In this post, Principal Consultant Jon Guerin lays out the benefits of Azure Event Management (AEM) and how to get started with the program.

Deploying an application to Azure in support of a high-profile business event can have many advantages. But failing to assess up front potential gaps that could negatively affect performance and availability during the event and can result in an undesirable impact to the company’s topline. Consider having an elevated support experience from Microsoft before, during and after the event orchestrated by your Application Development Manager.

Microsoft Unified and Premier customers have access to several programs that provide a dedicated support team during a critical event. Examples of high profile events can be seasonal peak usage, sporting and marketing events.

To minimize risk of issues during the event your Application Development Manager can help you get setup in Microsoft’s Azure Event Management service. Azure Event Management (AEM) is the preferred enhanced support and engineering services program for critical events and available as an add-on to Unified or Premier customer agreements. AEM provides you with event pre-planning, proactive best practices guidance and problem resolution support during your event. The AEM team will conduct a review of your Azure solution to increase chances of success. A team of Azure experts will offer awareness and important information to ensure you are well prepared. And during the event you will get dedicated support from AEM, the same team that performed the resiliency assessment, with a 15-minute SLA response time for any critical issues that may occur.   

AEM will proactively examine the health of your production subscription for Storage capacity, CPU, Disk Failures, IOPS Optimization, Availability Set Isolation and other potential single points of failure. We can also establish a direct bridge line to product engineering should an issue occur during the event. For the period of the event window there is an option for a dashboard of resource performance and throughput status in case of escalations.

Key features of AEM include enhanced reactive support during your event, proactive preparation before your event to ensure readiness, recommended practices from knowledgeable Azure event engineers, an assigned Azure support team and post-event summary analysis.

For the most critical high-profile events such as the Super Bowl, Olympics and elections your Application Development Manager can nominate your organization for Microsoft’s High Priority invitation only program where Microsoft will commit additional resources directly from the Engineering team to ensure success.

To learn more about Azure Event Management and other enhanced support and engineering services to help ensure your critical event’s success contact your Application Development Manager or Microsoft support representative.

Thanks to the following reviewers:

Tina Stewart, Principal Program Manager, Customer Experience Program

Loan Tong, Senior Program Manager, Customer Experience Program

Alex Taege, Business Program Manager, Enhanced Solutions