What is Azure Arc and How Can It Help Your Business?

Software infrastructures become increasingly complex as companies extend cloud environments with on-premises systems and multiple cloud providers. In fact, Gartner predicts that 90% of organizations will adopt a hybrid cloud approach through 2027.

However, managing distributed systems is often more challenging than running workloads on a single cloud platform. Inconsistent environments and the need for custom integrations add complexity. Overall, the more diversified the infrastructure becomes, the harder it is to manage.

That’s when Azure Arc can help. In this article, we will discuss this service, its capabilities for managing distributed infrastructures, and its core benefits for business.

Azure Arc is a service designed for managing resources beyond Azure. It extends Azure’s control plane (Azure Resource Manager) to almost any infrastructure.

• Designed for multicloud management, hybrid cloud governance, and edge computing, Azure Arc covers:
• On-premises Windows and Linux servers
• Virtual machines
• Kubernetes clusters
• Resources hosted in AWS or Google Cloud

At the core of Azure Arc’s capabilities is the Azure Connected Machine Agent. It is a lightweight agent installed on non-Azure servers that connects them to Azure. Once installed, these machines appear in Azure as first-class resources. As a result, a business gets centralized visibility, governance, and lifecycle management over these resources without migrating workloads.

Through the Connected Machine Agent, Azure Arc allows businesses to establish consistent policies, security controls, and observability across all environments. It does so using familiar Azure governance and monitoring services like Azure Policy, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, and Azure Monitor.

For platforms that cannot be managed with agents, businesses can use Azure Arc Resource Bridge, which connects whole virtualization or container platforms to Azure. The Resource Bridge works as a management cluster that connects Azure Resource Manager to environments like VMware vSphere, System Center VMM, and Azure Stack HCI. By establishing native connectivity, Azure Arc Resource Bridge allows organizations to manage virtual machines, networks, and storage from Azure without modifying individual workloads.

In sum, the list of the main Azure Arc capabilities looks as follows:

• Managing the entire environment together by projecting existing non-Azure and/or on-premises resources into Azure Resource Manager.
• Managing virtual machines, Kubernetes clusters, and databases as if they are running in Azure.
• Onboarding physical and virtual servers via the Azure Connected Machine Agent, which ensures monitoring, security, and policy enforcement.
• Connecting virtualization platforms through Azure Arc Resource Bridge to ensure their centralized management.
• Using consistent DevOps practices to support cloud-native patterns across different environments.
• Configuring custom locations as an abstraction layer on top of Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters and cluster extensions.

Overall, Azure Arc is a strong option for companies that rely on Azure to manage diversified infrastructures and environments with familiar policies, controls, and tools. With tools like Azure Connected Machine Agent and Azure Arc Resource Bridge, this service provides organizations with complete visibility of distributed infrastructures, from individual servers to entire infrastructure stacks.

According to a recent Forrester study, companies that use Azure Arc achieve a 304% return on investment within 3 years. Let’s take a closer look at the key benefits driving these results.

Unified management across on-prem, cloud, and edge

Managing distributed infrastructures spanning across different clouds and on-premises environments can be challenging. Organizations struggle with duplicated processes, inconsistent policies, and diversified manual workloads. No wonder that 52% of companies cite the complexities of multicloud or hybrid cloud management among the biggest cloud challenges.

Azure Arc provides a single control plane for managing distributed resources. Instead of using separate tools for each environment, businesses can manage servers, Kubernetes clusters, and databases with a unified interface. This allows teams to save time, cost, and effort, managing an Azure hybrid cloud architecture or other distributed infrastructures as one coherent system rather than a collection of disconnected parts.

Improved security and compliance visibility

According to Accenture’s State of Cybersecurity Resilience 2025 report, 77% of organizations lack the foundational data and AI security practices required for safeguarding their resources and infrastructures. In highly diversified hybrid infrastructures, building a unified and secure framework across all resources is even more challenging.

With Azure Arc, teams can enforce uniform security and compliance for diverse infrastructures. Its interface also allows businesses to track compliance status and detect misconfigurations across all connected resources. This is especially relevant to regulated industries, such as fintech, which is bound by regulations like the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, California Consumer Privacy Act, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, etc.

