Are you using Microsoft cloud IT solutions? Do you want to unlock features and collaboration streams you didn’t know were available to you? Integrate Azure seamlessly with your existing Microsoft tools, making them work even harder for your business.

As any collector knows, there’s more value in a complete set.

Start your collection

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform built with business needs in mind. As such, it works perfectly with your current setup. Chances are you already have a few Microsoft services as part of your collection of cloud IT solutions. If you can answer yes to any of these questions, this blog post is for you:

• Have you got your team connecting and collaborating with Office 365, Microsoft Teams or Skype for Business?
• Are your customers getting amazing customer service, with Dynamics 365?
• Have you got the full Microsoft 365 set of Office 365, Windows 10 and Enterprise Mobility + Security all rolled into one?

Yes? Then it’s time you consider adding Azure to your collection. Get the set.

Azure Active Directory and apps with Office 365

Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) is an identity and access management system designed to help you manage your user and group accounts, set up single sign-on and sync passwords.

The good news is, if you have Office 365, you get a free subscription to Azure AD. The better news is, by upgrading you gain a whole host of additional management capabilities. You could use gain broader functionality with the Azure AD Application Proxy. This lets you publish on-premise web apps with Azure AD. Or, improve the flexibility of your management systems using Microsoft Identity Manager and create dynamic groups or set up self-service group management.

And, grant granular application access with Integrated apps (including third-parts SaaS apps and Power apps), so that if you want to roll out access on an enterprise scale, you can do it en masse. Go even further and run customised web apps and mobile apps in Azure, and integrate these easily with SharePoint Online to share information gained from these apps with your teams.

Secure customer data with Dynamics 365, Power BI and Azure

Access is one thing. On the other side of the coin, how do we prevent threats from accessing data?

Dynamics 365 hosted on Azure provides integrated advanced encryption and security capabilities for sensitive data, such as customer information. By coupling Azure Service Bus with Dynamics 365, you gain a reliable information delivery service that improves communications between systems. Not only does this make transferring data easier, but also it is reliably secure.

As well as keeping this data safe from external threats, you also want to use customer data, such as preferences, behaviours and actions, to inform your decision-making. With Azure and Power BI, you can take stored data and create real-time business intelligence analytics. Power BI Embedded on Azure even lets you load custom visualisations to suit your business’ individual needs.

And before you ask, yes there’s plenty to learn from Dynamics 365 reports, but we say boost your reporting power ten-fold with Power BI’s advanced functionality. Read more about it, here.

Get an expert to value your collection

Cloud Direct is an Azure Expert MSP, ready and waiting to offer our knowledge and resources to a business looking to expand their cloud IT solutions with Azure.

Collect and connect, in the cloud.