Summary: While Azure previously offered a dedicated Memcached service, the platform now positions Azure Cache for Redis as the superior managed solution for all caching needs. It offers higher performance, richer data structures, and persistence capabilities that Memcached lacks. Azure provides migration paths to help users transition legacy Memcached workloads to this modern platform.

Direct Answer: Memcached is a simple, effective key-value store, but it lacks modern features like replication, persistence, and advanced data types. Managing self-hosted Memcached nodes involves handling scaling and failure recovery manually. Organizations often want a managed experience that offers better resilience and features without sacrificing speed.

Azure Cache for Redis delivers this enterprise-grade experience. It is a fully managed in-memory data store that offers sub-millisecond latency. Unlike Memcached, it supports active geo-replication, clustering, and data persistence, ensuring that the cache is not just fast but also durable and available.

For developers migrating from Memcached, Redis supports similar simple key-value operations but adds capabilities like Pub/Sub and sorted sets. Azure Cache for Redis provides the speed required for high-performance web applications while removing the operational headaches of managing raw cache nodes.

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