Welcome to the third part of our Getting Started with Azure – Solutions You can Deploy in 10 Minutes or Less blog series. This post focuses on web apps, and how to go about starting your web app journey with Azure.
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Thanks to the power of the cloud, IT solutions today are very different to those of even just five years ago. Using someone else’s datacentre and the internet, you can store your data, back it up, host virtual machines, apply AI to your data, and much more, paying only for what you use and nothing on maintenance or support.
Cloud has also enabled “web apps”, apps that run within a browser without any need to install software on the device. All that’s needed is a browser and a connection to the internet; simply navigate to the relevant webpage and click go, and the cloud does the rest.
Solving development challenges
For the app developer, web apps are the solution to many traditional development challenges: they don’t need to buy the infrastructure on which the apps run, which means they don’t have to pay for its upkeep, either.
The ability for cloud-hosted infrastructure to scale as app resource requirements grow, is likewise a win for the developer – provisioning extra horsepower as more people use their apps is but a click of a button away, or it can be handled automatically according to usage patterns. Availability is world-class, at 99.9%, meaning chances are incredibly slim that services will be interrupted for a meaningful length of time.
A natural home
Microsoft’s Azure platform, being one of the biggest, most dependable, and most versatile cloud services in the world, is a natural home for app developers focused on creating web apps. Azure supports apps for Windows and Linux, and developers can code their creations in .NET, Node.js, PHP, Java, Python, and HTML. That gives them plenty of leeway to develop as they wish.
Other benefits of web apps include:
- Cross-platform compatibility: Web apps run on virtually any OS that runs supported browsers.
- Manageability: Maintaining and updating web apps requires only server-side interactions. Client-side updates are deployed directly from the server, making them both quick and easy.
- Easily deployable: All the end-user needs is a web address to point their browser at.
- Reduced costs: Not having to purchase or maintain physical infrastructure means web apps cost developers a lot less.
- Data is secure: Cloud hosting means data does not need to be moved around as much, making it far more secure.
Microsoft makes it incredibly easy to get started with Azure web apps, with a very helpful page that points aspiring web app developers in the right direction. It includes “5-Minute Quickstarts”, step-by-step tutorials, free Pluralsight video training, samples, and reference materials.
Simply click here to be taken to that page, and start your journey towards developing your own web apps.
You can also contact the Azure experts at Tarsus On Demand to answer any questions you might have around developing web apps using Azure’s extensive capabilities.
