Fuse have been pioneering the use of Azure with our customers and Microsoft for a long time. We have a great deal of experience in hosting large-scale, public-facing SharePoint farms in Azure, utilising hybrid networking to connect those farms to on-premise Active Directory infrastructures via the Azure site-to-site VPN service.
Our development work with Azure includes extending the multi-factor authentication (MFA) cloud service to provide integrated application security for a highly-sensitive public-facing website we developed on SharePoint 2013. This SharePoint farm too is hosted on Azure IAAS.
Using our System Center expertise, we can connect private and public clouds together - enabling solutions such as datacenter replication, cloud backup, and SQL replication, to be accomplished using familiar tools.
We've also carried out integration work between Office 365, Azure Active Directory, On-Premise Active Directory and 3rd Party applications (in the cloud and on-premise) to provide secure single-sign on experiences for users consuming all these services.
More recently, we've been migrating the entire IT infrastructures of small and medium companies into Azure, using hybrid technologies and Office 365 to simultaneously improve the user experience rather than just "lift and shift". These projects have included the new Windows Virtual Desktop technology, which fully integrates with Microsoft 365.
Pricing/Billing
When you purchase your Azure subscription through Fuse, you gain the following benefits over pay as you go (credit card) and enterprise agreements:
- No upfront or minimum commitment
- Monthly invoicing in arrears
- Direct Debit payments
- Lower pricing
- Direct support with Fuse
Example Packages
The hybrid cloud starter pack enables companies with existing IT server infrastructure, to extend that infrastructure into the Azure cloud. This allows the infrastructure to grow, opens up new services such as remote working, and is ideal for linking multiple locations securely. It also provides a level of redundancy for your disaster recovery planning. This solution can be extended by adding further cloud servers, and services such as SQL, backup and file shares. The VPN gateway can also be used by users, to provide a secure remote access solution that doesn't rely on the office's internet connection.
Package Includes:
- Azure site-to-site/client to site VPN gateway
- Azure virtual network
- 2x Virtual Server - for Active Directory/DNS roles
- Setup and integration with your compatible VPN device and internal network
Aimed at companies requiring long-term storage of data in any format, cold storage is an ideal way to free up expensive on-site storage, reducing IT costs whilst still ensuring your data is secure and meets compliance requirements. All files are stored in at least two geographically separate regions, and can be encrypted before being uploaded.
Package Includes:
- Setup of Azure storage account
- Integration with any existing Azure services
- Assistance with migration of files (upload or physical disk migration)
- File encryption and key management
A more secure and cost effective alternative to on-site tape/disk based backup, using Azure we can backup Windows servers and application data to the cloud using a simple backup agent. The backed-up data is held in six locations across two datacentres, and all data is encrypted with keys you provide before the data leaves your network. You can specify up to three backups a day, with retention periods as long as 99 years. Fuse can also integrate Azure backup with supported versions of SQL server, to backup databases directly to the Azure cloud, avoiding expensive database backup software.
Package Includes:
- Setup of Azure recovery account
- Integration with any existing Azure services
- Setup of server backup application
- File encryption and key management
For more complex disaster recovery scenarios, this package allows businesses to quickly bring up a replica of a virtual server, or even their entire IT infrastructure within Azure, in case of a server or datacentre failure. Virtual machine recovery is a cost effective alternative to maintaining redundant servers and failover datacentres, and the entire process of recovery can be orchestrated for automatic recovery. This service is for any private cloud, and any server OS, not just Hyper-V and Windows - VMWare and Linux can be protected too. The service can also be used to orchestrate automated failover between two existing environments, should you wish to use your own resources.
Package Includes:
- Consultancy to configure your private cloud/datacentre for site recovery
Find out more about Azure
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Why Microsoft?
Only Microsoft uniquely offers a flexible platform that lets you choose the path that’s best for your business, whether that’s on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid combination. Working seamlessly with other Microsoft software and services such as Windows Server, SQL Server, and SharePoint, Azure helps make the cloud a seamless part of your IT in a way that’s best for your company’s specific needs.
