Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure, launched in February 2010 and headquartered in Redmond, Washington, is the world's second-largest cloud platform with ~21% global market share and $75 billion+ in annual revenue (FY2025). It is the cloud of choice for enterprises - 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure, and it serves 350,000+ organizations worldwide through 70+ global regions and 400+ data centres. No other cloud provider has more regions globally.

For Indian customers, Azure has the deepest India presence of any hyperscaler: four regions in India - Central India (Pune), South India (Chennai), West India (Mumbai), all launched in 2015 - plus India South Central (Hyderabad), expected in 2026 as part of Microsoft's $3 billion India AI infrastructure investment. Pune has full Availability Zone support (3 AZs), making it Azure's primary India region for high-availability production workloads.

Azure's defining advantage over AWS and GCP is its enterprise ecosystem integration. For organizations already using Microsoft 365, Teams, Active Directory, SQL Server, Windows Server, and Power BI, Azure is the natural cloud - workloads migrate with minimal friction, and Azure Hybrid Benefit lets enterprises bring existing Windows and SQL Server licences to the cloud, reducing VM costs by up to 85% compared to fully licensed rates.

On AI, Azure has placed the biggest bet: a $13 billion strategic partnership with OpenAI gives Azure customers exclusive access to GPT-4, GPT-4o, o3, and other OpenAI models via Azure OpenAI Service - integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and the rest of the Microsoft stack. Azure now has 60,000+ AI customers and 11,000+ AI models available through Azure AI Foundry. H100 GPU (ND H100 v5) is available in several regions including India (Central India / Pune).

• 4 India regions - Pune (3 AZs), Chennai, Mumbai, and Hyderabad (2026); deepest Indian footprint of any hyperscaler
• H100 GPU in India - ND H100 v5 series available in Central India (Pune); enterprise-grade AI training locally
• Azure OpenAI Service - exclusive access to GPT-4, GPT-4o, o3, DALL-E 3, Whisper; pay-per-token, no GPU management
• Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) - bring existing Windows Server and SQL Server licences; reduce VM costs by up to 85%
• Reserved Instances - up to 72% savings over Pay-As-You-Go for 1-3 year commitments; combine with AHB for maximum savings
• Spot VMs - up to 90% off PAYG for interruptible workloads; eviction with 30-second notice but deep discounts for batch/ML training
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) - fully managed Kubernetes with free control plane; GPU node pools supported in India regions
• Native Microsoft ecosystem - Microsoft 365, Teams, Active Directory, Entra ID, Power Platform integrate natively; essential for enterprise IT
• $3 billion India AI investment through 2026 - new Hyderabad region, expanded capacity, local AI accelerators
• 70+ global regions, 400+ data centres - more regions than any other cloud provider; ideal for global enterprises
• Azure Arc - manage on-premises, multi-cloud, and edge infrastructure from a single Azure control plane
• $200 free trial credit for 30 days + 12-month free services - B1s VM, 5GB Blob Storage, 250GB SQL Database, and more
• Industry-leading compliance - 100+ compliance certifications including ISO, SOC, PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, FedRAMP; broadest coverage globally

• USD billing - no INR pricing, no UPI/NEFT; GST requires separate Azure India billing entity setup; same forex risk as AWS and GCP
• Not MeitY empanelled - ineligible for Indian government and PSU procurement without separate assessment
• Complex VM naming convention - Standard_D4s_v5, Standard_NC40ads_H100_v5 etc. are notoriously cryptic; steep learning curve vs GCP or DO
• Egress charges - outbound data to internet charged at $0.087/GB after 5 GB/month free; adds up significantly for data-heavy workloads
• GPU pricing premium - Azure H100 8-node cluster costs ~₹38.6L/month; Indian providers (E2E, Cyfuture) offer H100 at 10-15× lower cost
• Stopped VM still bills for storage - deallocated VMs don't bill for compute, but managed disk and OS disk keep billing ($2-50/mo each)
• Support tiers are expensive - Developer support $29/mo; Standard $100/mo; Professional Direct $1,000/mo; needed for production SLAs
• India region service gaps - not all Azure services are available in all India regions; some services lag Central India (Pune) by months or years

All prices in USD per month, Linux, Pay-As-You-Go. India regions (Central, South, West) are typically priced similarly to each other and ~10-15% above East US rates. Managed disk billed separately. Per-second billing, 1-minute minimum.

B-series - Burstable (dev, small apps, low-traffic sites) · India Linux PAYG

D-series - General Purpose (production workloads) · India Linux PAYG

GPU VMs (N-series) - On-Demand

Key Managed Services - Starting Prices

Azure has 4 India regions - more than any other hyperscaler. Central India (Pune) is the primary region with full Availability Zone support.

Beyond India: Azure operates in Singapore, Japan East/West, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and Australia across APAC. Full region list at azure.microsoft.com/en-us/explore/global-infrastructure.