In this age, startups contribute a lot in driving innovation across various industries. Not all startups succeed in their ventures however. Initially, it wasn’t easy for startups to compete and eventually surpass their already-established competitors and grow their own reputation at the same time. Software development startups, particularly, had many hurdles ahead of them at that time and they still do.

But Microsoft recently announced an initiative that could benefit startups in their run on dynamic, competitive environments – Microsoft for Startups. Also known as the Bizspark program, the initiative provides startups that lack funds for licenses and platforms an opportunity to develop and market enterprise-grade software solutions.

The ASP.NET program along with Bizspark is now considered an excellent way for startups to take their first step in the tech world. This consequently led to a rise in demand for ASP.NET development services. ASP.NET is now seen as a technology that startups can leverage for accelerated growth. We will be exploring this subject in this blog. But before we begin, here are a few facts that emphasize the importance of ASP.NET and the reason for its ever-growing popularity.

A SimilarTech research found that over 17 million websites are built using ASP.NET. According to BuiltWith, over 41 million live websites use ASP.NET in their records at present.

Let’s dig into how the popular Microsoft technology solution can help startups in 2019.
 

Easy interoperability

 
With Microsoft releasing Windows 10 IoT, startups have an opening they can utilize to grow faster in a world that’s expected to be dominated by the Internet of Things in the times to come. However, interoperability is a concern that many IoT enthusiasts have.

With ASP.NET, interoperability won’t be an issue. As a matter of fact, it’d be more secure with ASP.NET. Combined with Microsoft Azure IoT suite, the framework grants impressive open source flexibility that amplifies development speed without compromising security.

So in 2019, for startups planning to take a shot with IoT as ammunition, ASP.NET guarantees a precise aim and stability.
 

Security for the future

 
As technologies advance and IoT gains momentum, data security concerns and the increasing tenacity of cyber-criminals make startups hesitant to pool their available resources to drive innovation. ASP.NET however has evolved big enough to combat most cyber-threats with its high-end security features. The Microsoft framework’s MVC architecture makes it even easier to build scalable applications that can be easily integrated with existing business applications without opening up security holes.
 

The Azure harmony

 
We are pretty sure that the cloud holds the future for almost every kind of business that deals with new-gen technologies. For companies that rely on Microsoft platforms for growth, Microsoft Azure is an appealing and beneficial choice. But what makes Azure an ideal choice for startups is the fact that it goes hand in hand with ASP.NET. The combination has a very low fail-rate for startups that are prepared to wield them effectively. It will certainly make a difference for startups this year, and the cherry on top is that Microsoft will be there to help.
 

Improved versatility for mobile app development

 
Back in the day, it wasn’t easy for application developers to build mobile apps based on .NET. But now things have changed. .NET evolved over the years to become even more versatile than it used to be, enabling startups to build mobile apps that can provide rich user experiences without hassle.
 

Conclusion

 
ASP.NET has always been known for its versatility and diversity. Despite being pitted against strong rivals, the framework has been successfully retaining its demand and popularity for years. With its great flexibility and multitude of impressive features, ASP. NET is undoubtedly the most ideal web solution for startups to begin their journey to success in 2019.

To outpace competitors in the digital ecosystem, apps can be a powerful tool for businesses. This is why a mobile app development company is forced to innovate and be unique from the rest. They will have to ensure that the app serves it purpose while being insightful, engaging, content-rich and targeted at the same time. On average, a mobile user may download close to 50 apps a month. They will have expectations for the app they choose to use from hundreds of thousands of other options.
 

Smart apps?

 
Ultimately, the users expect the apps to be smart and respond in a way they like providing a personalized experience – effortless navigation, responsive interface, excellent security. To provide such a catered experience to users, the apps need to be intelligent enough to know its own intent and the desire of the users as well.

But developing one wasn’t easy a year ago. Though it isn’t particularly easy now, we do have the technology to make it a reality – artificial intelligence and machine learning.
 

