“Can you show me how to use Azure”? I have been asked the same question many times over the past while. It’s an awkward question. Azure isn’t a tin-opener. It’s a platform, combining many different technologies, tools and service offerings.

I mean, I could get into the little detail, and say “Sure, which part of the Azure platform are you interested in”?

If the person is a Developer and there is a clear response like Shared Storage, or Continuous Deployment or Mobile Services or Streaming Analytics or even Machine Learning, then we are off to a good start and we can make progress.

But the first issue is that it’s not a Developer who is asking the question. It’s usually the Business Owner, or Senior Management, or worse - the CTO. The second issues is that the response I usually get back is “I don’t really know, I thought you could tell me”.

Ouch!

I have come to the conclusion that we have to stop looking at Azure as a platform or a bunch of technologies or services, and instead start looking at Azure as a Strategy. (AaaS)

The real question they are asking is: “Can you help me form an Azure Strategy”?

That’s a very different question.

You see, the first question is driven out of fear of being left behind and uncertainty about the future. Business owners are constantly hearing about the Cloud and Azure, but beyond Office365 and perhaps spinning up a VM in Azure and sticking a database driven web-server on it - Which by the way is frankly a waste of time (*) - the whole Azure “thingy” all seems a little too much like Dark Magic

I am constantly seeing developers dip their toes in the world of Azure and getting burnt, and trying to justify their actions to management either by taking the victim stance - “Azure is X” - where X is some derogatory nominilization (Azure is Slow/Immature/Down), or by saying Azure doesn’t support Y, where Y is some feature that has nothing to do with Scalable cloud Architecture (such as, Azure doesn’t support sticky sessions/ Linked Databases / CONTEXT_INFO objects).

The second question is very different, because it is a realisation that Azure is not a silver bullet, and it will not solve all the technical debt that the organisation has built up over the last five years. In fact Azure will most probably bring your technical debt into the spotlight, perhaps with red faced defenses and blame been thrown at junior developers who have long left the fold.

Developing an Azure Strategy involves building a clear and simple 3 step plan:

• Step 1. Where am I now ?
• Step 2. Where do I want to be?
• Step 3. What do I need to Change to get there?

Over the next few posts, I will work towards answering these questions in the context of four Key Performance Indicators. These are:

• Cost
• Time
• Work-flow Efficiency
• Repeatability

Next week: Background to an Azure Strategy: Why choose these Key Performance Indicators?