Faster modernization and scaling

According to Gartner, over 40% of enterprise systems are beyond end‑of‑life or unsupported. Software modernization is often challenging because the companies need to preserve all the features and connections while ensuring the compatibility of infrastructure components. The problem becomes even more relevant when it comes to modernizing distributed systems with different infrastructure components located across diverse environments.

Azure Arc allows organizations to modernize existing systems and extend cloud-native capabilities to on-premises environments, and scale when needed without costly cloud migrations. This gives companies greater operational control and reduces downtime, as they can embrace gradual modernization instead of changing the entire infrastructure at once.

Consistent DevOps workflows

Around 60% of business decision-makers express concerns regarding the integration of legacy systems with modern DevOps tools. Such infrastructure fragmentation can lead to workflow inefficiency, poor outputs, and security breaches.

Azure Arc helps organizations effectively manage DevOps practices in distributed environments. The service provides a unified interface allowing engineers to ensure the consistency of CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices. This approach is based on GitOps workflows to Kubernetes clusters across different connected environments.

GitOps is a way to manage deployments where the Git distributed version control system works as a single source of truth. With GitOps, the desired state of your apps and infrastructure lives in a Git repository and is reconciled automatically in every environment. This reduces differences between environments and helps keep deployments consistent, ensuring greater software stability.

Keep in mind that DevOps teams still need to thoughtfully design CI/CD workflows and Git repositories because Azure Arc provides only the tools to enforce consistency. In addition, Azure Arc’s GitOps approach focuses primarily on Kubernetes clusters. Your DevOps teams may need to implement other tooling or pipeline logic for non-Kubernetes workloads.

Better cost control across environments

According to Gartner, worldwide IT spending is expected to grow 9.8% in 2026, exceeding $6 trillion for the first time. One of the reasons behind such growth is that many organizations still lack efficient policies for managing their resources. This task can become even more challenging in diversified systems that span across multiple clouds, on-premises, and edge environments.

Azure Arc helps businesses that run hybrid environments achieve greater cost-effectiveness. Companies gain a unified vision of how resources are used across hybrid and multicloud setups. In addition, Azure Arc’s control plane allows teams to apply consistent policies, such as resource limits, tagging rules, security baselines, and cost controls. This helps businesses prevent overprovisioning and standardize resource usage.

This translates into more informed cost decisions and helps companies to adhere to the most cost-effective approach to resource management.

All diversified infrastructures are unique, shaped by different performance needs, compliance rules, data sources, and workflows. To manage everything effectively with Azure Arc, it’s often necessary to set up advanced configurations, create custom GitOps pipelines, and seamlessly connect multiple environments. This requires specialists with deep experience in hybrid and multicloud management, as well as expertise in Microsoft technologies like Azure Arc, Azure Data Factory, Microsoft Fabric, Azure AI services, etc.

If this expertise is not available in-house, you can outsource distributed infrastructure management to a dedicated team with strong experience in cloud development and cloud data management services.

Leobit is a company with Azure technologies at the heart of our services and is always ready to assist. We are a Microsoft Solutions Partner for Digital and App Innovation and Data & AI, with extensive Azure development experience gained from over 150+ successful projects. Leobit’s team also has strong expertise in building hybrid cloud infrastructures that span

For example, we helped a Norwegian customer build a cloud-based mobile application that seamlessly connects with IoT sensors of a smart home. This solution helps users increase house security and ensure efficient resource consumption.

We know how distributed infrastructures work and will help you configure the most efficient and tailored policies and workflows for their management.

Azure Arc is a powerful solution for businesses looking to simplify hybrid cloud data management and implement a multicloud governance platform. Powered by tools like the Azure Connected Machine Agent and Azure Arc Resource Bridge, Azure Arc enables companies to achieve unified visibility and resource management, stronger security, faster modernization, consistent DevOps workflows, and more effective cost control across distributed infrastructures.

To take full advantage of Azure Arc and ensure proper management of your infrastructure, a team with strong cloud governance and development skills is essential. Leobit possesses such skills, as we have strong Azure cloud expertise. Contact us to discuss your needs and find out how we can help you build and manage complex distributed infrastructures.