Microsoft simplifies Azure offerings for business with “Contoso in the Cloud” infographics

Dave W. Shanahan

Today, Microsoft unveiled a poster titled “Contoso in the Microsoft Cloud,” showing what Microsoft can do for enterprise customers that are looking to move forward by adopting a “cloud-inclusive IT infrastructure.” The Contoso Corporation is a fictional company created by Microsoft years ago, and is now being used to show how enterprise customers can benefit when using all of Microsoft cloud services, including Azure, Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Intune.

Microsoft, Azure, Cloud, Contoso
Contoso in the Cloud

The “Contoso in the Microsoft Cloud” poster includes the following highlights::

  • An overview of the fictional Contoso Corporation, its three-tier design for its offices, and key elements of Contoso’s implementation of the Microsoft cloud.
  • A review of Contoso’s on-premises IT infrastructure and how its business needs map to Microsoft’s cloud offerings, including opportunities for Azure PaaS and IaaS.
  • Contoso’s private WAN infrastructure, its app design for its offices, its use of Azure ExpressRoute Premium, and its step-by-step path to cloud networking readiness.
  • Contoso’s on-premises Windows Server Active Directory (AD) forest, how it geographically distributes authentication traffic, and how it uses Azure IaaS to provide authentication infrastructure redundancy for the 15,000 workers in its Paris headquarters.
  • Contoso’s structure for Microsoft cloud offering subscriptions, licenses, its common Azure AD tenant, and user accounts synched with Azure AD from its on-premises Windows Server AD forest.
  • Contoso’s security requirements in the cloud, its data sensitivity classification and mapping of cloud features to each level, and its step-by-step path to cloud security readiness.

This poster in is available for download via PDF or Visio format, and you can also view it online on Docs.com. Microsoft plans to add additional highlights to posters like these that will include Azure PaaS, SQL Server Stretch Database, and others. Microsoft hopes to use these posters to shift enterprise customers from an on-premises IT infrastructure to a cloud-enabled one.

Take a look at the additional posters that are available in the Microsoft Cloud for Enterprise Architects Series.

Microsoft Cloud Services and Platform Options
Microsoft Cloud Identity for Enterprise Architects
Microsoft Cloud Security for Enterprise Architects
Microsoft Hybrid Cloud for Enterprise Architects
Microsoft Cloud Networking for Enterprise Architects
Microsoft Cloud Storage for Enterprise Architects
Microsoft Cloud Mobility and Security for Enterprise Architects

If you are an IT administrator and you have a scenario that you would like to see available in a future update to this poster email the Microsoft Cloud team at [email protected].