Microsoft owns Azure, its cloud-computing platform first announced in 2008.
Microsoft announced Azure, originally called Windows Azure, at the Professional Developers Conference in October 2008. The platform became commercially available in 2010 and provides computing, storage, databases, networking, analytics, artificial intelligence, and developer tools.
Azure was initially presented as a platform for running applications in Microsoft-managed data centers. It later expanded into infrastructure services and hybrid-cloud offerings, allowing organizations to connect their own data centers with Microsoft’s cloud. Azure supports Microsoft technologies as well as many open-source languages and systems.
The name changed from Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure in 2014, signaling that the service had grown beyond a Windows-centered identity. Azure competes with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. It is separate from Microsoft 365, although the two services are commonly used together by organizations.