Microsoft has even sweetened the pot for potential Microsoft Azure cloud customers, offering new Azure migration tools and also discounts. Last week, it rolled out a new cloud feature to ease the transition of Windows Servers to Azure and improved capabilities in Azure Site Recovery. And more recently, it launched a new service to help companies with their cloud assessment and workload performance.

Microsoft Azure's latest cloud service, the free Cloud Migration Assessment tool works across a company's IT environment to evaluate IT hardware configuration and cloud migrations. The tool was designed to give enterprises a way to determine whether it would make sense to take the migration and how much it would really cost to migrate to a hybrid cloud solution.

Additionally, the tool also provides a free report that estimates the cost benefit of moving workloads to Microsoft Azure. It can also make suggestions about cloud migrations and even informs enterprise customers about the VM types to select.

In the Microsoft Azure website, the company detailed the benefits of moving to the Azure cloud which include better analysis the workload configurations, better identification all the servers across the data center environment, an estimate of the initial cost of moving to Azure and the ability to view the results into a customized IT reports.

Meanwhile, Microsoft this week released more details of the company's Interactive Azure Platform. Launched in May 2016, the company's Interactive Azure Platforms was added to the cloud mix to help enterprise customers with the new and big features on Microsoft Azure.

The Interactive Azure Platform provides a full and detailed list of the various Azure features where users can click on a feature and see its short description. Microsoft has also published a PowerPoint Presentation that sums up all these information and Azure features. Customers can now view the details of those Azure features and even download the PowerPoint Presentation of all these Azure features from the Azure website.

In addition to the cloud assessment tool and Interactive Azure Platform, Microsoft Azure also offers a web-based TCO calculator that will allow its customers to know the cost of cloud migration or a full cloud solution. The goal is to provide its customers a great idea of the total cost of ownership for those cloud options.

Azure customers can now get started with their Microsoft Azure Total Cost of Ownership, which located at https://tco.microsoft.com/. However, Azure customers will need to provide all the key information about their current cloud setup and associated costs before they can get started.

In starting with the new tool, Microsoft has provided a 33 page PDF document called Cloud Migration Assessment to assist its customers with the cloud preparation. However, Azure customers need to complete a simple registration form before they can gain access to the PDF documents.

The 33 page PDF document provides step-by-step instructions on how to use the Azure Total Cost of Ownership tool to understand the initial cost of cloud migration. The PDF guide also offers deeper costing analysis, providing an initial comparison report to identify savings when moving on-premises environment to Microsoft Azure. For more information about the Azure TCO tool and Microsoft Azure cloud solutions, check out company's Hybrid Cloud Blog and the Cloud Platform portal.

In another Microsoft-related story, Microsoft Korea this week announced that it has added an artificial intelligence (AI) function to its cloud-computing service, Office 365. The local unit of Microsoft Corp. also confirmed that Word, Outlook, PowerPoint and Excel will be backed up by various cloud-powered AI capabilities through data centers in South Korea, the Yonhap News Agency reported.

The Redmond-based software company currently operates two data centers for its Azure cloud computing service, one in the Korean capital Seoul and the other one is in the southern port city of Busan. Microsoft Korea told reporters that the company has been working hard to improve work productivity by using AI technology and utilizing knowledge learned from developing office products.

Additionally, Microsoft also announced plans to strengthen the security function in its Office 365 services to better detect and defend against all types of cyber threats. Microsoft currently operates both the Azure cloud computing services and its cloud-based Office 365 services from 38 Microsoft Azure regions across the world, with 13 of these data centers located in the Asian region.

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Tags Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, Office 365, Azure, Cloud, Cloud Computing, Enterprise, Software, Computing, IT