Microsoft Azure is not "better" than any other "Cloud" Infrastructure/Platform Provider. They have implemented a IaaS/PaaS in response to Amazon Web Services; because they saw their server business being wiped out. Their choice of name "Windows Azure" in 2010 reflects how utterly clueless Steve Ballmer was about the "Cloud" (Market) that MSFT saw Azure as a way to sell more Windows (i.e. Server Licenses) and not as general purpose platform. Obviously in 2014 when Satya Nadella was made CEO of Microsoft Azure was re-branded from "Windows Azure" to "Microsoft Azure" they decided to expand to being a more general purpose IaaS/PaaS provider. The fact that Nadella was "Executive Vice President" of "Cloud and Enterprise" before being made CEO helped Microsoft to focus on that segment of their business when was given the reins.
To be 100% Clear: we are only using Azure because one of our clients (NHS) requires us to. We would prefer to use AWS, Digital Ocean or Google Could Platform over Azure every time. Not that we think that the people working on the Azure team are "bad" just that the Company (Microsoft) is Evil and should not be supported.
Microsoft has allowed their OS to be insecure which has lead to Ransomeware costing the NHS real Time and Money e.g: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-39899646 We think the NHS should implement moving away from Microsoft immediately. If anyone at the NHS is reading
thisfar and wants to discuss an implementation plan for moving away from Microsoft's Monopoly, contact us to discuss, I will personally work for FREE for as long as it takes to make the NHS 100% Open Source, Transparent and thus Orders of Magnitude more Cost-effective!!
We understand from a corporate policy/decision-making perspective
that Azure is an easy decision for certain companies/"executives"
to make given their existing investment/commitment to Microsoft ...
So we want to document our setup so that it can be followed
by anyone else in the same situation.
Much like Windows Phone, Azure is a "me too" product where Microsoft is playing catchup with well-established/better (more mature, feature rich/innovative, faster, cheaper) alternatives. There's no technical reason why anyone would use Azure other than a political decision. In our case the NHS were offered big discounts by Microsoft to use Azure. Everyone knows that MSFT are discounting Azure to the NHS for reasons other than "doing good", but the NHS IT people love a bargain so they are investing huge amounts of time locking themselves into the Microsoft "Cloud".
At least all the apps that we (@dwyl) build are designed to be "infrastructure agnostic" (i.e. no "lock-in").