Microsoft Azure Managed Cloud
Run your Azure estate to best practice: managed, monitored, backed up, and cost-optimised by certified Azure specialists, so your team can focus on building.
Challenges we solve
Azure gives you enormous reach across infrastructure, data, and Microsoft's wider platform. Running it safely, efficiently, and to best practice every day is the hard part. These are the pressures we hear from Azure customers most often.
Cloud spend that creeps
Your Azure bill climbs month on month and no one can fully explain why. Idle virtual machines, oversized Azure SQL tiers, and orphaned managed disks quietly drain the budget.
Security you can't fully see
Role sprawl in Microsoft Entra ID, over-permissioned access, and inconsistent encryption keep you up at night. You need confidence that your environment is configured to best practice and stays that way.
A team stretched thin
Patching, monitoring, backups, and 24/7 cover pull your engineers away from the work that moves the business forward. There aren't enough hours in the day.
Recovery you've never tested
You have backups, probably. But you've never proven you could fail over and recover inside an agreed window when it actually matters.
Inconsistent deployments
Manual changes and configuration drift make every environment slightly different. Releases are slow, risky, and hard to repeat.
Best practice that slips
You know the Azure Well-Architected Framework matters, but keeping a live estate aligned to it, as it grows and changes, is a job in itself.
What is Azure Managed Cloud?
Azure Managed Cloud brings together the management, monitoring, backup, and recovery of your Microsoft Azure environment under one service. Whether your estate already exists or we build it from scratch, Claranet makes sure it fits current best practice and performs reliably, through busy periods and quiet ones alike, scaling to what your business needs.
We manage the operating systems, platform services, networking, and security controls that sit on top of Azure, and we automate the way your infrastructure is built and deployed using infrastructure as code (IaC) and continuous deployment pipelines. Our certified Azure specialists handle the day-to-day operations so your people can spend their time on the applications and outcomes that differentiate you.
This is a peer-to-peer service. We're a Microsoft Solutions Partner, and we'd rather make you more capable than keep you dependent. You get the depth of a specialist team, clear reporting, and an estate aligned to the Azure Well-Architected Framework, without having to build and retain that capability in-house.
Key benefits
- Certified Azure specialists managing your estate day to day
- Cost control through built-in FinOps and certified practitioners
- Backup and disaster recovery that's tested, not assumed
- Security and patching held to best practice, continuously
Technical capabilities
What's included as standard. Every capability is delivered with Azure-native tooling and monitored from our service desk.
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Managed compute and operating systems
We configure, patch, and maintain your Azure virtual machines and their operating systems. CPU, memory, and disk are monitored against your application's needs. Monthly patch reviews cover critical and security updates, tested in staging before they reach production.
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Managed platform services
We configure and maintain your Azure PaaS (Azure SQL Database, App Service, Azure Functions, Azure Cache for Redis, and more), including licensing, capacity, and monitoring of service-specific metrics such as queue performance and job success rates.
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Infrastructure as code
We build your environment with IaC using Bicep, ARM templates, or Terraform, customised to your estate and held in source control to our standards. Templates stay current and compatible, and you can co-manage the code where it suits your team.
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CI/CD pipelines
We configure pipelines with Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions to test, deploy, and execute your IaC, giving you fully automated, repeatable, push-button deployments across every supported environment.
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Security controls
Named accounts, role-based access through Microsoft Entra ID and Azure RBAC, multi-factor authentication, and encryption at rest using Azure Key Vault. We design and configure to Azure security best practice and review our access quarterly.
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Networking and connectivity
We configure and monitor your virtual network, load balancers, Azure DNS, Azure Front Door (CDN), and Azure DDoS Protection, and validate private connectivity over Azure ExpressRoute. SSL/TLS certificates are installed and managed too.
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FinOps and cost optimisation
Certified FinOps practitioners help you control Azure spend, improve cost reporting, and make optimisation recommendations using Microsoft Cost Management and Azure Budgets. Where we manage your billing over £10,000 a month, the standard FinOps service is included.
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Backup and recovery
Platform-native backup with Azure Backup and Recovery Services vaults, configured to bronze, silver, or gold retention. Daily backups run in an out-of-hours window, with functional restore tests at least once a year to prove they work.
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Disaster recovery
A platform-native recovery service with Azure Site Recovery, agreed runbooks, and an annual failover test. We define recovery point and recovery time targets with you, and rehearse the failback as well as the failover.
Accreditations & partnerships
Credentials that back the service.
Ready to Get Started?
Let's talk about your Azure estate: where it is today, where you want it to be, and how a managed service gets you there without the heavy lifting falling on your team.