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Cloud computing requires new security paradigms that are unfamiliar to many application users, database administrators, and programmers. Consequently, some organizations are reluctant to implement a cloud infrastructure for data management due to perceived security risks. However, much of this concern can be alleviated through a better understanding of the security features built into Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Azure SQL Database.

SQL Azure: A cloud relational database for rapid app development

SQL Database is a cloud relational database service that enables organizations focus on rapid app development, accelerating time to market instead of managing virtual machines and infrastructure. Based on SQL Server database technology and built on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform, SQL Azure enables organizations to store relational data in the cloud and quickly scale the size of their databases up or down as business needs change and data is hosted, managed and provisioned in Microsoft data centers.

Differentiating Azure SQL from SQL Server on premises

Why should you be migrating SQL Server to SQL Azure?

• Conveniently Manageable & Accessible: A relational database-as-a-service that makes tier-1 capabilities easily accessible.
• Extremely Scalable: Scale performance on the fly, without app downtime.
• Reasonably Familiar: Work within your preferred development environments.
• Superior Performance Level: Predictable performance you can dial up or down.
• Robust Data protection: Help toprotect and secure your app data via auditing, restore and geo-replication.
• Self-managed for near-zero maintenance

New tiers introduced by Azure SQL Database improve customer experience and provide more business continuity options

To better serve organizations’ needs for flexibility, Microsoft Azure SQL Database has added new service tiers, Basic, and Standard, to work alongside its Premium tier. Together these service tiers help you more easily support the needs of database workloads and application patterns built on Microsoft Azure.

How can yourbusiness benefit by choosing Azure SQL?

The Basic, Standard, and Premium tiers are designed to deliver more predictable performance for light-weight to heavy-weight transactional application demands. While features such as Elastic Database Pool allows you to focus on the application layer and deliver your solution to the market faster. The new tiers also help in removing costly workarounds and offer an improved billing experience where SQL Database is sold to customers as a service, not with a license. Furthermore, the new tiers offer a spectrum of business continuity features, a significantly stronger up-time SLA at 99.95%, and larger database sizes up to 500 GB for less cost.