AI/ML Advancements

 
AI and ML aren’t new technologies either. They have been around for a while but only recently did they evolve big enough to transform enterprises and several other sectors. Both became two heavily invested trends in a very short time, turning heads of tech behemoths like Microsoft, Google, Amazon Web Services etc.

Now we can use AI, machine learning and big data to drive innovation in a way that was only a fantasy till recently. Combining the three technologies, developers can now build intelligent apps or smart apps that have adaptive learning capabilities and human-like responses ensuring a considerably better, engaging, and more personalized user experience.
 

Where Azure comes in

 
When it comes to providing cloud-driven cognitive services, Azure and AWS dominate the market.

Though AWS is still leading, Azure adoption grew from 20% to 34% last year, reaching 60% of AWS’ market penetration.

Azure is expected to outpace AWS in the coming years, is more preferred by enterprises, and is already transforming the software development sector. Azure’s Cognitive Services offer various APIs that developers can use to add and leverage AI for their apps. The APIs can be used to add many smart features to apps including natural language processing and voice recognition.

With Azure’s services, the apps will be able to analyze generated data to learn patterns on user behavior and take measures to make the app more engaging. The apps can also be automated to personalize the content and serve it to users at the right time.

The list of APIs from Azure is only growing bigger, with many more under production. Here are a few of the most interesting services from Azure that can make a positive impact on how users see and use apps.

Customer Decision Service

This service takes into account user behavior and the data provided by the mobile app development team, and utilizes machine learning technology to serve content at specific contexts based on the data. It can also learn from user feedback to determine the type of content to serve to particular users i.e. to make decisions for targeting the content.

Developers can also tailor the service to suggest content options to users, and analyze their responses to not make mistakes in the future. The API essentially grants adaptive learning capabilities to an app. If the app is hosted on Azure, all they have to do is provide the data for it to work on.

Content Moderator

Content moderator is a service that can come of use when user-generated content is involved. It leverages machine learning and human-based content review to give greater control of user-generated content to the owner of the app. The service can moderate not just text but images and videos as well.

This is the service that developers can use to detect offensive textual content by matching and cross checking it with a custom list, before deciding to flag the content or block it. It can similarly block and flag any user-generated image if it’s offensive, and can block adult video content from appearing in the app.

Speaker Recognition API

This API addresses the security and authentication aspects. Speaker Recognition API, like the name suggests, can be used to add voice authentication to get access to applications instead of using passwords or patterns. Many apps feature username/password login, which can be replaced with voice authentication to make it easier and more convenient for users. This is because, though they have the option to remain signed into apps so they don’t have to login every time, there is still a security risk.

Voice recognition, on the other hand, blocks access to unrecognized users safeguarding it while giving users a more convenient way to log in at the same time. The voice recognition feature fits more on banking/finance apps or the ones that handle personal data.
 

Conclusion

 
We have the technology to build smart apps now, and this fact is one of the primary reasons why the trend is gaining momentum. Mobile apps will also be evolving and AI/ML would have a lot to do with it. And when it comes to AI/ML, Azure’s Cognitive Services is a step above its counterparts when it comes to building smart apps.

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Present age businesses rely on technologies and technological advancements to accelerate their growth in the market and become successful against odds. This is why maneuvering of technologies within a business is important. As of now, many businesses of various sizes seem to be satisfied with various Microsoft technologies that provide them with enough flexibility and benefits to keep pressing forward.

With the advent of the cloud technology, growth prospects for organizations significantly increased. Organizations have started seeing the potential of cloud-based models, hybrid or others, and cloud services that can give them a great edge in their markets. This also led to the rise of cloud IaaS service providers. And among those cloud service providers is Azure – a Microsoft technology solution that provides many practical solutions that promote business growth while enhancing operational performance and stability.
 

