Azure is Microsoft's cloud, with a UAE region. Its advantage is integration: if your staff sign in with Microsoft accounts and your reporting is Power BI, an Azure-hosted application fits without an adapter layer.
What is Azure?
Azure offers the same broad categories as AWS — compute, storage, databases, networking. What differentiates it is how tightly it connects to the Microsoft software an enterprise already runs.
If identity is Entra ID, single sign-on is configuration rather than a project. If reporting is Power BI, the data path is short. For an organisation already inside that ecosystem, that integration is the whole argument.
For a mid-market business with no Microsoft estate, none of that applies and Azure becomes an ordinary cloud with a slightly less pleasant developer experience. The platform is not the differentiator; the integration is, and if you do not have it there is nothing to integrate with.
When we choose Azure
When the client is a Microsoft organisation. Staff identity in Entra ID, documents in SharePoint, reporting in Power BI — an Azure-hosted application slots into that rather than needing glue written for each.
When enterprise procurement specifies it, which in this region it frequently does.
The practical test is simple: if your staff already sign in with a Microsoft account and your reporting already lives in Power BI, an Azure-hosted application inherits both. That inheritance is worth more on a real project than any comparison of individual services.
When we do not use Azure
When there is no Microsoft estate to integrate with. Without that, the integration advantage disappears and the choice comes down to preference and pricing, where AWS usually has more options.
And for a small site, where a managed host is simpler and cheaper — the same argument as AWS.
What we build with Azure
Internal applications with corporate sign-on
Staff sign in with the account they already have, permissions follow existing directory groups, and nobody manages a second set of users. That last point is usually what IT actually cares about.
Portals for staff and partners
External-facing applications where sign-in uses the organisation's existing directory, including guest access for partners without creating accounts anyone has to manage separately.
Document workflows on SharePoint
Applications that read from and write to the document library the organisation already uses, so nothing has to be copied into a second system and kept in step.
Deployments inside the UAE region
Application and data hosted locally where residency is a contractual requirement, with the position documented for procurement rather than asserted.
Reporting pipelines into Power BI
Application data prepared and delivered into the reporting tool the business already reads, so a new system does not arrive with its own separate dashboard nobody opens. Refreshed on a schedule that matches how the numbers are actually used rather than in real time for its own sake, which keeps the cost proportionate to the value.
How we ship Azure projects
With single sign-on wired to the existing directory from the first sprint rather than retrofitted, because retrofitting authentication is where these projects lose time.
With a cost alarm, same as AWS.
Infrastructure defined as code, the same as anywhere else, so the environment can be reviewed, recreated and handed to your IT team rather than existing only as a set of choices someone made in a portal.
What Azure costs you
Outside the Microsoft ecosystem the advantage largely evaporates, and the developer experience for non-.NET stacks is generally considered behind AWS.
Cost is as hard to predict as any cloud, and the same discipline applies.
Cost management needs the same discipline as any cloud — a billing alarm on day one and a review each month for the first quarter. Data transfer and a service left running after a test are the two common surprises, and neither announces itself.
The developer experience for non-Microsoft stacks is also generally considered a step behind AWS, which shows up as more time spent on tooling than on the product.
Azure questions we get asked
Azure if your organisation runs on Microsoft — identity, documents and reporting already there makes the integration worth more than any feature comparison. AWS otherwise; it has more services and generally better tooling for non-Microsoft stacks.
Yes — single sign-on against Entra ID, with permissions following the directory groups your IT team already maintains. Nobody manages a second set of users, which is usually what IT actually wants from an application like this.
No. Azure runs PHP, Node, Python and containers perfectly well, and the integration advantages — identity, documents, reporting — apply regardless of what the application is written in. Procurement sometimes assumes otherwise, and it is worth clarifying early.
It can, and it is usually more machinery than the job needs. A marketing site with steady traffic runs perfectly well on a managed host for a fraction of the cost. Azure earns its place on internal and customer systems where the identity integration matters.
Yes, there is a UAE region and an application can be deployed entirely within it. We document which services hold data and where, because "hosted in the region" is a claim a compliance team will want evidence for rather than an assurance from the supplier.
Through a private connection between your network and the Azure environment, so the application reaches an internal database or file server without either being exposed to the internet. This is one of the areas where Azure is genuinely well served, and it is often the reason an enterprise picks it.
Yes, and on Azure projects that is usually essential — they own the directory, the network and the policies we have to work within. We agree the boundaries early: what they provision, what we deploy, and who holds which credentials. Projects that skip that conversation lose weeks to access requests.
