Different Ways to connect Microsoft via Express Route

• Co-located at a cloud exchange
• If you are co-located in a facility with a cloud exchange, you can order virtual cross-connections to the Microsoft cloud through the co-location provider’s Ethernet exchange. Co-location providers can offer either Layer 2 cross-connections, or managed Layer 3 cross-connections between your infrastructure in the co-location facility and the Microsoft cloud.
• Point-to-point Ethernet connections
• You can connect your on-premises datacenters/offices to the Microsoft cloud through point-to-point Ethernet links. Point-to-point Ethernet providers can offer Layer 2 connections, or managed Layer 3 connections between your site and the Microsoft cloud.
• Any-to-any (IPVPN) networks
• You can integrate your WAN with the Microsoft cloud. IPVPN providers (typically MPLS VPN) offer any-to-any connectivity between your branch offices and datacenters. The Microsoft cloud can be interconnected to your WAN to make it look just like any other branch office. WAN providers typically offer managed Layer 3 connectivity.

Note: ExpressRoute capabilities and features are all identical across all of the above connectivity models.

Cloud Strategy in progress ...

Azure Compute Offerings

Virtual Machines	With support for Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM and SAP, Azure Virtual Machines gives you the flexibility of virtualisation for a wide range of computing solutions – development and testing, running applications and extending your data centre. It’s as if there was another rack in your data centre, giving you the power to deploy an application in minutes instead of weeks.
Cloud Services	Cloud Services is an example of Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS). Like App Service, this technology is designed to support applications that are scalable, reliable, and cheap to operate. Just like an App Service is hosted on VMs, so too are Cloud Services, however, you have more control over the VMs. You can install your own software on Cloud Service VMs and you can remote into them.
Batch	Azure Batch enables you to run large-scale parallel and high-performance computing (HPC) applications efficiently in the cloud. It's a platform service that schedules compute-intensive work to run on a managed collection of virtual machines, and can automatically scale compute resources to meet the needs of your jobs.
RemoteApp	Azure RemoteApp brings the functionality of the on-premises Microsoft RemoteApp program, backed by Remote Desktop Services, to Azure. Azure RemoteApp helps you provide secure, remote access to applications from many different user devices. Azure RemoteApp basically hosts non-persistent Terminal Server sessions in the cloud, and you get to use them and share them with your users. DISCONTINUED as announced on 12 August 2016, will replace by XenApp “express” combines the simplicity of application remoting and the scalability of Azure with the security, management, and performance benefits of XenApp, to deliver Windows applications to any employee on any device.
Service Fabric	Service Fabric is a distributed systems platform that makes it easy to package, deploy, and manage scalable and reliable microservices. Service Fabric also addresses the significant challenges in developing and managing cloud applications. Developers and administrators can avoid solving complex infrastructure problems and focus instead on implementing mission-critical, demanding workloads knowing that they are scalable, reliable, and manageable. Service Fabric represents the next-generation middleware platform for building and managing these enterprise-class, Tier-1 cloud-scale applications.Microservice applications are composed of small, independently versioned, and scalable customer-focused services that communicate with each other over standard protocols with well-defined interfaces.
Virtual Machine Scale Sets	Virtual machine scale sets are an Azure Compute resource you can use to deploy and manage a set of identical VMs. With all VMs configured the same, VM scale sets are designed to support true autoscale – no pre-provisioning of VMs is required – and as such makes it easier to build large-scale services targeting big compute, big data, and containerized workloads.
Azure Container Service	Azure Container Service makes it simpler for you to create, configure, and manage a cluster of virtual machines that are preconfigured to run containerized applications. It uses an optimized configuration of popular open-source scheduling and orchestration tools. This enables you to use your existing skills, or draw upon a large and growing body of community expertise, to deploy and manage container-based applications on Microsoft Azure.
Functions	Azure Functions is a solution for easily running small pieces of code, or "functions," in the cloud. You can write just the code you need for the problem at hand, without worrying about a whole application or the infrastructure to run it. This can make development even more productive, and you can use your development language of choice, such as C#, F#, Node.js, Python or PHP. Pay only for the time your code runs and trust Azure to scale as needed.

Azure Functions & Web Jobs

Min Role - SharePoint2016

https://www.petri.com/minrole-improvements-sharepoint-2016-feature-pack-1

Ignite 2016

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ragnarh/2016/10/02/yammer-roadmap-updates-and-microsoft-ignite-sessions/

SharePoint And Office 365 feature comparison Sheet:
Feature Comparison Sheet