Focus on Your Core | Operated by Microsoft | Choose your Geography | Better Cash Flow | Enables Hybrid Workforces
Modern businesses need to accept hybrid work, whether they want to or not. Attracting the best talent (sometimes any talent) requires the flexibility to work from home. Azure is inherently designed to allow 24/7/365 reliability from anywhere, anytime. As work from home became a necessity, businesses faced major challenges supporting their data centers at the office, and providing remote access to critical resources. Azure services for manufacturing are designed first and foremost for remote work and acces.
The average small manufacturing company “do it yourself” IT systems are not properly protected, designed nor configured. Microsoft Azure data centers have 24/7/365 security, monitoring, power, and internet access. A small business might need to spend $100,000 for the generators, environmental controls, security access, speed, and redundancies you get with Azure for a fraction of the cost.
Azure cloud for manufacturing is flexible and the price is based on what you need – now. No more buying a 5 or 6-figure server system only to find out it was too little – or worse – you don’t need it any more. With Azure, you scale up and down as you need it. This is ideal for the current world of rapidly changing IT needs and requirements that are no longer well handled by big hardware purchases.
Azure supports a variety of configurations. Use it as a fail-over for your existing on-premise systems. Have some servers at the office, and others in the cloud. Lift your entire network into the cloud. You pick based on your needs and the level of comfort you have.
Microsoft Azure servers are great places to host your AutoCAD vault or SolidWorks PDM (or any other drawing management system). Use Azure cloud for manufacturing to deploy storage that can expand quickly and easily. Stored data can be synchronized between on-premise and cloud locations. Drawings checked into the cloud servers can be accessed from home offices, remote locations, and engineering teams across the world.
Your ERP system was perhaps the single most important piece of software that your office staff needed access to when working remotely. Azure could for manufacturing is designed to allow remote access for both using the ERP, as well as managing the servers. Almost any modern ERP can run easily in Azure and adding Remote Desktop Services access is easy.
Azure servers now include both NVidia and AMD GPU capabilities, and it is practical to setup CAD systems running any modern CAD software to run in a remote session. Spin up a machine for a Co-Op student, an off-shore engineer or (without GPU) for any staff member. Any entry-level PC can become a high-powered workstation.
Modern manufacturing often involves AI based systems that use video and high resolution photos to track and manage product quality. Customers often want this data preserved and easily retrieved. Azure cloud for manufacturing offers the ability to store enormous amounts of data at very low prices per TB and make that data available in the cloud for on-demand access.
After many years of working with Azure, Sabre has learned how to maximize every dollar of Azure spend for our own server clusters and hosted Microsoft Dynamics systems.
Try on your own with the Microsoft Azure Price Calculator to choose Azure Products and Services directly from Microsoft.
If you looked at the Azure Price Calculator above, you might find it a bit daunting. It is easy to make mistakes, choose the wrong products, and end up in a quoted price that seems crazy!
There are dozens of tricks, traps, and opportunities to either turn Azure into an affordable solution or a serious and dangerous budgetary trap.
In addition, although Microsoft manages your Azure cloud for manufacturing infrastructure (the hardware level) they do nothing to manage the server software or operating system. Maintenance, monitoring, patching and configuration within the Azure Portal are your responsibility. Moving to the cloud offers great flexibility and cost savings, but it is not as forgiving as your on-premise systems.
Let Sabre manage your Azure cloud for manufacturing infrastructure and systems from a technical and financial point of view.
What do we mean by “manage it financially?” Many customers end up purchasing too many Azure resources, or don’t notice that their Azure monthly bill has grown in the background. Sabre managed Azure services for manufacturing ensure that someone has their eye on the ball, and makes the best recommendations to save you money and ensure things don’t get out of hand.
Our expertise with Azure Infrastructure, from Blob storage to Server Clusters means you’ll pick the right products and services.
As a Microsoft Dynamics and Modern Work partner, we ensure that you are not backed into a corner with choices that were wrong.
We charge an Azure Management fee so that we can save you money, recommend better choices and keep your Azure servers running perfectly.
Still have questions about our Azure Cloud Solutions for Manufacturers? Below are some of the most frequently asked questions that we are asked! If at the end you still have some questions, book a call with our team. We’d be happy to help!
Our Azure Management fees start at CAD $185 USD $150 per month and increases based on the size of your Azure deployment and what features you use. Companies with a few servers and simple requirements pay less. Companies with complex disaster recovery, file storage, Azure SQL and other complex requirements pay more.
The Sabre Azure services for manufacturing management fees are scaled to the size of your total spend on Azure and the complexity of the services used.
You can.
Sabre will do a one-time setup for customers who want that. We will not check into that setup or manage it in any way afterwards. Since the Azure “rules” are constantly changing, and require someone familiar with them, we recommend you have someone who is dedicated to managing Azure or outsource it. The current going rate for an Azure expert is around CAD $110 USD $90 per hour for a part-time staff plus or minus 10% depending on where you live (although with today’s remote work the wages are normalizing all over).
If you feel you can successfully manage such a person in your own company, this is a viable alternative.
If you tried the Azure Calculator above you’ll see that the prices of Azure vary wildly. Basically, Azure is a pay by the hour technology service (or sometimes by the byte). If you choose the right Azure server with the right characteristics, it’s more value than purchasing hardware.
The big trick with Azure is picking the right service and often purchasing external resources to bring down the costs. That is our job under our Sabre Azure cloud for manufacturing support fees.
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