain terms, you rent computing power over the internet instead of owning servers. Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform, and Microsoft announced its general availability on 1 February 2010, then under the name Windows Azure, in 21 countries. 1

What sets it apart is how well it fits businesses that already run on Microsoft. Many use Microsoft 365 for email, files and meetings, and all of that sits on Microsoft's identity system, Microsoft Entra ID, which keeps track of who each person is and what they may open. Every Microsoft 365 or Azure customer already has an Entra directory, called a tenant, which you can think of as the organisation's own private space in Microsoft's cloud. 4 Software built on Azure can plug into that same space.

The main way to do that is Microsoft Graph, the gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft cloud services like Microsoft Entra and Microsoft 365, reachable through a single endpoint. 3 A developer can use it to read a calendar, find a file in OneDrive or work with Teams, as long as the person asking is authorised to. 3

For the code itself, Azure offers Azure Functions, a serverless service that runs event-driven code, so you pay for the work and skip the server upkeep. 2

We choose it for that fit: when your people already live in Microsoft's tools, software that sits inside that world is easier for your team to sign in to and to adopt.

How we use it

We use Azure Functions for web applications, as the second home for our serverless work after AWS. We also use the Microsoft Graph API for clients whose software has to live inside their managed service provider's Microsoft suite (a managed service provider, or MSP, is a company that looks after a business's IT), within a specific tenant. To get our software in, we register it as an app in Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory), which is how it's given permission to sign people in and reach their data.

Around that we've used a wider set of Azure services: relational databases, storage accounts and Blob Storage for keeping files and raw data, Event Hubs and Event Grid for passing events between systems as they happen, and Stream Analytics for working on that data as it arrives.

In Software Development, that means your app can sit inside the Microsoft tools your people use every day. In Solution Architecture, it's one of the platforms we plan around, so the technology we recommend lines up with what you already run. In Data Solutions, it's where large amounts of data are stored and processed. When a project connects to Microsoft backends, it may also involve C# and SQL Server.

References

1. Doug Hauger, "Windows Azure General Availability", Microsoft Blog, 1 February 2010. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2010/02/01/windows-azure-general-availability/ (accessed 28 October 2026)
2. Microsoft, "Azure Functions overview", Microsoft Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-overview (accessed 28 October 2026)
3. Microsoft, "Microsoft Graph overview", Microsoft Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/overview (accessed 28 October 2026)
4. Microsoft, "What is Microsoft Entra?", Microsoft Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/fundamentals/what-is-entra (accessed 28 October 2026)
5. Stack Overflow, "2025 Developer Survey: Technology", survey.stackoverflow.co, 2025. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology (accessed 28 October 2026)
6. Peter Mell and Tim Grance, "The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing", NIST Special Publication 800-145, National Institute of Standards and Technology, September 2011. https://csrc.nist.gov/pubs/sp/800/145/final (accessed 28 October 2026)