Organisations today are looking to transform their applications and business process by migrating to Platform as a Service (PaaS). However many are struggling to migrate existing applications including commercial-of-the-shelf (COTS) products to Azure.
Historically, one of the factors limiting the migration of an application to Azure SQL Database is that the functionality is not on parity with SQL Server. Even though today the feature set between both platforms is almost comparable, there are still several key features such as no support for cross database queries that are missing. As a result, many organisations migrating to Azure have deployed SQL Server inside a Virtual Machine using Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
The introduction of Azure SQL Managed Instance, simplifies the ability to migrate to Azure whilst providing all the benefits of PaaS. Unlike Azure SQL Database, the new Managed Instance provides all of the instance level configurations that you know and love. This includes SQL Server Agent jobs, the ability to deploy multiple databases and use cross database queries. As well as the configuration flexibility, Azure SQL Managed Instance includes additional features such as built-in geo-redundancy and automatic patching. Meaning you can spend more time delivering business value rather than managing virtual machines and infrastructure.
If you would like to know more about Azure SQL Database Managed Instance capabilities and how you can modernise your Data Platform, get in touch to schedule a free half day workshop.
