Cloud computing is quickly gaining ground in the business world and Microsoft Azure is taking the lead. About 84% of enterprises had a multi-cloud strategy in 2019. Gartner’s Top Strategic Trends for 2021 has established that organizations require a strong AI strategy to make sure that their projects don’t stall.

With cloud computing showing no signs of reducing in its application and Microsoft taking a strong lead, it is important to examine what Azure Cloud is and how it impacts businesses and what Microsoft would be doing with it in the future.

What is Microsoft Azure?
Azure Cloud is a cloud platform that provides both low-level cloud solutions and high-level infrastructure. The infrastructure makes it possible for companies to run their applications in a scalable, elastic, and redundant environment hosted in the cloud.

Signing up on the Azure Cloud platform gives you access to over 200 products and cloud services that are designed to offer new solutions to your business operations. It is designed to solve modern business challenges and help build a future that would be unimaginable without cloud computing.

With Microsoft Azure, you can build, run and manage applications across multiple clouds, on-premises, and at the edge with great tools of your liking.

Why Azure Cloud holds the future of cloud services?
Virtually everything in the digital world has a connection with the cloud in some way. As tech giants focus on developing new ways of organizing, processing, and presenting data, cloud computing is slowly becoming part and parcel of our everyday lives.

In the recent past, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Amazon Web Services have provided cloud computing and cloud storage services. Newer entrants such as Vultr and Linode have also made inroads into the space.

What do you think is the future of cloud computing? How will it affect future business strategies, and to what extent? Concepts such as decentralized cloud computing and serverless cloud may start trickling into your mind.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Azure today is synonymous with Infrastructure as a Service. IaaS is the primary low-level public cloud service used to provide instant computing infrastructure. It is managed over the internet.

IaaS is unique because it is less expensive and is a simple way of managing physical servers and data center infrastructure. It offers essential storage, computing, and networking resources on demand.

With all the amazing computing benefits that come with it, adopting an IaaS solution for your organization helps reduce maintenance of on-premises data centers, gain real-time business insights and save money that would have been spent purchasing and maintaining hardware.

Organizations are keen on the scalability of their business operations, and more emphasis will be put on this in the future. IaaS solutions give businesses the flexibility to scale their IT resources up or down as their needs change. They also have a provision for you to quickly introduce new applications, further increasing the reliability of your infrastructure.

With IaaS, you will not incur the costs of buying and managing physical servers and data center infrastructure. Besides, you only have to pay for the resources you need since each one of them is offered separately.

Azure Data and Analytics
Azure data and analytics provide unified data governance that helps organizations do away with data challenges and shape their future.

Azure Cloud makes the future look bright by offering the general availability of Azure Synapse Analytics, a limitless analytics service that provides business insights with an emphasis on enterprise data warehousing, Big Data, and data integration.

Azure Synapse Analytics combines various capabilities, among them, machine learning, business intelligence, and data engineering. Simply put, Azure Synapse Analytics securely and seamlessly unifies your company’s data in one location.

You can get started with Azure’s machine learning features in this guide from Iteration Insights.

Data Security
No other player in the tech industry beats Azure Cloud in offering secure cloud computing. Microsoft leverages several years of being a productivity solution provider and being an enterprise operating system to provide top-shelf security to all the information hosted in their cloud products.

Microsoft Azure has put together several resources to ensure organizations’ on-site data centers are secure. They update their systems on a regular basis to make their systems immune to external threats.

Once you have purchased Azure Cloud services, you will gain access to all elements related to the security of your information. All their customers have access to the latest threat detection and prevention technologies.

There is a range of security solutions and architecture that come with Azure Cloud. They include Information Protection which enables organizations to classify and protect specific information, documents, and emails by applying labels to them, and Advanced Threat Protection and Threat Intelligence.

Azure Cloud threat monitoring agents generate real-time security alerts and threat intelligence reports which provide insights into the attackers, their motives, and their tactics.

Improved business sustainability and scalability
Many businesses will be expanding their operations in the future. If they want to do so without major hiccups, they should adopt Microsoft Azure Cloud technology which provides scalability to businesses.

Under normal circumstances, it is quite costly and time-consuming to expand a business and provide it with new infrastructure. Azure Cloud guarantees the availability of services throughout the year, thanks to its many data centers the world over. As if that is not enough, Microsoft is planning to add even more servers.

Azure Cloud boasts of having a physical infrastructure in every continent. This allows for replication in the case where an organization would like to expand beyond the borders of one continent.

Final thoughts
There is no doubt that Azure Cloud is a game-changer in cloud computing. The public cloud service, IaaS, for instance, is making cloud computing very easy while providing a simple way of managing physical servers and data center infrastructure. If you picture the future of cloud computing, you are probably thinking serverless cloud, enhanced data security, improved business analytics, and business scalability. Azure Cloud provides it all. It holds the future of cloud computing in its hands – or in the cloud – so to speak!

