HashiCorp Consul and Nomad can utilize Azure managed identities to authenticate against Azure, enabling the elimination of hard-coded service principal information. The use of cloud auto-join allows for dynamic cluster joining without requiring static IP addresses or DNS names. This simplifies network automation for services and reduces operational complexity. By leveraging managed identities, Consul and Nomad can provide highly available service mesh capabilities that facilitate communication between services across regions. Additionally, the use of Azure managed identities with these tools offers a more secure approach to managing service principal information, as it eliminates the need to hard-code sensitive details.