At a recent partner event, Microsoft Partner Technical Specialist, Robert-Jan Gerrits, answered a question that many people ask: does Office 365 run on Azure?
The short answer is “no” – the Office 365 infrastructure is dedicated – i.e. it’s not a bunch of VMs running on Azure; however there is a slightly longer answer.
Office 365 uses Azure for:
- Office 365 video (media)
- Azure blob storage (storage)
- Azure AD for identity (identity)
- Power BI app (cloud services)
- Access services (storage)
Over time, we can expect to see more and more Office 365 components using Azure services but, for now, Office 365 is (almost) a standalone environment.