Monitoring in Azure: the pillar that supports business operations and efficiency

In an era where the cloud supports critical systems, business applications, and sensitive data, monitoring is no longer just an afterthought — it’s an operational requirement. Microsoft Azure offers a comprehensive set of native tools that enable businesses to gain visibility, control, and responsiveness while reducing costs and mitigating risk.

1. Azure Monitor: Centralized visibility

Azure Monitor is the core of observability in the Azure platform. It aggregates metrics and logs from virtually all Azure services—from virtual machines and networks to databases and PaaS services—enabling technical teams to detect issues before they impact the business.

How do you solve real problems?

• Avoid unplanned downtime: Real-time monitoring of CPU, memory, disk and latency lets you detect bottlenecks before they cause downtime.

• Automate response: Configurable alerts and integration with Logic Apps or Azure Automation reduce reaction time to seconds.

• Facilitates auditing and compliance: Detailed logs ensure traceability to regulatory requirements.

  
  

Practical example: A customer with a critical application for online sales configured dynamic alerts that anticipated a seasonal peak in usage, allowing VMs to be scaled automatically. Result: zero downtime and a smooth experience for the end customer.

2. Log Analytics: Deep and correlated analysis

Log Analytics is the engine that enables companies to transform raw data into actionable insights. By centralizing logs from multiple sources—virtual machines, firewalls, NSGs, applications—you can build a complete history for forensic analysis or operational optimization.

How to solve specific problems:

• Detects intermittent failures: By correlating logs from different layers, it reduces mean time to resolution (MTTR).

• Improves collaboration: Interactive workbooks make it easy to share insights with DevOps and security teams.

• Reduces troubleshooting costs: structured queries help quickly identify usage spikes or incorrect configurations.

  
  

Practical example: A financial services company consolidated logs from three Azure subscriptions to meet audit requirements, reducing manual reporting effort by 40%.

3. Application Insights: more than just applications

While designed for developers, Application Insights is also a powerful tool for operations teams. It allows you to monitor critical infrastructure dependencies, such as API response times or network failures between components.

How it helps:

• Improved user experience: quickly identify causes of slowness in backend services.

• End-to-end view: maps the journey of calls between microservices or hybrid environments.

• Faster incident resolution: Integrate alerts and diagnostics directly into DevOps workflows.

  
  

4. Azure Network Watcher: Detailed network diagnostics

For enterprises with complex networking environments—VPNs, ExpressRoute, virtual networks—Azure Network Watcher is a must-have.

Problems it solves:

• Connectivity breakdown: flow diagnostics allow you to identify where and why a connection fails.

• Degraded performance: latency analysis helps optimize routes.

• Compliance: Flow logs facilitate traffic audits.

  
  

Let's look at a real case: A multinational organization used Network Watcher to resolve intermittent failures between two data centers connected by VPN, preventing loss of productivity for teams in several countries.

Custom Dashboards and Alerts: Real-Time Visibility

The Azure portal allows you to build custom dashboards that consolidate critical metrics into a single pane. This ensures that operations teams always have at their fingertips:

• Status of virtual machines and load balancers.

• Disk utilization and network throughput.

• Status of backups and replications.

 

Business value:

• Faster response to failures, minimizing customer impact.

• Automatic alerts sent to Microsoft Teams, email or ITSM systems, ensuring defined response processes.

Cost and performance optimization

Monitoring isn’t just reactive. Tools like Azure Advisor provide actionable recommendations based on real usage data.

 

Problems it helps solve:

• Oversized VMs that make operations more expensive without any benefit.

• Resources provisioned but not used.

• Lack of alignment with good security and management practices.

Direct benefit: significant reduction in operating costs without compromising availability or performance.

Good technical practices for companies

To take full advantage of the potential of Azure tools, organizations should take a structured approach:

1. Centralize logs and metrics in Log Analytics workspaces with clear retention policies.

2. Automate responses to critical events with runbooks or Logic Apps.

3. Periodically review alerts to avoid alert fatigue and stay focused on what matters.

4. Apply consistent naming conventions and tagging to facilitate management and analysis.

5. Integrate with CI/CD pipelines for continuous visibility into agile development cycles.

Performance monitoring and management in Azure are not just technical concerns—they are strategic enablers. They ensure that critical services remain available, efficient, and secure, supporting business objectives and improving the customer experience.

At Linkcom, we believe that transforming data into informed decisions is the true competitive advantage in the cloud. With a well-defined approach and the right tools, companies can reduce costs, mitigate risks and gain the agility needed to thrive in an increasingly demanding market.