Businesses today are building and running cloud-based applications to drive their business forward. As these applications are built they need to take full advantage of the agility, efficiency, and speed of cloud innovation. However, not all applications and infrastructure they run on can physically reside in the public cloud. That’s why 86 percent of enterprises plan to increase investment in hybrid or multicloud environments.

We’re building Azure to meet you where you are, so you can do more with your existing investments. We also want you to be able to stay agile and flexible when extending Azure to your on-premises, multicloud, and edge environments.

Azure Arc delivers on these needs. Azure Arc is a bridge that extends the Azure platform so you can build applications and services with the flexibility to run across datacenters, edge, and multicloud environments.

For the 2022 commissioned study, The Total Economic Impact™ of Microsoft Azure Arc for Security and Governance, Forrester Consulting interviewed four organizations with experience using Azure Arc. These organizations serve global markets in the industries of manufacturing, energy, and financial services. According to the aggregated data, Azure Arc demonstrated:

• A 206 percent return on investment (ROI) over three years with payback in less than six months.
• A 30 percent gain in productivity for IT Operations team members.
• An 80 percent reduction in risk of data breach from unsecured infrastructure.
• A 15 percent reduction in spending on third-party tools, saving on expenses.

The Forrester study provides a framework for organizations wanting to evaluate the potential financial impact on their organizations of using Azure Arc for infrastructure security and governance. Forrester found that organizations with hybrid or multicloud strategies can realize productivity gains and reduce security risks by using Microsoft Azure Arc to secure and govern non-Azure infrastructure alongside Azure resources.

Productivity gains with Azure Arc’s single-pane view

The organizations in Forrester’s study reported that after implementing Azure Arc, their IT Operations personnel realized a 30 percent gain in productivity from savings in time spent on regular duties such as configuring and updating infrastructure, managing policies and permissions, troubleshooting, and resolving issues, and other tasks that don’t directly drive business. With Azure Arc, IT teams can observe, secure, and govern diverse infrastructure and applications from a single pane of glass in Azure—leveraging Azure services enables them to be more agile, respond more efficiently, and frees time to serve business interests with higher-value tasks.

“We’re just making everyone’s lives so much easier so they can do other things. If there is an issue, for example, you don’t have to spend a week troubleshooting.”—Architect, Cloud products, Energy.

Cost savings and streamlined infrastructure through the Azure portal

Most organizations today run a mix of applications in on-premises datacenters, in the cloud, and at the edge. These disparate environments often result in investments in multiple management tools specific to the technology platforms, resulting in tool sprawl and excessive costs.

By moving to a single view of infrastructure and resources in the Azure portal enabled by Azure Arc, organizations could eliminate their legacy management tools, reducing licensing expenditures and eliminating costly on-premises management infrastructure. With Azure’s flexible consumption-based pricing, they are no longer locked into long-term contracts or capacity limits.

The composite organization in the Forrester study saved $900,000 in year three from reduced spending on third-party tools—a 15 percent decrease.

"When I do dive in, I actually have a faster understanding of [our infrastructure]. So the benefit to me is that I have greater visibility—I need to ask [the team] fewer questions. The [Azure Arc] dashboard is […] very easy."—VP of IT, Finance.

Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Sentinel modernize security operations

Azure Arc helps organizations combat rapidly evolving security threats with increased efficiency by enabling the use of Microsoft security services such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Sentinel across hybrid and multicloud environments.

Forrester found that the composite organization lowered the risk of a data breach from unsecured infrastructure by 80 percent after adopting Azure Arc and Microsoft security services. After onboarding Azure Arc, the organization uncovered noncompliant assets running on-premises or in edge environments and updated them to the latest security standards. This results in the savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars that would have been spent otherwise on managing breaches.

"With Azure Arc, we gained real insights into our infrastructure, including infrastructure [another cloud provider]. That helped us identify architecture [gaps] as well as controls to improve security compliance. [With Azure Arc], we found that around 20 percent of our infrastructure had been noncompliant."—Deputy IT Director, Manufacturing.

Learn more

Azure Arc is a bridge that extends the Azure platform to help customers build applications and services with the flexibility to run across datacenters, at the edge, and in multicloud environments. Get started today and do more with your existing investments. We welcome you to try it for free. You can also learn more about how other customers are using Azure Arc to innovate anywhere.

• Download the full report: The Total Economic Impact^™ of Microsoft Azure Arc for Security and Governance.
• To learn more about Azure Arc, visit our website.