What is Azure?

Azure is an open source and flexible cloud platform which helps in development, service hosting, service management, and data storage. The Azure cloud computing tool hosts web applications over the internet with the help of Microsoft data centers.

What is Aws?

Amazon Web Services is widely used secure cloud services platform, offering computing power, content delivery, database storage, and other functionality to help businesses scale and grow.

Comparison between Azure and AWS

Parameters AWS Azure Launched Date Launched in 2006. Launched In 2010. Market Share 31% Share of the global computing market 11% Share from the worldwide market. Availability Zone 61 Availability Zone 140 Availability Zones Storage services S3

Buckets

EBS

SDB

domains

Easy to use

SQS

CloudFront

AWS Import/Export Blob Storage

Containers

Azure Drive

Table Storage

Tables

Storage Stats Databases Services MySQL

Oracle

DynamoDB MS SQL

SQL Sync Deployment Services Amazon Web Services

Amazon Machine Instance (AMI)

Traditional Deployment Models

Fine-grained updates

Elastic Beanstalk

Cloud Formation Cspkg (fancy zip file) Upload via portal or API via blob storage Course-grained updates “click to scale.” More magic Networking Services IP/Elastic IP/ELB

Virtual Private Cloud

Route 53

ELB

Firewall heavily configurable Automatic IP assignment

Load-balancing

Azure Connect

Balancing

Endpoints defined in csdef/cscfg Price Per hour- rounded up On-demand reserved spot. Customers Adobe, Airbnb, Expedia, Yelp, Nokia, Netflix, Novartis. Pearson, 3M, Towers Watson, NBC, Essar, Serko, etc. Type of Cloud Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Virtual Network Connection type Direct Connect ExpressRoute Pricing models Free Tier

Per Hour

Free Trial Per Minute

No change for stopped

Pay for EBS volume Free Trial

Per Minute Government Cloud AWS has an edge as far as government cloud offerings. Limited reach for government cloud offerings. Support for Hybrid cloud Does not offers the best of hybrid cloud support. With Hybrid Cloud, organizations can integrate onsite servers with Cloud instances. Ecosystem AWS has a software marketplace with an extensive partner ecosystem. With very few Linux options, Azure doesn’t’ have a big ecosystem. Support for Big Data EBS storage is ideal for handling big data. Standard storage has many issues for big data, and therefore you need premium storage. Maturity More mature cloud environment for big data. The less mature environment for big data. Machine access In AWS machine can be accessed separately. Machines are grouped into cloud service and respond to the same domain name with various ports. Salary The average salary for “AWD engineer” is approximately $141,757 per year for Software Architect. The average salary for “Microsoft Azure” ranges from approximately $113,582 per year. Key features Zero setups, Detail Monitoring, Auto-scaling groups. Startup friendly, High performance, Low cost. Long term data archiving Allows long term data archiving and retrieval. Does not offer any long term data archiving and retrieval option. Security Security is provided using defined roles with permission control feature. Provides security by offering permissions on the whole account.

Popularity Index with Market Share

Stack Overflow Questions AWS vs. Azure

AWS continues to dominate a global cloud-infrastructure services industry which is likely to hit proximately $70 billion last year. Today, it enjoys market share which is better than some top public cloud providers.

Google Trends Azure vs. AWS

In the past year, Azure’s cloud adoption rate is almost 85 percent that of AWS’, up from 70 percent last year.

Advantages of AWS

Here, are significant advantages of adopting AWS cloud services:

Compute Cloud allows you to increase or decrease storage according to the need of your organization

AWS enables you to select an operating system, programming language, database of your choice.

Broad & deep service offerings

Robust partner ecosystem

Trusted by high-profile customers

High Transfer Stability

Minimal information is lost during server and storage transfer

Offers more data centers for availability and low latency

Better DevOps support

Simpler licensing method

Stronger support for Bl and analytics

Advantages of Azure

Here, are some major advantages of using Azure cloud services:

Capability for developers and users to create, maintain and deploy applications

Fully scalable cloud computing platform offers open access across multiple languages, frameworks, and tools

Total support for Microsoft legacy apps

Greater awareness of enterprise needs

Easy one-click migrations in many cases

Conversion of on-prem licenses to the cloud

Support for mixed Linux/Windows environments

Offers inbuilt tool like Azure stack to help the organization deliver Azure service from the own data center

Disadvantages of AWS

Here, are few drawbacks of Amazon Web Services:

Less hybrid- cloud-friendly

AWS elastic load balancer is not equipped to handle as many requests as it receives

AWS lacks customer support, so it more suitable for a technically savvy group of consumers and those companies who have their inbuild tech support team

The number of choices offered by AWS is confusing to those who may not speak the language of technology.

Incompatible and Weak Hybrid Strategy

AWS is a less open private cloud. This makes it an unpopular storage option for sensitive industries like banking

AWS has too many products which makes the selection process much harder

Disadvantages of Azure

The major Drawbacks of Azure cloud services are:

Customer service is not transparent, and data is hosted globally. So, if you have data restrictions where it must be stored in a specific country, at that time you need to verify/specify with Microsoft

You will be charged extra for paying as you go

Azure cloud-based services are full of glitches. To fix these bugs, you will need to spend additional money

Less flexibility about non-Windows server platforms, when compared to AWS

Which one is better?

Microsoft Azure has increased its market share in the last couple of years, but not to an extent where there is a real contest between the two companies at least for the near future.

Moreover, both companies introduce new products, new integrations, and new pricing structures. Therefore, the final selection will be depend on the need of your organization.