Myntra has worked closely with Microsoft to migrate its platform to Azure for hyperscale and cost-effective computing
The tie-up is in line with hyperscale cloud providers like GCP and AWS partnering with e-tailers to establish their cloud presence

One of the leading Indian e-commerce portals Myntra has announced that it has partnered with hyperscale cloud provider Microsoft Azure to accelerate its digital transformation journey. This announcement continues in line with top hyperscale cloud providers like Google Cloud Platform (GCP), Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure announcing partnerships with top enterprises across the country to establish their cloud presence.

Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said, “We are thrilled to partner with Myntra to integrate Azure cloud and analytics capabilities in India’s largest fashion e-tailer. The solutions we build together will empower Myntra to be the leading fashion e-commerce experience from India.”

Hyperscale refers to the complete mix of hardware and software cloud facilities that can scale a distributed computing environment spanning thousands of servers. The data center market is witnessing significant investments from colocation service providers, cloud/hyperscale service providers and telecommunication service providers. Hyperscale data center investment has grown significantly in the past years led by Google, Facebook, AWS, Alibaba, and Microsoft. Globally, analysts estimate, AWS and Microsoft Azure are leading the cloud market.

Myntra has worked closely with Microsoft to migrate its platform – from supply chain management to inventory to site capabilities – to Azure for hyperscale and cost-effective computing. These capabilities support its entire portfolio of 700,000 styles from more than 3,000 international and domestic brands available on its store. Myntra is now in a position to offer a seamless and personalized experience for customers as they shop across its portal both from their personal computers and mobile phones. Myntra’s parent company Flipkart had announced a similar arrangement with Microsoft Azure few years ago. Since the deployment of Azure, Myntra, has recorded a 50% rise in orders in the latest edition of its biennial End of Reason Sale.

Hyperscale cloud providers have started working on partnering with tech and IT companies now to establish independent business units and centres of excellence to offer bundled services to enterprise customers while keep a skilled pool of associates who can work on the platforms. TCS announced a similar Microsoft Business Unit initiative last year. Last week, Tech Mahindra announced the launch of a dedicated COE to offer its clients a full spectrum of Google Cloud services, including consulting, assessment, migration, optimization and support services for enterprises looking to optimize their workloads on Google Cloud.

The Problem: Inconsistency Across Azure Libraries

Microsoft has long offered developer libraries for its Azure cloud platform, but rapid feature growth over several years created a significant pain point: inconsistency. Different engineering teams built libraries independently, leading to mismatched design patterns, conflicting dependencies, and uneven documentation quality. Developers working across multiple Azure services often found themselves juggling incompatible library versions just to get a working setup — a cloud-era echo of the classic DLL Hell problem.

To address this, Microsoft announced a preview of a new, unified Azure SDK. The goal is to bring coherent design, consistent APIs, and reliable documentation to Azure’s developer libraries across four major programming languages.

Languages and Services in the Initial Preview

The initial preview of the new Azure SDK targets four languages:

• Python
• Java
• JavaScript
• C# / .NET

The SDK preview also covers four core Azure services to start:

• Azure Storage
• Cosmos DB
• Key Vault
• Event Hubs

These services represent a cross-section of common workloads — storage, databases, secrets management, and event streaming — making them a reasonable starting point for validating the new SDK design approach.

Design Goals: Developer Productivity First

Peter Marcu, Microsoft’s principal group software engineering manager, outlined the motivation behind the SDK overhaul. According to Marcu, the team has spent time learning which patterns and practices most directly improve developer productivity when working with Azure services.

The stated goals for the new SDK include:

• Easy-to-use APIs that reduce the learning curve for new users.
• Idiomatic design — each language’s SDK should feel native to that language and its ecosystem, rather than like a generic wrapper.
• High-quality documentation and samples that are neither too simplistic nor too complex to be useful.
• Minimized external dependencies to reduce versioning conflicts and make library upgrades easier.

The documentation and samples goal is particularly notable. Microsoft’s existing documentation has historically ranged from overly simple examples that don’t reflect real-world use to large, complex sample projects that obscure the core API concepts. Key information has sometimes been buried in blog posts or forum threads rather than in official documentation. The new SDK initiative explicitly targets this with a higher documentation standard.

Language-Specific Guidelines and Cross-Platform Commitment

Rather than enforcing a one-size-fits-all approach, Microsoft is creating per-language design guidelines. Each language’s SDK is expected to follow conventions appropriate to that language’s community and tooling. The .NET guidelines, for example, include a clear cross-platform requirement:

Use of platform-specific or native code requires an exception from the review board… DO test that sample apps execute as expected on Linux, Windows, and macOS.

This signals a meaningful commitment to cross-platform compatibility rather than treating Windows as the assumed default — a significant shift for a Microsoft developer tool.

The Trade-off: Breaking Changes

Unifying SDK design at this scale requires making difficult decisions about backward compatibility. Marcu acknowledged that some breaking changes were unavoidable:

For some cases we have had to make breaking changes to get to a better foundation. We believe aligning on that foundation will help meet the productivity goals outlined above, and once it’s set we intend to provide a high degree of compatibility. As a final note on compatibility, we’ve looked at the dependencies that we took and tried to minimize them as much as possible to reduce future incompatibilities and versioning complexities.

