Overview of Azure Marketplace
Microsoft Azure is a Marketplace, or total store, that lists the services and applications integrated into Microsoft’s public cloud. The services and products listed in this store are published by Microsoft or licensed by its partners.
Services and products are certified before they are released for sale. This certification is done through the Microsoft Azure Certified Program. It ensures high compatibility with the Microsoft Azure public cloud. In addition, if Microsoft experts have confidence in the partner’s product solutions, they mark them as “Microsoft Preferred Solutions” because of their expertise in specific sectors.
In addition, the range of cloud tools and applications that can be useful to developers is extensive. It includes Azure Solution Builder, Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions, ready-to-use virtual machine images, Azure Solution Template, and managed and consultancy services on Azure. All of these are easily accessible to users.
What solutions does the Azure Marketplace offer?
It offers access to a wide range of services integrated with Microsoft services. These include software solutions to niche services and products tailored to specific requirements. The Azure Marketplace also benefits users and organisations by offering various solutions.
1) Azure Application Solution Template
Developers can use these templates to implement the infrastructure as code. It is used in Azure solutions together with Azure Resource Manager templates. These templates are helpful as they help to deploy topologies using different servers and their dependencies consistently.
2) Azure applications and managed applications
There is a fine line between these two services. In Azure applications, solutions are deployed on Microsoft cloud services, and users need to have an Azure account to deploy pre-paid virtual machines.
In contrast, in the case of managed applications, the application is hosted on the customer’s Azure account. However, there is a catch. Software vendors can revoke the management permission.
3) SaaS solutions
Organisations and developers can offer SaaS solutions on this platform through their partner accounts. SaaS applications must support Azure Active Directory Single sign-on before being listed for sale in the Marketplace.
Users making a purchase are redirected to the vendor’s website. Application pricing varies by model, such as metered subscriptions, flat rate, per user, etc. In addition, each model is based on an annual or monthly commitment.
4) Virtual machine images
Virtual machine images are a single file containing a virtual disk with a bootable operating system. These images are replicas of computer systems containing system drivers, operating systems, and status information. Customers can directly purchase virtual machines from this platform, and users will need an Azure subscription to access these images.
5) Management and consultancy services
Businesses can take advantage of managed services offered by qualified partners identified through the Expert Managed Service Provider program. It can be done so that the service provider can be provisioned on the customer’s Azure tenant to provide the services.
On the other hand, consulting services are helpful in this Marketplace to understand better technologies, custom development solutions, request workshops, evaluate business solutions, etc. Publishers provide these services.
Conclusions
We hope that this blog has provided you with enough insight into the Azure Marketplace to enable you to make the most of the platform. The platform offers a digital catalog with a wide range of services, products, and solutions that are cloud-based and integrated with Microsoft services.
If you want to understand more about the general concepts of cloud computing, register for our Microsoft Azure Fundamentals AZ900 course now!
