Manufacturing organizations continue to seek ways to improve efficiencies and drive productivity. In an increasingly competitive landscape, business leaders are looking to technology to achieve breakthroughs that help them service customers, increase revenue, and reduce costs. To meet these demands, organizations have begun incorporating the many benefits of the Internet of Things (IoT) into their manufacturing operations.

Microsoft is at the leading edge of this technological revolution in manufacturing with its Azure IoT Suite. Some of the world’s most prominent manufacturers, are leveraging Azure to drive advances in three critical areas.

It’s nearly impossible to read an article or view a video centered on IT planning without a discussion of the cloud. Every day more organizations are looking to the cloud for their computing needs. The global cloud computing market grew 21 percent to $110 billion in 2015 according to Synergy Research Group. Some forecasts predict 60 percent of all computing will be done in the public cloud by 2025.

Increasingly, companies looking to the cloud are turning to Microsoft Azure. Nearly nine out of 10 Fortune 500 companies use Microsoft Cloud and there are currently 750 million Azure ActiveDirectory users. There have been 120 billion hits to websites run on the Azure Web App Service.

Why the cloud?

IT leaders now recognize the many advantages of moving workload to the cloud.

Disaster recovery (DR) was once a privilege reserved for large enterprises with substantial budgets and sizeable IT staffs. In year’s past, small and mid-market companies could fall back to manual or paper based processes.  However, that simply isn’t the case today. For most businesses, the paper processes are a thing of the past. Losing access to their critical systems will mean loss of business, lost customers, and possibly even going out of business. This makes disaster recovery an absolute necessity. Fortunately, Azure Site Recovery (ASR) makes it cost-effective and easy. Azure Site Recovery list price is $25 per virtual machine per month – which is incredibly low. 

Azure AD Domain Services provides managed domain services that relieve the high cost and administrative overhead required when deploying domain controllers using virtual machines in Azure. Other approaches often require admins to manage and monitor every small detail of these domain controllers, which can cause workloads to be vulnerable to transient network glitches or outages, resulting in lower uptime and reduced reliability due to network outages. With Azure AD Domain Services, you no longer have to worry about this.

What is Windows Hybrid Use Benefit?

Microsoft has a relatively unknown benefit called Hybrid Use Benefit (HUB). If you already own Windows Servers with Software Assurance, you can use it to run workloads in Azure on Windows without paying for Windows in Azure. For those that license Windows Servers utilizing the Data Center version, you can continue to use that Windows Server to run on-premises workloads, as well as different workloads in Azure with the same license. This allows you to double the functionality of each Windows Server Data Center license! 

A few important facts:

• Both versions of Windows Server - Standard and Datacenter -  license with Software Assurance are eligible for the Hybrid Use Benefit
  
  
  
  
• A Windows Server Standard Edition license cannot be used simultaneously in on-premises deployments while utilizing Hybrid Use Benefit in Azure
• Windows Server Datacenter licenses can utilize the Hybrid Use Benefit and continue to be deployed in parallel on-premises
• All uses of HUB must be done by importing a customer’s image file into Azure

For Azure deployments of HUB, each eligible license has an entitlement to run Windows Server VM’s at the lower non-Windows VM rates. Through leveraging HUB, some deployments in Azure can offer end-customers a savings up to 50%.  

Hybrid Use Benefit Sample - Full Time

Example scenario with customer running two D2v2 VMs using the Hybrid Use Benefit.

*EA Level D in USD, US East 2; full-time usage on demand
**Second Azure instance is included with Windows Server Standard Edition Software Assurance, EA level A

If you want to learn more about how Azure has leveraged this benefit, please follow these links:

• Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Benefit Overview
• Azure for Microsoft software FAQAzure for Microsoft software FAQ 

We look forward to explaining more about this benefit, and how it can save you money with your existing investments in Microsoft infrastructure.  Contact Interlink today!