What Is Microsoft Azure? A Practical Guide for IT Professionals
- Alfredo Iorio
- 3 days ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 3 days ago
Microsoft Azure is the second-largest cloud platform in the world. If you work in IT, you will encounter it.
This post explains what Azure is, how it works, what it runs, and why it matters for your career. Practical and focused, not a catalogue of every service.
Azure in plain terms
Azure is Microsoft's cloud computing platform. Instead of buying servers, storage, and software and running them in your own data centre, you rent what you need from Microsoft's global infrastructure and pay for what you use.
Organisations that run their IT stack in Azure remove the capital cost of hardware, the lead time to procure and configure it, and the overhead of keeping it running. You provision resources in minutes, scale them based on demand, and decommission them when they are no longer needed.
Azure launched in 2010 and now covers over 200 services: compute, storage, networking, databases, AI, security, and more. It is not one product. It is a platform that organisations combine and configure depending on what they need.
IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS
Azure delivers services across three models. Understanding the difference tells you who is responsible for what and where the costs are allocated.
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) gives you virtualised servers, storage, and networking. Microsoft manages the physical hardware. You manage the operating system, applications, and data. Azure Virtual Machines is the most common example. Use this when you need full control, or when you are moving an existing workload to the cloud without redesigning it.
Platform as a Service (PaaS) removes the operating system layer. Microsoft provides a managed runtime: Azure App Service, Azure Functions, and Logic Apps. You deploy your code; patching, scaling, and load balancing happen automatically. Use this when building new applications, and you want to focus on the software, not the infrastructure.
Software as a Service (SaaS) is fully managed software delivered over the internet. Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Entra ID are all SaaS products running on Azure. Microsoft manages everything from hardware to the application. You configure and use it.
With IaaS, you manage the most, with SaaS the least. As you move up the stack, Microsoft takes on more responsibility and your team's time shifts from maintaining infrastructure to using applications.
What Azure actually runs
Azure services are grouped into various categories.
Compute. Virtual Machines for traditional server workloads, Azure Functions for serverless event-driven code, Azure Kubernetes Service for containerised applications, and Azure App Service for web applications and APIs.
Networking. Azure Virtual Network is the private network layer where your resources sit. VPN Gateway connects it to your on-premises environment. ExpressRoute provides a dedicated private connection that bypasses the public internet, which matters for latency-sensitive or compliance-driven workloads.
Storage and databases. Azure Blob Storage for unstructured data at scale. Azure SQL Database for managed SQL Server. Azure Cosmos DB for globally distributed NoSQL workloads.
Security and identity. Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) is the identity backbone for the entire Microsoft cloud. If your organisation uses Microsoft 365, you are already using Entra ID. Microsoft Defender for Cloud provides unified security posture management across Azure, on-premises, and other clouds.
AI. Azure AI Services gives you pre-built capabilities via API. Azure OpenAI Service gives enterprise customers access to GPT-4 within Azure's security boundary, which matters for organisations in regulated industries that cannot send data to external AI tools.
What Dynamics 365 users often miss
Many people who use Dynamics 365 every day do not realise it runs on Azure. It lives in Azure data centres, it is governed by Microsoft Entra ID, and Azure security controls are part of what protects its data.
When a user logs into Dynamics from home, Azure is what makes that possible. No VPN, no dependency on a server room, no restriction to a company device. That is Azure working in the background.
Functional consultants who understand the layer beneath their application ask better questions during implementations. They can speak to security and access management with confidence. They can contribute to integration conversations that often stall because nobody in the room understands both the application and the platform it runs on.
Azure is not separate from Dynamics 365. It is the foundation it sits on.
The costs and benefits of Microsoft Azure
Azure's Pay-As-You-Go model is a sensible starting point. But Azure does not stop your resources when you hit a budget. It keeps running them and bills you at month-end.
Take this case study: A third-party vendor once enabled AI services in a client's Azure environment for testing, forgot to turn them off, and the monthly bill jumped from $19,000 to $67,000 before anyone noticed. No alerts were configured.
The fix is straightforward. Set up Azure Budget Alerts before you provision anything. Use Azure Advisor to identify resources that are running but underutilised. Tag every resource by project or team from day one, because an untagged bill in a large environment is nearly impossible to interrogate.
For predictable workloads, Reserved Instances offer discounts of up to 72% in exchange for a one or three-year commitment. If you already run Windows Server or SQL Server on-premises, Azure Hybrid Benefit lets you apply those licences to Azure virtual machines. It is a significant saving that many organisations do not claim.
Who should learn Azure?
Most IT professionals in 2026. Cloud is no longer a specialism. It is the infrastructure layer that underlies most of what modern organisations run.
Administrators managing Windows Server or Microsoft 365 are already in Microsoft's ecosystem. Azure is the natural extension.
Developers deploying to App Service, Functions, or Cosmos DB are working with Azure every day.
Security professionals working with Sentinel and Defender for Cloud need to understand the Azure security model to do their jobs properly.
IT managers who understand Reserved Instances, Hybrid Benefit, and the shared responsibility model make better decisions and ask better questions of their teams.
Dynamics 365 and Power Platform professionals. The platform you work with runs on Azure. Understanding it makes you better at your job.
Azure certifications
Microsoft's Azure certifications are role-based. You follow a track aligned to your job.
The starting point for most people is AZ-900: Azure Fundamentals, a broad overview of cloud concepts, Azure services, pricing, and governance. It is suitable for technical and non-technical professionals with no prior cloud experience.
I recommend it as a baseline for anyone in IT who touches Microsoft infrastructure.
From there, the most commonly pursued paths are:
AZ-104: Azure Administrator for admins responsible for day-to-day Azure management
AZ-204: Azure Developer for developers building and deploying applications on Azure
AZ-500: Azure Security Engineer for security professionals managing Azure security controls
AZ-305: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (requires AZ-104) for those designing end-to-end Azure architectures
AZ-400: DevOps Engineer Expert (requires AZ-104 or AZ-204) for those implementing DevOps practices
Associate and Expert certifications expire after one year. Renewal is a free online assessment through Microsoft Learn, not a full re-sit.
Where to start
Microsoft Learn at learn.microsoft.com is free. The learning paths for every certification include hands-on sandbox labs with real Azure portal access, no credit card required. The official practice assessments are also free and give you an honest picture of exam difficulty before you commit.
For instructor-led preparation, we offer courses for the core Azure certifications at D365Training.com, including AZ-900, AZ-104, AZ-305, and AZ-400.
If you are not looking to get certified but want to learn the foundations of Microsoft Azure, the AZ-900 is the right place to start.
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