Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are both computing titans in the present scenario. Both are providing solutions to meet the needs of organizations of virtually any size. That’s why it is difficult to understand which option will work for your organization- MS Azure vs AWS, and hence this blogpost.
Microsoft and Amazon, both have been named as leaders in Gartner’s Magic Quadrants for IaaS, PaaS Application and cloud storage. There are more than 90,000 new Azure customer subscriptions every month and about 500 companies are using it. It provides services for customer-side applications and websites. Amazon Web Services provide a portfolio of content delivery, computing, storage, and networking services.
The chart below shows the difference between AWS and Azure
| Amazon Web Services | Microsoft Azure | |
| Storage options | Amazon simple storage (S3) | Azure storage (Blobs, Queues, Tables, Files) |
| Backup options | Amazon Glacier | Azure Backup |
| Database options | Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) | Azure SQL Database |
| Compliance | AWS CloudHSM | Azure Trust Center |
| Hybrid cloud | None | Available |
| Storage services | Amazon Import/Export | Azure Import Export |
| Block storage | Amazon Elastic Block storage (EBS) | Azure Blob storage |
| Government services | AWS GovCloud | Azure Government |
| App/Desktop Services | Amazon WorkSpaces Amazon AppStream | Azure RemoteApp |
| Analytics/Hadoop options | Elastic MapReduce(EMR) | HDInsight (Hadoop) |
| Compute services | Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) | Virtual Machines (VMs) |
| Amazon Elastic Beanstalk | Cloud services | |
| Azure websites and apps | ||
| None | Azure visual studio online |
While there are some basic similarities between AWS and Azure such as easily spinning up a new virtual server, secure remote access and VPN capabilities for private clouds, it’s where they differ that provides you a window to get insights on whether to choose Azure or AWS for your business.
Azure or AWS: What sets them apart?
AWS has various application services, deployment options and stream analytics for real time data stream processing in the cloud. Gartner says that AWS has 5 times the capacity of 12 – 14 competitors combined, together with Azure and Google.
AWS can take the capacity lead from its competitors, but one of the biggest advantages Azure has over AWS is its connections with clienteles. It’s this long-standing rapport with them, coupled with the ease of usage of all Microsoft’s tools that provide a short learning curve so that it becomes a comfortable ride for them.
Let’s discuss some other characteristics so that you can decide which cloud option will work for you –
Productivity
With AWS, you’ll be productive and effective once you get trained in it.
Azure gives you access to the similar tools that millions of industries trust and use today, including Windows and Linux, Active Directory, virtual machines and containers. It also ties into toolsets such as Eclipse, Visual Studio, GitHub, XCode, and Hadoop, and offers a bundle of third party solutions, tools, and partner-developed applications via the Azure Marketplace.
Rapid app development
With AWS, it’s easy to use open source tools that run on Linux third party tools such as web accelerator Varnish Cache.
Azure’s integrated tools, services, and sure solutions help you build enterprise applications faster, for any platform or device. Anyone can work on Azure because it supports the widest selection of devices, databases, operating systems, frameworks, languages, and tools. There is no need to manage virtual infrastructure.
Applications requirements
AWS offers a wide range of fully managed database services to fit your application requirements. They can be launched in minutes with just a few clicks. It includes Amazon Relational Database Service, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, and so on.
With Azure, you can build hybrid applications easily that facilitates the use of existing datacenter resources to meet the todays’ business and operational imperatives. You can do this within azure itself – without any complexity of workarounds and tradeoffs.
Hybrid connections provided by azure are content delivery networks, virtual private networks, Express route connections that ensure privacy and confidentiality between datacenters and your infrastructure.
The tables shown below provides the basic comparison between the clouds:
-
From networking point of view:
Virtual network Public IP Hybrid Cloud DNS Firewall/ACL AWS VPC Yes No Route53 Yes Azure Vnet
Yes
Yes
Yes -
In relation to storage and DBs:
Ephermeral (Temporary) Block Storage Object Storage Relational Db Archiving NoSQL and Big Data AWS Yes EBS S3 RDS Glacier Dynamo DB, EMR, Kinesis, Redshift Azure Temporary Storage-D Drive Page Blobs Block Blobs and Files Relational DBs Windows Azure Table, HDInsight -
In relation to pricing and models
Pricing Models AWS Per hour- rounded up On demand, reserved, spot Azure Per minute- rounded up commitments (pre-paid or monthly) On demand- short term commitments (pre-paid or monthly)
The AWS vs Azure race never ends as both offer businesses a broad and deep set of abilities with global coverage by keeping in mind, the requirements of customers. So, whether you are an SMB or a big enterprise or an individual, both have one thing or the other for you!
Feel free to drop your comments in the section below.
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AWS has been proved to be the ultimate leader when it comes to cloud services, but now as one can see, Azure is coming closer and faster than Amazon would like and have accepted.
Thanks for this amazing article, I like your perception about the power of Azure to hibrid solutions.
To my mind, Microsoft Azure is the best in comparison of any other type Cloud server. It is branded and more secure from another companies server. There is more information sharing by you there and it is very helpful for everyone.
Amazing article sir. A great information given by you in this blog. It really informative and very helpful. Keep posting will be waiting for your next blog.Thank you.