Microsoft Azure

Founded in 2010

CEO: Satya Nadella

Founded in 2010, Azure is Microsoft’s public cloud computing platform. With 160 active data centres in 60 regions around the world - more than any other cloud provider - the Azure cloud platform is now made up of more than 200 products and cloud services designed to help bring new solutions to life, solving today’s challenges and shaping the future. Its cloud services include compute, analytics, storage and networking.

Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, Azure’s robust infrastructure and comprehensive suite of services allows it to offer a secure and scalable cloud platform for deploying applications, storing data, and accessing computing resources.

Using Azure can help organisations achieve their sustainability goals. The Azure platform, Microsoft says, can be up to 93% more energy efficient than using a traditional enterprise data centre. Microsoft has been carbon neutral since 2012 and is committed to being carbon negative by 2030, with the commitment by 2050 to remove all the carbon it's directly emitted since its founding in 1975.

The Azure platform also provides enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure on which customers and partners can rely. This includes physical elements like redundant power, networking, and cooling, as well as software elements like safe deployment processes, impactless maintenance, and failure prediction enabled by ML.

Microsoft also makes use of infrastructure innovations such as underwater data centres, liquid immersion cooling projects, and hydrogen fuel cell technologies to boost the performance, efficiency, power consumption, and costs of Azure. It shares server and data centre infrastructure designs, emphasising security and standardisation, as part of the Open Compute Project — promoting a vibrant industry ecosystem for global data centre deployment in the cloud.

With the likes of Asos, Daimler and McKesson among its clients, Azure delivers fast and personalised experience to some of the world’s leading brands.