What are the benefits of Azure Windows Virtual Machine?

[davidboon2813]

The Benefits of Azure Virtual Machine and Azure IaaS
Virtualization transforms a piece of functioning hardware into software and gives us flexibility by unshackling the chains of the physical realm. Software has no limitations in a physical world. We can clone it, copy it, back it up and even send it across the globe in a matter of seconds. This freedom creates multiple business benefits.

Microsoft Azure’s Infrastructure as a Service offering gives you the ability to build, configure and host your virtual infrastructure in the cloud. However, this offering is not only limited to spinning up virtual machines. With Azure services you can create complex virtual networks which span the globe, store data anywhere and take advantage of the innovative, world-leading cloud services and the global footprint Azure offers.
If we combine the power of virtualization with the reach and scope of Microsoft Azure, the business benefits of both are amplified giving us speed, agility, performance, global presence, security and disaster recovery at scale.

Agility and scale
The fact that we can manipulate a server as we would data is where the true power of virtualization lies. A physical resource which needs to be procured, assembled and installed is now a piece of software you can configure and run in the cloud in just minutes. This rapid deployment ability gives us the agility we need when called on by business to respond and execute on IT infrastructure requirements.
Take for example the business requirement to deploy a new application. In the pre-virtualization era, we would have needed to first order hardware and wait for delivery. When delivered, we needed to assemble the hardware, configure the necessary components and finally install the operating system. Now we simply select the operating system we need, configure the necessary resources and spin up the server in any Azure data center anywhere in the world. What could have taken weeks in the past can now be completed in a matter of minutes.

Enhanced Performance
The ability to clone and spin up multiple instances of the same virtual machine allows us to scale services and applications rapidly, efficiently and very cost-effectively.
In today’s online world where uptime and performance are critical business requirements, we need to ensure our applications and services are available and perform above expectation. Scalability in a physical world is an expensive option as it requires the procurement, configuration, and installation of additional hardware. In a virtual world, this cost is minimized. If your hosting platform has sufficient resources, commissioning another instance is a few mouse clicks away.

I hope this information will be helpful!
David Boon