There's an old joke which goes "The cloud is just someone else's computer." While it certainly goes beyond just someone else's computer, there is some truth to the joke. The cloud is a catch-all term used for resources and services made available by different providers. You can use the cloud to host your applications, run virtual machines, and enhance your projects by accessing various services to incorporate machine learning, artificial intelligence, chat bots, and a host of other features.
Microsoft Azure is a flexible, scalable, and full-featured cloud platform. If you can imagine it, you can build it on Azure, using the tools, languages and frameworks you're already familiar with. Python, JavaScript, Java, .NET - you can run them all on Azure.
Using Azure you can run serverless code using Azure Functions, host web applications and databases, take advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) through Cognitive Services, and create your own machine learning models through Azure Machine Learning designer.
There's three different options available to create an account on Azure, depending on your current status as a student.
- Azure for Students | $100 in Azure for 12 months with free tier of services - no credit card required with academic verification
- Azure for Students Starter | use select Azure products like App Services for free - no credit card required with academic verification
- Hack based workshops: Designed for the team who likes to self-explore, we have created a series of hack-based workshops to help you explore Azure. Each workshop will present a series of goals to accomplish, and help you gain experience using Azure for hackathons.
This is only the start of the applications of Azure. Since Azure is a full-service cloud, it can grow as you and your projects grow. Here's a few resources you may find helpful as you continue your journey:
- Publish Angular, React, Svelte or Vue.js apps to Azure Static Web Apps
- Authenticate users with Azure Static Web Apps
- Creating your first web apps with React
- Take your first steps with Vue.js
- Create data-driven websites by using Django