In practice, breaking changes may be less disruptive than they initially sound. Most Azure services expose a versioned REST API, and older API versions typically continue to function after a new version is released. This means existing code can remain operational until a developer actively needs a feature that requires a newer API version. In some cases, newer API versions also deliver performance improvements.

Languages Not on the List: REST API as a Bridge

The four SDK languages cover a wide range of use cases, but not every developer works in Python, Java, JavaScript, or C#. For languages outside Microsoft’s current list — such as Go, Ruby, or Dart (used with the popular Flutter framework) — the Azure REST API remains the path forward. Developers can wrap REST endpoints in any language to access Azure services without waiting for official SDK support.

Go support may eventually be incorporated. When asked about the Go SDK, Marcu responded via Twitter that it would “probably” come under the Azure SDK umbrella “at some point,” though no firm timeline was given.

What to Expect Going Forward

Azure has hundreds of services, and the new SDK covers only a small fraction of them in this initial preview. Expanding coverage to the full Azure catalog will be a long-term effort. Developers should treat the current release as an early preview — useful for evaluating the new design patterns and providing feedback, but not yet production-ready across the board.

The initiative reflects a broader trend in cloud SDKs: as cloud platforms mature and their service catalogs expand, the developer experience layer becomes a critical differentiator. Consistency, idiomatic design, and solid documentation are increasingly table stakes for winning developer adoption.

Coles Bets on Azure for Its Next Century of Retail

Australian supermarket and convenience retailer Coles has signed a strategic partnership with Microsoft, naming Azure as its cloud platform of choice. The deal spans cloud infrastructure, data analytics, artificial intelligence, enterprise resource planning, and modern workplace productivity — making it one of the broader cloud commitments announced by an Australian retailer at the time.

The partnership was positioned as a cornerstone of Coles’ Smarter Selling strategy: a business-wide push to simplify operations, increase the pace of change, and deliver improved experiences for customers, team members, and suppliers.

Building an Enterprise Data Platform at Scale

A central goal of the Azure migration is the construction of an Azure-based Enterprise Data Platform. According to Coles Chief Information and Digital Officer Roger Sniezek, the platform is designed to execute advanced analytics and AI across all areas of the business at extreme scale.

Practically, this means aggregating data from multiple proprietary sources — including the Flybuys loyalty program, customer transaction records, and internal research — to produce deeper business insights. Those insights are intended to drive two outcomes:

• Better range decisions: Using customer data to tailor product ranges to local shopping habits and preferences.
• Faster AI deployment: Enabling rapid rollout of AI capabilities into physical stores and across the supply chain.

AI in Stores: Reducing Manual Work for Team Members

One of the most concrete applications described is in-store productivity. Coles plans to equip store team members with new tools powered by Azure AI services to automate or streamline repetitive tasks such as:

• Stock management and replenishment tracking
• Price markdown processing

By removing manual overhead from these workflows, Coles says team members can redirect their time toward customer-facing activities — a pattern consistent with broader retail digitisation efforts where AI handles operational repetition and staff handle service.

Dynamics 365 for ERP in Coles Express and Meat Manufacturing

Beyond the core supermarket business, Coles will deploy Microsoft Dynamics 365 as an enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution in two specific business units:

• Coles Express — the company’s fuel and convenience store network
• Meat manufacturing operations

The stated objectives are simpler, more efficient, and more robust operational processes. Using a cloud-native ERP aligned to the broader Azure investment removes the need to maintain separate on-premises systems in these business units and provides a consistent data layer that can feed the enterprise data platform.

Modern Workplace: Office 365 and Agile Ways of Working

Coles will also roll out Microsoft’s Modern Workplace suite — including Office 365 — across the organisation. This component of the deal is aimed at improving collaboration and enabling more agile working practices for corporate and support teams, complementing the operational changes happening in stores and distribution.

Strategic Context: A Series of Digital Partnerships

The Microsoft deal was announced as part of a wider series of technology and digital partnerships Coles was building at the time. Sniezek described it as building on a long-standing relationship with Microsoft rather than a greenfield commitment, suggesting existing Microsoft licensing and tooling was already present in the Coles environment.

For DevOps and cloud engineering teams watching the retail sector, the Coles–Azure agreement illustrates a common pattern in large enterprise cloud migrations:

• Selecting a primary hyperscaler to consolidate workloads and reduce platform sprawl
• Anchoring the migration around a data and analytics use case that delivers measurable business value quickly
• Pairing infrastructure migration with SaaS and PaaS adoption (ERP, productivity tools) to accelerate capability delivery
• Using an innovation lab or centre of excellence — referenced in Sniezek’s comments — to prototype and validate AI use cases before broad rollout

Key Technologies in the Coles–Microsoft Deal

Bottom Line

Coles’ Azure migration represents a full-stack cloud commitment rather than a selective lift-and-shift. By linking cloud infrastructure to a coherent data strategy, in-store AI tooling, ERP modernisation, and productivity software under a single vendor partnership, Coles is trading platform diversity for integration depth and speed of execution — a trade-off that will resonate with engineering leaders managing transformation at scale in complex, multi-site retail environments.

This article is based on reporting originally published by cio.com.au in July 2019.