AWS Vs Azure : Which Cloud Computing Platform Is Best?

The adoption of cloud computing has quickly become a major motivator for today's businesses, as applications move from local data centers to innovate, reduce costs and increase flexibility.

The first concerns about data security and sovereignty have been largely addressed by the three main public cloud providers - Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform - only the most regulated companies. They remain cautious about adopting cloud services.

Comparison between AWS and Azure

1. Key strengths 

Choosing one cloud provider over others depends on the wants and needs of each customer and the workloads they run. It is common for companies to use multiple providers in different parts of their operations or for different use cases, an approach called multiple clouds.

Starting with AWS, the lead’s main strength continues to be the breadth and depth of its services with more than 175 in computing, storage, databases, analytics, networks, mobile devices, development tools, management tools, IoT, security, and business. Consultations, at the last count.

2. Features and services

AWS and Microsoft Azure offer very similar basic functions for flexible computing, storage, and networking. They have all the common elements of a public cloud in common: self-service and out-of-the-box provisioning, auto-scaling, and security, compliance, and identity management roles.

Both vendors introduced services and tools aimed at high-tech areas, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and serverless computing (Lambda for AWS and Azure functions), while customers can leverage one cloud or another to build multiple mobile applications. or even create a mobile app. High-performance computer environment according to your needs.

Machine learning has also been an expanding area in the great arms race of cloud computing recently.

AWS launched SageMaker in 2017 to simplify the adoption of machine learning by merging a hosted environment for Jupyter notebooks with integrated model management, automated rotation of training environments using EC2 instances, and HTTPS endpoints for hosting resources with Amazon S3. The provider also offers a wide range of ready-to-use machine learning services for use cases such as image recognition (AWS Rekognition), deep learning models for text-to-speech (Polly), and the engine that powers Alexa (Lex ).

With Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, developers can write, test and deploy algorithms and access a market for ready-to-use APIs.

3. Computing, storage, databases, and networks

AWS's core offering for computing is EC2 instances, which can be customized with a variety of options. It also offers related services such as Elastic Beanstalk for application delivery, EC2 container service, ECS for Kubernetes (EKS), AWS Lambda, and automatic escalation.

The Azure computing offering focuses on your virtual machines (VMs), other tools such as cloud services and resource managers to deploy applications to the cloud, and the Azure auto-escalation service.

AWS storage includes Simple Storage (S3), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Elastic File System (EFS), high-volume import/export data transfer service, Glacier Archive Backup, and storage gateway that can be integrated into local environments.

Microsoft's offerings include Azure Core Storage Service, Queue and File Storage, Azure Blob Block Storage, and Table, and it also offers Site Recovery, Import-Export, and Azure Backup.

4. Hybrid options

A growing trend for large public cloud providers over the past year has been an increasing focus on meeting the needs of hybrid and multi-cloud customers.

This often occurs when customers deploy infrastructure from multiple vendors and need to maintain certain applications locally. Suppliers responded with a range of solutions to help customers who are not yet ready to fully enter the public cloud, which represents the majority of large companies.

With its Azure stack established, Microsoft has long been the first choice for hybrid deployments across the Big Three. This provides customers with the hardware and software they need to deliver Azure public cloud services in an on-premises data center, with a shared management portal, code, and APIs to facilitate interoperability.

AWS announced its first serious restriction on hybrid deployments during its reinvention conference in 2018 with the launch of Outposts, a fully managed service where the provider provides preconfigured racks in your organization so that AWS services run as if they were in your operating data center.

5. Price

Since AWS changed prices for EC2 and EBS services from hour to second in 2017, AWS has become compatible with Azure.

However, it can be difficult to make a clear comparison, as both offer slightly different pricing models, discounts, and frequent price drops. Of course, not all customers pay the label price, especially at the company level, where volume discounts can be negotiated with sales representatives.

All providers offer free introductory tiers that customers can use to try out their services before purchasing and generally offer credits to attract innovative startups to their platforms, as well as "always free" tiers with strict usage restrictions.

6. Customers

This is one of AWS's strengths. It was doing better and better business with its customers.

A longtime AWS customer is Netflix, which decided to close all data centers as part of a final move to the cloud in 2016. However, in addition to the web pioneers, AWS has been very successful in convincing more traditional companies to migrate to the cloud.

The other main clients are AstraZeneca, NewsCorp, AirBnB, Aon, Dow Jones, Kurt Geiger, Lonely Planet, Nasdaq, Nike, Channel 4, Financial Times, Nisa Retail, and Royal Opera House.

Microsoft may have fewer senior Azure users, with most vendor posts appearing to be related to widely used software as a service (SaaS) tools. However, the Redmond-based company has also had notable success with customers like Pearson, Ford, NBC News, and Easyjet, to name a few.

7. Advantages and disadvantages of AWS

As mentioned earlier, the reasons for choosing one supplier over another are different for each customer. However, there are aspects of competing clouds that offer advantages in certain circumstances.

The breadth and depth of the AWS offering are seen as an advantage for AWS.

AWS was one step ahead of the competition and has been developing its suite of cloud services since 2006. All of these services are designed to be business-friendly for both CIOs and the target audience of developers.

The provider ranks very well in terms of platform configuration options, monitoring and policy functions, security, and reliability. The partner ecosystem and overall product strategy are also considered to be market leaders, and the AWS Marketplace offers a variety of third-party software services.

This is supported by Gartner's Global Magic Quadrant IaaS 2019, which states: “Companies using AWS benefit from the first users who are helping to incorporate new technologies, remove these services and reduce their use and simplify administration. "

One area where AWS fails in part is its hybrid cloud strategy, which tends to ignore the benefits of local private clouds. As mentioned above, the supplier slowly comes up with the idea.

Another drawback of AWS is the breadth of what it offers. While these options are pleasant to choose from, it can also be difficult to navigate the multitude of features on offer, and some see AWS as a complex management provider.

While AWS is generally rated positively as a market-leading cloud provider, Gartner notes that some companies may not want to fill Amazon's pockets, as the huge parent company continues to grow and compete in several growing sectors, such as financial health services.

8. Advantages and disadvantages of Microsoft Azure

The great advantage of Azure is that Microsoft already has a solid foundation within a company and can easily help those companies move to the cloud. Azure can be easily connected to important local Microsoft systems, such as Windows Server, System Center, and Active Directory.

"Companies that are strategically involved in Microsoft technology typically choose Azure as their primary provider of IaaS + PaaS," reported Gartner at the IaaS Global Magic Quadrant 2019 - Products and services to promote adoption. "

Microsoft is also increasingly open to open source technologies. About half of their workloads are now running on Linux. Azure Training will help you to explore your skill.

However, one of the disadvantages has been a series of disruptions over the years, including a major global outage in May 2019. Lydia Leong, an analyst at Gartner, has recommended considering disaster recovery capabilities outside of that. '' Azure for mission-critical applications hosted in the cloud. AWS is not resistant to downtime, but it suffered its last major outage in 2017, and the Google Cloud had a major outage in November 2019.

Gartner also warns: "Companies repeatedly complain about the quality of Microsoft technical support (along with rising support costs) and solution architects on site. This is detrimental to customer satisfaction and slows down business. Adopting Azure and therefore the customer’s spending." For more information and to learn you should visit AWS training in Pune