Which company is the parent of the cloud-computing platform Azure?

Microsoft is the parent company of the cloud-computing platform Azure.

Microsoft Azure is a cloud-computing service created and operated by Microsoft. It provides computing power, storage, databases, networking, analytics, artificial-intelligence tools, and other services through Microsoft-managed data centers.

Azure was announced in 2008 under the name Windows Azure and became commercially available in 2010. Microsoft later renamed it Microsoft Azure in 2014, reflecting the platform’s broad scope beyond the Windows operating system. Customers can use Azure to host websites, run applications, manage data, and build software without owning all the required physical infrastructure.

Azure competes with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. These businesses are often confused with ordinary web-hosting services, but major cloud platforms provide a much wider collection of programmable infrastructure and managed services. Azure also integrates with Microsoft products such as Windows Server, SQL Server, Microsoft 365, and developer tools.