Azure’s Market Penetration

 
Though it competes with Amazon Web Services and Google Computer Engine, Azure still stands out as the most preferred cloud service provider. There are many reasons for this, including but not limited to the potential it gives organizations to expand globally with more regions compared to other cloud providers, its hybrid consistency, and its openness to open source technologies.

Its stats can vouch for this.

Azure adoption grew from 20% to 34% last year, reaching 60% of AWS’ market penetration.

Though AWS dominates the market, Azure has been catching up at a rapid pace and is speculated to surpass AWS in the near future.
 

The Various Benefits of Azure

 
Azure provides many services including computing, analytics, database, networking, web, and storage. Many such services can even streamline software development. They all come with various benefits businesses can leverage to outpace their competitors. Here are a few top benefits of Azure your business can take advantage of.

• Azure’s very fast: Azure’s speed is one of its greatest benefits. With Azure, deployment, operation, and scalability are considerably faster. Evidently, Azure offers unmatched functionality compared to other 0n-premises or other cloud providers. The popular cloud platform seamlessly integrates with Microsoft products.
• Azure enhances business agility: Azure allows business to not just develop applications but also test and deploy them. They can garner feedback to improve the application further. This aspect of letting businesses explore new avenues without having to set up complex infrastructure is one of Azure’s key features. Essentially, Azure enhances business agility while allowing businesses to innovate without investing more money.
• Expand globally with Azure: To catch up with its growth rate, a business must take into account the dynamic changes in performance and resource utilization. This is essential. With data centers operating on several parts of the globe, this can be easy. Azure offers just that with its global reach; its biggest benefit. Azure users, on the other hand, get a plethora of services and a fine experience regardless of their location.
• Azure’s business focus with Visual Studio: Azure also brings Visual Studio with it, allowing developers to build Azure solutions in the leading development environment without hassle. This also allows businesses to integrate other disruptive technologies including IoT and machine learning with Azure to obtain more functionalities that tie back to their business goals.
• Azure automation: Azure allows businesses to automate tasks in their Azure environments. This means businesses won’t have to spend time on monitoring and resource maintenance, subsequently reducing overhead costs and enabling them to focus more on business critical operations. All they need to do is to create workflows termed ‘runbooks’.
• Azure’s analytics support: Azure comes with built-in data analytics capabilities allowing business to uncover and utilize valuable insights to improve critical processes, and for better decision-making. Businesses can use Azure’s Apache Hadoop-based cloud service named HDInsight to analyze data in detail by building Hadoop clusters.
• Azure’s disaster recovery capabilities: When cloud technologies are involved, it’s better to have efficient built-in disaster recovery capabilities. Azure has it covered with global and regional fail-over measures and rolling reboot capabilities. While this may only come of use rarely for a business, it’s still good to know that ‘disasters’ won’t affect an Azure-driven business much.
• Azure’s compliance is Microsoft’s responsibility: When one of the biggest corporations in the world is responsible for one of its products’ compliance, businesses won’t have to worry much. Organizations using Azure can trust Microsoft itself to do the heavy lifting when it comes to compliance. Reducing compliance-related complexities enable greater resource allocation for Azure-driven enterprises.

Conclusion

 
Choosing between AWS and Azure can be a bit tricky. But it depends on the organization’s goals most of all. Azure simply didn’t become the most preferred cloud service option for startups and other SMBs. Over the years, it proved its worth. This blog can help organizations, contemplating the impact of Azure on their businesses, make a choice worthy of their investments. They can learn more about Azure and its benefits from a reputed cloud service provider.

To survive the world today, modern businesses require powerful tools we refer to as ‘software’ to help them execute tasks, communicate, share data, plan strategies, analyze performance, market the business etc. Business apps can also be seen as such a tool, if not one of the most effective ones, which benefit the organization as a whole.

But before using such tools or digital solutions, businesses will have to decide where to deploy them. On-premises infrastructure is the generally opted deployment platform. However, such facilities demand considerable investment from the business as they will need to buy and configure servers, keep them running in datacenters, and secure and maintain the datacenter itself. It’ll all work out if the business has time and enough budget for a capital investment to protect their data.

