5 reasons why Azure is a great choice for startups looking for flexible and reliable Open Source solutions

Open source computing has witnessed increasing adoption in recent times. One of the primary reasons is that, irrespective of the size of the organisation, it ticks off the right boxes in terms of affordability, flexibility, speed and innovation. Not only is it less expensive than proprietary closed-box solutions, open source software enables developers to focus their energies on innovating and tackling newer challenges, since solutions common challenges are already available to them within the bustling open source community.

The Microsoft Azure cloud platform has been built to enable businesses to fulfil a range of services, including analytics, virtual computing, storage, networking, and much more, in a convenient manner. It can be used to supplement the on-premise solutions being currently used by a business, giving them the option to build their desired suite of open source services on top of these, without having to completely overhaul them. Here are some of the main benefits offered by the Azure platform:

More options with open source on Azure: Some of Microsoft’s most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source. Azure is a first-class platform for Linux and open source technology, with a growing list of OSS solutions in the marketplace, Linux extensions, and Azure services like HDInsight running on Linux; PostGreS and MySQL on Azure. Azure supports the open source technologies that millions rely on and trust.

Offers more choices in the cloud: Azure offers you choices to help you maximise your existing investments. So you can get support for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) on Linux, Java and PHP Web application platforms, develop and test your Linux and open source components in Azure. You get to bring the tools you love and skills you already have and run virtually any application, using your data source, with your operating system on your device.

Adds value with technologies that work well with each other: Another advantage is that Azure allows you to complement what you have already built. You can augment your open source application with identity and access management through Azure Active Directory, or cloud-powered insights through Azure Data Lake Analytics. You can connect your SharePoint sites with PHP portals, run Linux batch processes to support your .NET applications, and tap a growing ecosystem of open source solutions available from Azure Marketplace which enable rapid deployment in the cloud.

Future-proofs what you build: Microsoft looks at open source as an intrinsic part of cloud innovation – be it delivering a simplified end-to-end experience for Kubernetes and adding new container capabilities with Docker and serverless Kubernetes integration. They are also constantly looking for ways to improve developer and user experiences with SDKs for open source languages and an open API. In addition to all this, they also share cloud learnings with the open source community, thanks to Linux and open source support in Azure Resource Manager and Azure Stack.

Offers flexible pricing options: Flexible pricing options make it easier for you to move to the cloud at your pace and choose a pricing model that works for you. For development and testing, you can provision and discard ephemeral Linux virtual machines and pay by the minute—only for what you use. With the Azure Compute pre-purchase plan, if you have steady-state workloads with known compute needs, you can also pre-purchase Azure compute capacity.

To know more about Azure contact the Microsoft team.