Research contributors shared that Azure gives a extra environment friendly and efficient platform for his or her Ubuntu workloads, maximizing their worth in core enterprise capabilities and supporting new expertise adoption.
Companies right this moment are beneath stress to innovate quicker, scale back prices, and keep safe—all whereas making ready for an AI-driven future. As a part of this shift, many organizations are turning to Microsoft Azure to modernize their infrastructure. In doing so, they discover that migrating to Azure helps meet these evolving calls for by enhancing agility, strengthening safety, and laying the muse for AI readiness.
Microsoft Azure helps your migration and modernization journey with companies constructed for Linux and Open Supply. Central to this transformation is Ubuntu, Canonical’s enterprise-grade Linux distribution, which integrates seamlessly with Azure’s IaaS and PaaS. Collectively, they ship excessive efficiency, reliability, and enterprise help—plus a broad set of instruments to make migration clean and environment friendly.
To deliver a data-driven perspective to those advantages, Microsoft commissioned Worldwide Knowledge Company (IDC) to conduct a enterprise worth research* primarily based on interviews with organizations that moved their Ubuntu workloads from on-premises to Azure. Research contributors shared that Azure gives a extra environment friendly and efficient platform for his or her Ubuntu workloads, maximizing their worth in core enterprise capabilities and supporting new expertise adoption. Utilizing the information derived from these interviews, IDC analysts created a typical buyer profile to symbolize frequent experiences and enterprise outcomes. The consolidated information from research contributors reveals that operating Canonical Ubuntu workloads on Azure delivers the next advantages:
- 306% three-year return on funding with an 11-month payback on funding.
- 35% decrease three-year price of operations.
- 63% quicker to deploy new compute assets and 52% quicker to scale to new enterprise alternatives.
- 85% much less unplanned downtime affecting customers.
- $30.63M larger income per group per yr.
Quantified advantages of Ubuntu on Microsoft Azure
IDC interviewed stakeholders concerned with Ubuntu workloads on Azure, uncovering important advantages cited by contributors, together with:
Run mission-critical workloads with sturdy efficiency and adaptability
Organizations operating workloads reminiscent of information analytics, engineering simulations, and machine studying, expertise elevated agility and operational effectivity with Ubuntu on Azure. By leveraging Ubuntu on Azure, companies can scale seamlessly and reply swiftly to altering market situations, guaranteeing optimum software efficiency whereas accelerating innovation and sustaining a aggressive edge.
“With Ubuntu on Azure, we’ve unlocked AI adoption. We are able to scale improvements and experiment with applied sciences like GenAI, ML, and massive information analytics with out infrastructure constraints.”
The research contributors additionally highlighted the benefit of migrating Ubuntu workloads to Azure and the power so as to add or take away capability as wanted. Beneficial properties in agility and growth have been notable, with customers in a position to modify and scale their Ubuntu environments extra quickly and flexibly in Azure, lowering deployment-related friction on growth and enterprise actions.
“Scalability is likely one of the causes we moved to Ubuntu on Azure. We now have fast scaling and versatile deployment, which improve our responsiveness to enterprise wants by virtually 40%.”
Strengthen safety and empower your IT groups
Safety was one other standout profit for organizations adopting Ubuntu on Azure. They skilled enhanced operational resilience and lowered publicity to safety and efficiency dangers. Azure’s built-in safety instruments, together with Microsoft Defender for Cloud, provide steady safety evaluation risk detection, and actionable suggestions. This allows IT groups to proactively determine vulnerabilities, reply swiftly to potential threats, and keep sturdy safety, in the end supporting enterprise continuity and fostering belief with prospects and stakeholders.
“Ubuntu on Azure gives built-in safety features reminiscent of Microsoft Defender for Cloud, which is a steady safety evaluation and actionable suggestions. This proactive strategy helps us determine vulnerabilities earlier than they are often exploited, which is what all of us are looking for.”
As well as, IT groups have been in a position to shift their focus from maintenance-heavy duties to extra strategic, innovation-driven efforts, together with AI initiatives. The transition to Azure simplified operations, streamlined growth cycles, and enabled groups to make quicker progress on business-critical tasks by leveraging built-in AI instruments and infrastructure that help fast experimentation and deployment.
“With Ubuntu on Azure, we leverage AI and refocus our IT workforce. Managing on-premises infrastructure was troublesome, however Azure AI companies enhanced our purposes and drove innovation. We’ve shifted IT assets from upkeep to strategic tasks, enhancing productiveness by 25%.”
Scale back operational prices whereas scaling effectively
Organizations additionally realized important price efficiencies with Ubuntu on Azure. By profiting from Azure’s pay-as-you-go pricing and eradicating {hardware} upkeep burdens, companies achieved notable infrastructure and licensing financial savings.
IDC discovered that prospects lowered the price of operating Ubuntu workloads by a mean of 35% over three years, saving $6,500 per Azure VM. Many additionally noticed a 29% discount in annual infrastructure prices, equating to roughly $581,100 per yr.
“Ubuntu on Azure has lowered our direct IT prices by 40%, and it additionally optimizes our useful resource allocation, so we’ve higher operational effectivity and workers time financial savings.”
“Ubuntu on Azure affords important price financial savings and scalability in comparison with on-premises options. It additionally gives wonderful integration and interoperability and helps deal with information challenges, enhancing completeness, accuracy, and availability to help enterprise choices.”
Study extra from the IDC research
*IDC White Paper, sponsored by Microsoft, The Enterprise Worth of Ubuntu on Microsoft Azure, doc # US52857024, January 2025.