Mobility, security and compliance, automation, and the demand for “the workspace of the future” are just some of the challenges that businesses face today.

The cloud is best positioned to support these challenges, but it can be hard to pick the right kind of cloud and find the right balance between cost and benefits.

Parallels Introduction
Parallels is a global leader in cross-platform technologies and is renowned for its award-winning software solutions that cut complexity and lower costs for a wide range of industries, including healthcare, education, banking and finance, manufacturing, the public sector, and many others.

Parallels Remote Application Server (RAS) provides easy-to-use, comprehensive application and desktop delivery that enables business and public-sector organizations to seamlessly integrate virtual Windows applications and desktops on nearly any device or operating system.

ThinPrint Introduction
ThinPrint is a global leader in solutions that support an organization’s digital transformation, helping ensure users can draw on highly reliable and innovative print solutions that support today’s and tomorrow’s requirements.

Joint Value Statement

Together, Parallels and ThinPrint allow an organization to become a cloud-ready business on its own terms, with unprecedented ease and cost-effectiveness.

We support any endpoint device from a desktop PC to a smartphone or tablet, can deploy on-premise or in the cloud, and follow your business as it completes its digital transformation.

You may decide to start digitally transforming your business by delivering applications or desktops from an existing server in your datacenter and move to Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure later. You can also replace user workstations with newer, more mobile devices, or expand from an initial pilot group to new use cases for the entire company.

Whatever your plans are, Parallels and ThinPrint will help you implement them with easy, cost-effective solutions and the ability to adapt to future challenges.

The cloud computing era is well and truly upon us, and knowing how to take advantage of the benefits of this computing paradigm while maintaining security, manageability, and cost control are vital skills for any IT professional in 2020 and beyond. And its importance is only getting greater.

In this eBook, we’re going to focus on Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) on Microsoft’s Azure platform - learning how to create VMs, size them correctly, manage storage, networking, and security, along with backup best practices. You’ll also learn how to operate groups of VMs, deploy resources based on templates, managing security and automate your infrastructure. If you currently have VMs in your own datacenter and are looking to migrate to Azure, we’ll also teach you that.

If you’re new to the cloud (or have experience with AWS/GCP but not Azure), this book will cover the basics as well as more advanced skills. Given how fast things change in the cloud, we’ll cover the why (as well as the how) so that as features and interfaces are updated, you’ll have the theoretical knowledge to effectively adapt and know how to proceed.

You’ll benefit most from this book if you actively follow along with the tutorials. We will be going through terms and definitions as we go – learning by doing has always been my preferred way of education. If you don’t have access to an Azure subscription, you can sign up for a free trial with Microsoft. This will give you 30 days 6 to use $200 USD worth of Azure resources, along with 12 months of free resources. Note that most of these “12 months” services aren’t related to IaaS VMs (apart from a few SSD based virtual disks and a small VM that you can run for 750 hours a month) so be sure to get everything covered on the IaaS side before your trial expires. There are also another 25 services that have free tiers “forever”.

Now you know what’s in store, let’s get started!