We recently announced the ability to spin up a Virtual Machine in the Azure cloud with Warewolf pre-installed on it. While that post touched on a some of the technical benefits, it did not fully express the incredible cloud integration options and business benefits this brings.

Hardware and software cost savings

According to Forbes.com, hardware costs can be reduced by over 60% depending on the size of the VM you are setting up versus the size of the server you would have bought. Only what you think you need upfront is provisioned and then grown as required. There is no need to worry about getting someone from Infrastructure to step up the server and install Warewolf, it’s all done for you with a few clicks. Furthermore, software cost is reduced because the cloud model is pay-as-you-use; if the server is not running you don’t pay for it. You incur no large upfront license fees or purchase costs.

Reduced your development costs

The benefits just keep coming. Setting up Warewolf in the cloud immediately gives your business the ability to start building your SOA platform in the cloud. This means drastically reduced development costs and without having to be worried about all the technical details of how to scale, security, availability, etc. – this is all handled by Azure.

You get all the benefits of creating a hybrid of on-premise and cloud services. This means that you can keep your sensitive systems and data on-premise. You simply expose specific on-premise Warewolf services to access this secure data and have your Warewolf VM on Azure use these services. Not only does this give another layer of security, but it allows you to move to the cloud at your own pace, and only move what you want.

But wait, there’s more

Can things get even better? Well, yes they can! Using Warewolf in Azure gives you the immediate benefit of having a platform in place with which people can integrate. This is because of the combination of Warewolf’s ability to expose all services as web services and, since you are using the cloud version, it means it is available on the web. We think that’s pretty awesome!

The perfect cloud integration combination

Combining all these features instantaneously brings your business into the SOA in the cloud era. This includes the ability to integrate without moving all your current infrastructure into cloud, ensuring that only the assets you want exposed from your on-premise systems are made available. The monetary value of these benefits are incredible, but more incredible is the business value this adds. You can easily adapt, change and increase your business’s ability to integrate, as well as for others to integrate with it. This is what business is all about; it allows more processes and business functions to be automated. You get all of these benefits on an Azure certified platform.

We are currently working various businesses to leverage all the benefits described in this blog post, so keep an eye out on Our Customers page in the coming months. In the meantime, get your 30-day free trial and spin up your own VM to start experiencing these incredible benefits.