How Azure’s Greatest Strength Can Lead to Infrastructure Challenges

Microsoft Azure has revolutionized the way our clients approach IT infrastructure and application deployment. Whether the goal is to eliminate the management overhead of an on-prem data center, or to leverage the cloud for implementing BCDR initiatives, or anything in between, Azure's intuitive interface and out-of-the-box functionality allow even complex systems to be spun up in minutes, empowering companies to innovate faster than ever before. But there’s a catch: Azure’s greatest strength—ease of deployment—is often its Achilles’ heel. This speed and simplicity can lead to oversights that require costly and time-consuming retrofitting later.

By now we can see that the cloud is here to stay. The question for organizations isn’t whether to take advantage of Azure, or even so much as how to do so. Based on the conversations that I'm having with customers and prospects in 2024, I'm inclined to believe that organizations could benefit from learning how to avoid the common traps that come with Azure's convenience.

The Appeal of Azure: Quick, Accessible, and Powerful

One of Azure’s defining features is its accessibility. For years, deploying new infrastructure was the exclusive domain of IT professionals with deep expertise. Azure changed the game. Today, anyone with basic knowledge can deploy virtual machines, set up databases, or connect cloud resources in minutes. The same platform that supports global enterprises is also accessible to small startups and individual developers.

This democratization of IT infrastructure has fueled unprecedented innovation. Need to deploy a new application? Azure makes it happen with just a few clicks. Want to scale resources to accommodate growing demand? It’s built right in. These capabilities are why Azure has become a cornerstone of digital transformation for organizations worldwide.

But herein lies the paradox: What makes Azure so appealing also makes it deceptively simple. And without careful planning, the ease of use can lead to major challenges down the road.

The Hidden Cost of Oversights: Why Retrofitting Happens

In traditional IT infrastructure projects, careful planning is not so negotiable. Because of the time, effort and expense that designing and deploying data center infrastructure demands, IT teams go to great lengths to design up front for scalability, security, resiliency, and interoperability from the start. With Azure, though, I'm seeing time and time again that the ease, speed and simplicity of deployment it provides can serve to encourage bypassing this essential planning stage.

Common Oversights

These are the four most common challenges we're encountering among our clients and prospects who are experiencing growth on Azure:

• Scalability: Businesses deploy applications quickly to meet immediate needs, only to realize later that their systems can’t handle future growth without significant rework.
• Security: Permissions, network segmentation, and compliance requirements may be ignored or misconfigured, leaving the infrastructure vulnerable to attacks.
• Resiliency: High availability and disaster recovery plans are often an afterthought, resulting in single points of failure that disrupt operations during outages.
• Interoperability: Resources deployed without a cohesive strategy can create silos, making it difficult to integrate systems across environments.

Retrofitting these oversights isn’t just a matter of flipping a switch. It often requires rebuilding systems, disrupting operations, and inflating budgets—costs that could have been avoided with proper planning.

Why Experienced IT Teams Are Not Immune

It’s easy to assume that these mistakes only happen when inexperienced users are at the helm, and Azure can put a lot of power to individuals who may not be well-versed in infrastructure planning. However, even seasoned IT teams can fall into the same trap. Azure’s efficiency can encourage a narrow focus on achieving immediate goals, such as deploying a specific application or providing quick access to a resource. In doing so, long-term considerations like scalability or security can be overlooked.

This isn’t necessarily a failure of expertise, mind you, but a reflection of how Azure enables users to achieve quick wins. Unfortunately, these wins can lead to challenges later when the infrastructure needs to evolve.

Retrofitting Challenges: Fixing What Wasn’t Built to Scale

When planning is skipped, the costs of retrofitting can be significant. Consider a business that deployed an application on Azure to meet an urgent deadline. Months later, as demand grows, the application begins to falter. Scaling it requires reconfiguring the underlying infrastructure, introducing downtime and additional expense.

Key Retrofitting Challenges:

• Reconfiguring Resources: Adapting underperforming systems to meet new demands.
• Correcting Network Architectures: Implementing best practices for security or resiliency that should have been in place from the start.
• Rebuilding for Integration: Making siloed resources work together across environments.

These issues can slow down innovation, increase costs, and frustrate IT teams who are forced to address problems that, with a little investment in planning up front, might have been prevented.

The Path Forward: A Structured Approach to Growth on Azure

How can businesses harness Azure’s strengths without falling into these traps? It all starts with a disciplined, structured approach to planning and deployment.

Actionable Tips

There's not a big difference between how IT teams have approached infrastructure planning traditionally and how we recommend they go about it now. The key here is that they aren't seduced by the agility of Azure into skipping the planning stage altogether.

• Start with a Clear Strategy: Before deploying any resources, define goals for scalability, security, resiliency, and interoperability. Use these goals as a blueprint for all decisions.
• Engage Infrastructure Experts: Don’t underestimate the value of specialists, whether this expertise is found within your IT team already or you need to partner with an outside provider like Prescriptive. The same types of experience and insights that have ensured success with traditional, on-prem infrastructure will help ensure a solid foundation for long-term success in the cloud.
• Establish Governance Frameworks: Create policies and controls to standardize deployments and avoid ad-hoc resource creation.
• Leverage Azure’s Built-In Tools: Use solutions like Azure Advisor to identify risks, Azure Monitor to track performance, and Azure Resource Manager to maintain consistency.

These steps help businesses take advantage of Azure’s strengths while avoiding the pitfalls of hasty deployments.

Harnessing Azure’s Strengths Without Sacrificing Stability

Azure’s ease of deployment is both a blessing and a challenge. Because while it’s easy to deploy something quickly, it’s far harder—and costlier—to fix it later. Azure empowers organizations to move faster, innovate more, and reach new heights—but only if approached with the same discipline as traditional IT infrastructure projects. By combining Azure’s power with thoughtful planning, businesses can achieve their goals today while building a foundation for future success.

As always, I encourage you to contact Prescriptive if you'd like to discuss how we can work together, whether you're already comfortably settled in the cloud or you're preparing to make the move toward modernizing your IT infrastructure. We're here to help.