Cloud computing was, and still is, one of the biggest trends in Information Technology (IT) in the last 15 years, with many new topics still to be discovered.

At the beginning of this century, most of us didn't use the phrase, cloud computing, but the concept, as well as data centers with massive computing power, was already in existence and being used. Later in that first decade, the word cloud became a synonym for nearly anything that was not tangible or online. But the real rise of cloud computing didn't start until the big IT companies (Amazon, Google, and Microsoft) started with their cloud offerings. Now, companies from start-ups to the Fortune 500 are enabled to use cloud services, virtual machines and the like, all with a billing exactly to the minute.

The focus of this book is the Azure platform, which is the cloud offering from Microsoft. In this chapter, I would like to introduce you to the platform, but not in great detail, as over 200 services and 500 updates last year alone cannot be covered in the space we have. 

In this chapter, we'll explore the following topics:

• Cloud service models and cloud deployment models
• Azure execution models
• Azure data services
• Azure application blocks
• Azure platform services
• How is Azure access organized?
• How is the work with Azure organized?