The Azure File offering complements the storage services by allowing on-premises legacy applications to be lifted and shifted to the cloud. Cloud applications can easily share files between virtual machines using standard and familiar APIs such as ReadFile and WriteFile.

Many distributed applications have a common pattern of storing configuration files in centralized locations where they can be used by several machines. Such files can be stored via Azure File shares and accessed uniformly; the same files can also be accessed via REST APIs, making them available to the internet via authenticated calls. So, imagine the variety of hybrid scenarios here.

In another scenario, IT administrators and developers might want to share frequently used tools and utilities needed for administering VMs and cloud services. Using Azure Files, this can be done without the cumbersome effort of distributing these files manually. You may even want to share documents and notebooks between...