Azure or Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service offered by Microsoft to build, test, manage, and deploy software applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers. Software as a Service (known as SaaS), Platform as a Service (known as Paas) and Infrastructure as a Service (known as IaaS) and also supports various other programming languages, tools, and frameworks that include both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.  

Azure was previously known as Project Red Dog before it was officially named as Windows Azure. 

Azure offers many services that the developers can make use of to work with and also to the users of the platform. It makes use of large-scale virtualization at Microsoft data centers. They include:

• Computer services: They allow users to make use of features like virtual machines (VMs), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), etc. This helps them launch general-purpose Windows and Linux virtual machines and also pre-configured machine images for well-known software packages. Linux is mostly run on Azure. Microsoft’s Linux-based Azure Sphere is one of the few amongst a lot of Linux distributions offered. Linux is mostly run on Azure.
• Application services: It offers a platform as a service (PaaS) environment. This allows the developers or users to manage and publish websites easily.  
• Websites: Azure allows website developers to develop sites through ASP.net, PHP, Node.js, and/or Python. These can be deployed through FTP, Git, Mercurial, Team Foundation Server, or even to upload through a user portal. Users can develop websites in PHP, ASP.net, Node.js, and/or Python or even choose open-source applications from the pictures to deploy. This includes platform as a service (PaaS) subject offering for the domain platform. 
• WebJobs: Software applications are deployed to an app service environment to implement background processing. This is done to invoke a schedule, on-demand, or even run continuously. To communicate between the web applications and WebJobs and to provide state, Azure uses the blob, table, and queue services. 

Azure identities: 

• Directories are synchronized on-premise through the Azure active directory. This also enables single sign-on.  
• B2C of Azure active directory helps users to use the customer identity and access management in the cloud. 
• It is also used for domain services to join Azure virtual machines to a domain without domain controllers. 
• Sensitive information is protected using Azure information protection. 

Azure mobile services:

• Mobile engagement provides push notifications to mobile devices. It collects real-time analytics that emphasizes the user’s behavior. 
• HockeyApp is used to develop, distribute, and beta test mobile apps. 

Storage services:

• Storage devices like REST and SDK APIs are used for storing and accessing data on the cloud. 
• Programs are stored in structured text in partitioned groups of entities through Table services. These are accessed through partitioned keys and primary keys. It is a NoSQL and non-relational database. 
• Programs are stored in unstructured and binary data as blobs through Blob services. These are accessed by HTTP(S) path. It also gives security mechanisms to control access to data. 
• Programs share information asynchronously through messages using keys with the help of the Queue service. 
• Stores and access the data on the cloud using the REST APIs and/or SMB protocol using File service. 

Azure Communication services:

• They provide SDK to create web and mobile interacting applications, which also comprises SMS, video calling, VOIP and PSTN calling, and web-based chat. 

Azure Data management:

• The data explorer gives big data analytics and data exploration capabilities. 
• The search gives users an option to text search and a subset of OData’s structured filters through REST and SDK APIs. 
• The SQL SELECT statement on JSON documents is implemented through Cosmos DB, which is a NoSQL database service. 
• A managed implementation of Redis is an Azure Cache for Redis. 
• Managing storage tasks between on-premises devices and cloud storage is done through StorSimple. 
• Azure Database creates, scales, and extends apps to the cloud through a Microsoft SQL Server. Active Directory, Microsoft System Center, and Hadoop are integrated along with SQL Database. 
• It has a fully managed cloud data warehouse called Azure Synapse Analytics. 
• Data integration service called Azure Data factory helps the development of data-driven workflows in the cloud for automating data flow and data transformation.   
• A scalable data storage and analytic service called Azure Data Lake, for big data analytics workloads needs developers to run huge parallel queries. 
• A big data service called Azure HDInsight deploys hardware Hortonworks Hadoop on Microsoft Azure. It also supports the development of Hadoop clusters with the help of Linux with Ubuntu. 
• A serverless scalable event processing machine called Azure Stream Analytics helps users create and run real-time analytics over multiple streams of data from sources like devices, sensors, websites, social media, and other applications. 

Microsoft Azure Service Bus allows four types of communication mechanisms: 

• Event Hubs
• Queues
• Topics 
• Relays

A platform as a service is used to encode, protect the content, stream, and analyze with the help of media support. 

The global content delivery network (CDN) is audio, video, applications, images, and other static files. It is also used in cache static assets for websites geographically nearer to the customers to enhance performance. Rest-based HTTP API manages the network. It has 94 point of presence (PoP) locations throughout the world, which is also known as Edge locations. 

The functions of Azure are used in serverless computing systems in which the users can run the code as an event-driven Function as a Service (FaaS) without managing the other following server resources. 

Azure provides a bunch of IoT services, such as:

• Azure IoT Hub
• Azure IoT Edge
• Azure IoT Central
• GA version of official Microsoft Azure IoT Developer Kit (DevKit) board 
• Azure Sphere
• Open Enclave SDK 

Great Learning gives you an opportunity to learn Azure or Microsoft Azure, which shall include the subject’s working, features, services, and other related topics. Azure is a cloud service offered by Microsoft that provides services like SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, and FaaS. It helps businesses in storing data with high security and accountability. You can learn Azure courses for free whenever you want to. You will also gain a certificate after the successful completion of the tutorial. Happy Learning!