This used to be the case till the advent of the cloud.
 

The Cloud – Business Connection

 
The cloud came with a pay-as-you-go pricing model providing businesses with a way to cut infrastructure costs while giving them access to computing hardware, storage, and network. They need pay only for what they use. However, even the cloud’s attractive features failed to gain many business’ attention mostly due to security and privacy concerns. This led to the development of the hybrid cloud approach where the cloud considers the on-premises and cloud infrastructures to be connected, and being used at the same time.
 

Enter Microsoft Azure

 
Businesses have been relying on enterprise solutions powered by Microsoft technologies for a long time. Azure is one of those solutions that uplifted quite a lot of businesses. The cloud-based Microsoft technology solution offers a broad range of services that cater to multiple scenarios.

For instance, consider the requirements of an organization with sufficient on-premises resources and wants to deploy their business app. They want the users to have a single sign-on experience, for which they use Active Directory for access management. The organization wants the data in the application to be private, and not expose it to the internet.

In such a scenario, the ideal way is to set up a network and have the on-premise infrastructure connected to a cloud infrastructure. So basically, an isolated network with a defined IP addresses range in the cloud is needed. A virtual network service can achieve just that, thus making it easier to integrate the cloud network with the on-premises network.

Once the virtual network is created, the organization’s datacenter should be connected with the cloud using a VPN Gateway service.

And once the network is configured and ready, the organization can integrate their Active Directory with the cloud. This is where Azure comes in. Its Active Directory services provide a managed Active Directory that can be integrated and synced with the organization’s Active Directory.

OR

The organization can deploy their own Active Directory configuration on the Virtual Machine.

The business app can then be deployed on servers, and configured to make use of the Active Directory the organization deployed earlier.
 

Perks of Using Azure for Businesses

• Move from capital expenditures (Capex) to operational expenses (Opex) with its pay-as-you-go pricing model
• Easy access to resources means reduced time to market
• Choose from a wide range of virtual server configurations to meet the business requirements
• Easier to set up a network connection using services like Virtual Private Network (VPN), VPN Gateway, ExpressRoute etc.
• Enhanced security and streamlined access management thanks to managed services like Azure Active Directory
• Flexibility in making infrastructure-related decisions
• This flexibility also gives them a way to respond faster to business challenges

Microsoft has always been reliable and consistent when it comes to delivering new cloud capabilities. They have been consistently delivering hybrid features across both on-premises and cloud environments. But apparently that wasn’t the end of it as Microsoft recently announced new Azure tools and resources that can optimize businesses by harnessing the potential of hybrid cloud.

This is a welcome change in today’s time with more businesses realizing how cloud can boost their growth, adopting the technology and leveraging it for its innovative benefits. However, it should also be mentioned that the vast majority of businesses in the world are still reluctant to fully move to public cloud citing latency concerns, customization, and even data sovereignty as reasons. Microsoft seems to be on the path to changing that.
 

The New Tools and Resources

 
They mentioned a tool called Cloud Migration Assessment, designed to help organizations discover and analyze servers across their IT environment. The tool also provides a detailed report that includes an estimate of the cost benefits of moving to Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft’s also announced that it will be possible to activate Azure Hybrid Use Benefit directly in the Azure Management Portal. In addition to the cost-effectiveness of this feature, the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit also saves up to 40% with Windows Server licenses.

Another tool that is worth noticing is the Azure Site Recovery tool. Also pro-cloud, this tool eases the transition to the cloud. The tool allows organizations to efficiently migrate virtual machines to Azure. It also makes moving applications running on physical servers, AWS, Hyper-V, or VMware hassle-free.

It wouldn’t be wrong to theorize that the tech giant will be announcing changes in other popular Microsoft technologies as well this year. It’s safe to expect some intriguing cloud features that can optimize businesses in unique ways.