By moving our customers to the cloud in Azure VMs (virtual machines), both iGuana and customers will have numerous benefits.
Security Benefits
Certified Security Standards
Azure complies with various industry standards and certifications, including ISO 27001, SOC 2, and others. Leveraging Azure can simplify the process of meeting compliance requirements.
Azure Security Centre
Azure Security Centre provides continuous security monitoring, threat detection, and actionable insights. It helps identify and respond to security threats proactively.
Data Encryption
Azure VMs support data-at-rest and data-in-transit encryption. Azure Disk Encryption can be used to encrypt the OS and data disks, and Azure Virtual Network supports encryption for data in transit. This helps protect sensitive information from unauthorized access.
Data Centre Security
Azure operates state-of-the-art data centres with strict physical security measures, including access controls, surveillance, and environmental safeguards. This can enhance the overall physical security of your infrastructure.
Azure Network Security Features
Azure provides a range of network security features, including Network Security Groups (NSGs), Azure Firewall, and Azure DDoS Protection. These tools help protect your VMs from unauthorized access, malicious attacks, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) incidents.
Moving iGuana Base Directories to Azure Storage
Usage-Based Pricing
Azure Storage follows a pay-as-you-go pricing model, where you are charged based on your actual usage. This can be advantageous as you only pay for the resources the customers are using. We can transparently move that cost to the clients by adding a profit margin. This will introduce a new revenue stream to the company since until now for on premise customers were not charging based on volume.
Data Storage and Operations
Monthly expenses will depend on the amount of data stored, data retrieval operations, and other associated operations. Understanding the client’s storage patterns and optimizing usage can help control costs. As before this cost will be transfer to the customer with a profit margin. Redundancy
Options
Azure Storage offers redundancy options for data durability. You can denote data tiers on the data to save on cost (Hot, Cold, Archive) based on the customer access. Utilizing the data tiers will reduce the cost of the company and increase its revenue.
Scalability
Azure Storage allows for easy scalability. As the documents of the client grow and require more storage, we can seamlessly scale the storage resources.
Data Resilience
Azure Storage provides features for backup and disaster recovery, enhancing the resilience of business operations. We can offer this as an additional service to the customers for extra data protection.
Moving iGuana Application to Azure VMs
Better Control and Deployment
We can have easy access to clients VMs for maintenance and troubleshooting. We can also monitor their systems if operated correctly using Windows Admin Centre and Azure Monitor and we can update quicker and more efficient the OS and the iGuana version.
Azure Availability Zones
Azure provides availability zones that enable you to distribute your VMs across multiple physical data centres within a region. This enhances fault tolerance and improves the availability of iGuana.
Scalability- On-Demand Resources
Azure VMs allow you to scale your computing resources up or down based on demand. This flexibility is valuable for handling varying workloads without the need for upfront investments in hardware. The customers do not need to worry about ageing hardware that need to be replaced.
Built-In Security
Azure offers a range of security features, including identity management, encryption, and network security. These features are designed to meet industry standards and help secure your applications and data.
High Availability and Redundancy
Azure provides availability zones that enable you to distribute your VMs across multiple physical data centres within a region. This enhances fault tolerance and improves the availability of iGuana to the clients.
Moving the Database to Azure SQL
DB Deployments
Database deployments can be performed faster without any issues using an automated procedure.
Automatic Updates and Patching
Azure SQL handles automatic updates and patching, ensuring that databases are running the latest security patches and improvements without manual intervention. No need to worry about old SQL server machines that cannot run newer TSQL queries that disrupt the updating process of iGuana. Customers can be rest assure that they are running on the latest SQL server engine.
Scalability-Elastic Scaling
Azure SQL provides the ability to scale databases up or down based on demand. This elasticity allows you to adapt to changing workloads without the need for significant hardware investments. This can have a direct impact on the cost that will save money for both iGuana and the customers itself.
Automated Backups
Azure SQL includes automated backups, reducing the burden on administrators for managing backup processes. Point-in-time restore capabilities are also available. The clients do not need to worry anymore about backups as this will be included in our service.
Geo-Replication
Azure SQL offers geo-replication, allowing you to replicate databases to different Azure regions for improved disaster recovery and high availability. We can sell this as an added service to the customers to increase revenue.
Monitoring and Analytics-Azure Monitor and Query Store
Azure SQL provides monitoring and analytics tools, including Azure Monitor and Query Store, to gain insights into database performance and query optimization. Having access to Customers DBs we can run optimizations easily and more often so we can address issuers faster increasing customer satisfaction.
