Using Azure? Price increase.

Fulcrum29 said:
My only concern is the change in pricing and when it will happen again; also that Azure is not hosted locally as certain SLA state that everything should be in SA, not that easy task anymore.

I do appreciate the enhanced VPN integration.

Many companies are now moving in the Azure/365 direction.

What is the general opinion to host all AD’s in Azure, eliminating on-premises server hardware?

We tend to move towards Hybrid solutions, than completely cloud-based.
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Also got the latest notice.

As far as pricing goes. We have an enterprise agreement, so not too stressed. My personal Azure account will probably be downscaled. :)

Cannot comment on AD in Azure. Haven't looked at it yet.
 
LOL, AWS brings prices down, MS pushes prices up.

Unbelievable.

EDIT: Ah ok I see, looks like you pay in rands. Actually makes a bit of sense considering how unstable it is.
 
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Gnome said:
EDIT: Ah ok I see, looks like you pay in rands. Actually makes a bit of sense considering how unstable it is.
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Unstable? We've had zero issues with stability. Maybe you guys should write better code. :p
 
"Do you even work in IT?"

Of course I do which is why I disagree with the level of vendor lock-in cloud services impose.

I also do not think that as a serious company you should trust a third party to care about your data (The very heart of a company these days.) as much as you do.

I know that I sound old-fashioned though.
 
BobsLawnService said:
"Do you even work in IT?"

Of course I do which is why I disagree with the level of vendor lock-in cloud services impose.
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What vendor lock in? If the cloud I am on is not ideal I just move all the documents and email. Perhaps you are working with really strange cloud or something. I know the clouds we have our documents and emails in... we can download them and move them any time we want.

Where exactly have you found it that you cant move your data?

I also do not think that as a serious company you should trust a third party to care about your data (The very heart of a company these days.) as much as you do.
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Yeah, Im not sure what you are talking about here.. :( When someone installs a Microsoft server they are trusting their data with a 3rd party. Unless you write your own OS or something.

I know that I sound old-fashioned though.
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Um, not how I would have phrased it.
 
BobsLawnService said:
There is more to cloud computing than email and documents.
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Cloud is a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and collaborative application nature. In layman terms when cloud versus traditional hosted applications, cloud processing implies web-based access rather than direct data link/communication. Also cloud hardware and applications can be managed dynamically to increase or alter capacity as required and is highly scalable to in return keep resources to an absolute minimum.

Remember that cloud is built on hosted applications, but the hosted application is not your worries since it is covered in the SLA to scale up and down quickly with back-up and disaster recovery.

Blah blah, not going into any in-depth details.

I have already mentioned in this thread that we move in the Hybrid direction (both cloud and on-premises or co-location), this is to improve our SLA in regard with ERP and CRM systems. This all requires increased security.
 
BobsLawnService said:
I also do not think that as a serious company you should trust a third party to care about your data (The very heart of a company these days.) as much as you do.
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Cloud vendors do care about your data, since you pay them to care and they have a reputation to look after. Also, they have people caring full time, which you are unlikely to be able to do. That being said, make sure you have backups, just like when you store it on a server under your desk. Stuff happens, no matter how much everybody involved cares, whether the cloud is involved or not. Murphy is not dead.

ghoti said:
Yeah, Im not sure what you are talking about here.. :( When someone installs a Microsoft server they are trusting their data with a 3rd party. Unless you write your own OS or something.
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Exactly.
 
Please will anyone help steer me in the right direction regarding with Windows Azure or alternatives.

I am not a technical fellow and I hope I am phrasing my questions the right way.

I have tried contacting Microsoft SA but have come up short on speaking to the right people. I have read the product descriptions on the MS Azure website but still don't see something that can answer my layman comprehension.

Some background
We develop software that uses MS SQL databases and a front end using MS Access and another using VB.net.

Its a locally hosted database and our staff have to go to each client to install the MSSQL database and then install our front end software on their "server". This is done individually at each client and makes it very hard for us to scale up. Each client has a server an an average of 6 users that connect to that server on their LAN.

The cost of redeveloping our software as a cloud solution is prohibitive and we are seeking a solution for our clients that have multiple branches that want to connect to a single MSSQL database at the main branch where the server is.

Question 1
Am I right in understanding that Azure can run our front end application and SQL database and if yes,

Question 2
Do users then log onto their database hosted on an Azure virtual machine via a web browser? If yes to that,

Question 3
How many databases can we host per virtual machine?

I know that some out there will be shaking their heads at the level of my incompetence but it seems I have been living in a cocoon.
 
1) You can run a instance on Azure, but you will be charged for CPU time, Input/Ouput hits time as well as bandwidth. If the database does a lot of work this can become costly. (This wont be a terminal type session, thou that would be even more licenses as well as office, unless im assuming the Access runs on the client machine and connects).

2) Users can connect to a database via public IP, if your app has that capability.

3) The instance scales up, it just starts to cost more than a kidney transplant.

To be honest if i was you, I would rather start investing time and energy into perhaps rewriting the apps for this platform.
 
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