A typical Azure solution normally consists of many components (SQL Server, Active Directory, App Svc and so on) and involves provisioning these resources independently using Azure Service Management APIs or PowerShell scripts. By using ARM (Azure Resource Manager) templates you now have the ability to group all these resources together and use a declarative style template written in JSON to manage the deployment of your cloud services and any dependencies. Using the same template, provides the capability to deploy repeatedly into different environments throughout the application lifecycle with the same consistent results.
The benefits of using ARM templates are as follows:
Set up resource locks, this provides the option to prevent the deletion or modification of resources by other users
View the rolled-up costs of the entire resources for a resource group as they can now be grouped together
Use declarative templates that can be managed under a source control...