Azure Services – Grouped by Purpose

A comprehensive overview of Azure services organized into 20 functional categories for easy navigation and understanding.

1. Core Compute

General purpose / parallel execution.
Virtual MachinesVM Scale SetsAzure Dedicated HostBatchSQL on VM

2. Managed App Compute

Managed runtimes & PaaS stacks.
App ServiceApp Service EnvContainer AppsAzure Spring AppsService FabricOpenShift

3. Serverless / Event Compute

Ephemeral functions & workflows.
Azure FunctionsLogic AppsDurable Functions

4. Orchestrated Containers

Container hosting & registries.
AKSAzure Container InstancesACRAzure Kubernetes Fleet

5. Messaging & Events

Async decoupling & push.
Service BusEvent GridEvent HubsQueue StorageSignalR Service

6. Relational Data

Managed SQL engines.
Azure SQL DBSQL MIPostgreSQLMySQLMariaDBDatabase Migration Svc

7. NoSQL / Multi-Model

Flexible / key-value / multi-API.
Cosmos DBTable StorageRedis CacheCassandra (Managed)

8. Big Data & Analytics

Batch, lake, orchestration.
SynapseDatabricksHDInsightData Lake StorageData FactoryData ExplorerMicrosoft Fabric

9. Real-Time Stream Proc

Continuous event analytics.
Stream AnalyticsEvent HubsKafka on HDInsightData Explorer (RT)

10. Core Object & File Storage

Durable blobs/files (hot, cool, archive) + POSIX.
Blob StorageData Lake Gen2File SharesAzure NetApp FilesArchive StorageUltra Disk

11. Networking & Delivery

Connectivity, routing, edge.
Virtual NetworkLoad BalancerApp GatewayFront DoorTraffic ManagerCDNNAT GatewayPrivate LinkVPN GatewayExpressRouteFirewallDDoS ProtectionBastionVirtual WAN

12. Identity & Access

AuthN / AuthZ.
Entra IDEntra B2CManaged IdentitiesRole Based Access Control

13. Security & Governance

Protection, catalog, policy.
Defender for CloudSentinelKey VaultManaged HSMPolicyBlueprintsPURVIEW

14. DevOps & CI/CD

Build, config, automation.
Azure DevOpsGitHub ActionsPipelinesArtifact FeedsApp ConfigurationAutomation (Runbooks)

15. Observability

Logs, metrics, traces, anomalies.
MonitorLog AnalyticsApplication InsightsMetrics AdvisorAnomaly DetectorGrafanaDashboard

16. Integration & API

API gateway & workflows.
API ManagementLogic AppsIntegration Service EnvAPI Center

17. AI & ML

Model build, cognitive, search.
Azure AI StudioMachine LearningCognitive ServicesOpenAI ServiceAI Search

18. IoT & Edge

Devices, twins, edge ops.
IoT HubIoT CentralAzure SphereEdge RuntimeDigital Twins

19. Migration & Hybrid

Move/extend workloads.
Azure MigrateDB Migration SvcArcVMware SolutionSite RecoveryBackup

20. Cost & Optimization

Spend, efficiency, rightsizing.
Cost ManagementAdvisorReservationsAutoscaleSpot VMs

Graph View (Groups as Nodes)

Simple force-directed graph: each group is a node. Edges show conceptual adjacency (e.g., serverless relates to messaging, observability touches most). Click a node to highlight neighbors.

Next: Deep dive group 1 in Index331 (Core Compute). We will cover characteristics, when to choose each service, and decision matrices.