Azure provides various tools for developing applications, along with appropriate environments to deploy and run applications through a cloud-based infrastructure (Azure Virtual Machines, Azure Kubernetes Services, Web Apps to name a few). With Azure DevOps, they provide a highly integrated cloud-based framework as an ecosystem, thereby enabling automation of the entire product development life cycle.

Developing a solution in one common platform would be ideal for cloud based applications, as it would greatly speedup the software delivery process. It would also reduce the reliance on multiple open source tools from different providers and eliminate the risk of compatibility issues. Microsoft as a solution provider therefore delivers a highly integrated ecosystem for developing and delivering cloud based applications. It also ensures the delivery of a truly integrated and extendable DevOps solution. Here are some ways businesses can leverage Azure as an integrated software delivery platform:

Development & Daily Operations

Microsoft Azure turns development and operation of your applications on the cloud into an effortless exercise. It offers the flexibility to integrate with the tools of your choice. For example, if you’re on a Java based platform, it provides native integration with Eclipse. Azure even allows direct deployment of builds made via Jenkins. With its ability to meet custom requirements, Microsoft Azure provides a hybrid DevOps experience guaranteeing smooth building, testing, deployment, and live monitoring and managements of applications in the cloud.

Cloud-based Architectural Support

Adopting a cloud-based infrastructure significantly transforms the deployment, development, and monitoring of application practice to serve customers more efficiently. Azure as a cloud-based provider has the ability to provision and configure multi-region cloud environments much faster. As a result, application provisioning can be done with a relatively smaller team size.

Each step in your DevOps can be automated by following continuous integration and continuous delivery by selecting the appropriate tools, similar to the following model:

• Using Azure Pipelines to define a CI/CD pipeline and manage multiple environments
• Harness the full capability of various Azure services including Azure Kubernetes Services, Azure Virtual Machines or Azure Functions
• Automating relevant workflows with GitHub
• Leverage existing configurations to host Jenkins in Microsoft Azure
• Creation of fast and easily repeatable deployments into Azure with Spinnaker

Enabling Efficient Agile Development

Microsoft Azure also provides an interface to adopt Agile development methods for planning and tracking small release cycles. Azure Board and an integrated GitHub can be used to manage the project by defining, assigning and tracking work items. Azure Board helps manage backlogs and Azure also creates custom dashboards to track progress of development and release of the projects.

Effective Version Control Support and Infrastructure as Code Services

When it comes to version control systems, Microsoft Azure is flexible enough to accommodate distributed version control and centralized version control systems. For the former, Azure can be integrated with Git, and with the latter Azure DevOps can integrate with Team Foundation Version Control.

Microsoft Azure with Azure Blueprint also provides infrastructure as code services, deploying cloud resources in a repeatable and reliable manner enabling management of cloud resources. Open-source tools such as Terraform and Ansible can also be integrated to enable the same.

See how Sasken's expertise in DevOps is utilized for seamless delivery of DevOps based solutions.