Azure Support Serves Microsoft's Global Cloud

Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform Is Built on 5 Support Plans

The Cloud’s infrastructure supports businesses worth hundreds of billions -- made possible by a few platforms including a company which helped to usher in an era of personal computing for billions of people - Microsoft. The company’s public cloud solution, Azure, is a major cloud platform, enabled by its Azure Support services, with over 500 services serving over 50 regions in the world:

is a cloud computing service created by Microsoft for building, testing, deploying, and managing applications and services through Microsoft-managed data centers. It provides software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and supports many different programming languages, tools and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.

The most sophisticated of cloud computing customers may have in-house engineering teams but they will still need help with platform-specific issues for deployment and that is why Microsoft’s Azure Support is essential for Azure customers.

In addition to free basic support, Microsoft also offers 4 premium Azure Support plans.

The Developer Plan (at $29 per month), as hinted by its name, is a plan intended for customers with a “trial, testing, and development” non-production cloud environment.

The Standard Plan (at $100 per month) is for when a business has a live production workload to maintain and support on Azure.

The Professional Direct Support ($1,000/M) is intended to help customers support “business-critical functions” in an Azure environment. At this level, customers have access to an account management team for faster response turnarounds, advisory services, and “high-severity incident escalation management”.

The Premiere Support (contact Microsoft for prices) is Microsoft’s support plan for Azure Enterprise customers. This is the highest level AWS Support plan - offering comprehensive support for the entire suite of Microsoft and Azure technologies.

Even at the free basic Azure Support plan level, customers would have much of the same customer support services enjoyed by all Azure Support customers. This includes access to self-help documentation and support forum communities, best-practices advisory support, and health dashboard notifications.

All plans offer the same basic services, short of technical support services.

The level of Azure Support is scalable and addresses the relevant potential demands of customers’ working environments -- beginning with early stage Developers’ focus on designing and testing of builds and prototyping, and progressing up to Enterprise customers with substantial integrations on Azure’s cloud platform and various products.

As can be expected, the response times for Azure Support at the for-pay plan levels begins with emails during regular business hours for Developers, moves toward narrower and faster response windows through 24/7 accessibility to phone and email access with dedicated support team engineers. Enterprise plan customers have 24/7 access with 15 minute response times for mission-critical support issues and inquiries.

Enterprise customers’ architecture-specific support issues are supported by specialists.

While there are support plans for AWS Support -- much like with other public cloud platforms -- many business customers will find it best to reach out to Cloud and DevOps consulting firms. All it takes is a simple email or phone call to find the right solution. In addition, it’s one thing to find the best potential Cloud platform match for a business customers’ needs, it’s another to make the most of that solution. Again, this is where reaching out to a Cloud and DevOps consultant can make sure solutions are deployed efficiently and effectively.