By James Belcher – Trustmarque Cloud Infrastructure Consultant
More and more organisations are adopting the public cloud for its agility and flexibility. They are capitalising on its strengths to optimise resources. Microsoft Azure provides a multitude of services that companies can assemble to address a wide array of workloads and applications.
When implementing a Microsoft Azure cloud strategy, however, there are many things to consider and knowing where to begin is often difficult. With the GDPR deadline looming, top of the agenda must be data sovereignty and cost management.
Microsoft Azure has the tools to allow you to effectively govern your Azure resources and monitor compliance. Know as Azure Policies, you can enforce standards, meet regulatory compliance, manage data sovereignty and control costs, in particular by controlling the type and size of resources that can be created and where these resources will be located.
How Azure Policies help with data sovereignty?
With the GPDR deadline on the horizon (25th May 2018), data sovereignty in the cloud has never been more important.
Azure Policies can help you meet your legal requirements for data sovereignty. With Azure Policies, you can define policies that ensure data sovereignty by restricting, enforcing or auditing certain actions. Policies can be applied to ensure Azure resources are only created in UK Azure data centres (UK South and UK West). This simple process ensures Azure resources cannot end up outside the UK, which is critical to meet the data sovereignty regulations.
How Azure Policies help with cost management?
When it comes to creating resources in Azure by default, administrators can create whatever they want from the marketplace. This could lead to the creation of large virtual machines, leaving you with a very large invoice at the end of the month! So it’s paramount you understand what every resource is supporting so you can account for it and bill it back accurately.
With Azure Policies, you can design a policy that restricts not only the size of the virtual machines that can be created but also what type of resources can be created in order to have full visibility and control costs.
Azure Policies allow you to continue company IT governance into the cloud and help make your cloud strategy a success.
Learn more about Microsoft Azure Policies: Overview of Azure Policy
About James Belcher
James has worked as an Information Technology engineer across several areas of the IT sector. With many years’ experience of Microsoft Azure, James has advised organisations on the best way to formulate their cloud strategy and worked on projects to migrate their systems to the cloud.
