Azure Cloud Services: Architecture, Migration & DevOps

Most web applications and APIs fit Azure App Service, which handles patching, scaling and deployment slots with little operational effort. Containerised services that do not need full Kubernetes control usually suit Azure Container Apps. AKS is worth its extra complexity when you run many services, need fine-grained networking or already standardise on Kubernetes. Azure Functions covers scheduled jobs, queue processing and event-driven glue code.

For data, Azure SQL Database or Azure SQL Managed Instance remove most SQL Server administration, and Managed Instance keeps closer compatibility for databases that use SQL Agent jobs or cross-database queries.

A landing zone is the foundation every workload lands on: a management group hierarchy, separate subscriptions for production, non-production and shared platform services, hub-and-spoke networking and centralised logging. We follow Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework guidance, sized to your organisation rather than the full enterprise blueprint when you do not need it.

Governance is then enforced rather than just documented. Azure Policy assignments at management group level require tags, restrict allowed regions and resource SKUs, and deny public endpoints on databases and storage, while Microsoft Defender for Cloud reports on security posture across every subscription.

On Azure, identity is the main security boundary. Applications use managed identities to reach Key Vault, storage and databases, so there are no connection-string passwords to rotate or leak. Where your Entra ID licensing includes them, administrators receive elevated roles through Privileged Identity Management - activated just in time and for a limited period - and Conditional Access requires multi-factor authentication for portal and management access.

Cloud cost problems are usually design problems: oversized plans, always-on development environments, chatty data transfer and premium tiers chosen by default. We tag resources by team and environment, set budgets and alerts, right-size based on real utilisation, and use reservations or savings plans for steady workloads.

If you already own Windows Server or SQL Server licences with Software Assurance, Azure Hybrid Benefit can reduce compute and database costs, and it is worth modelling before any migration is priced.

Every resource we create is defined in Bicep or Terraform and deployed through Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions pipelines, so environments can be rebuilt, reviewed and audited rather than configured by hand in the portal.