Azure vs AWS - What to choose between two strong cloud platforms?

Nowadays, Cloud computing has been on a tremendous hype in the market. There was a time when enterprises are completely dependent on huge and costly servers. Then the introduction of cloud platforms has entirely changed the game.

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AWS and Azure are today’s innovation juggernauts that offer impeccable cloud-based services. Both platforms are equally leading the market and at some point, it makes us difficult to decide which one is better among them. These two have the calibre to cover the organizational needs in different ways. Hence it is suggested to understand the exact requirements of your business first and then choose the best that fits your needs.

In this article, we will dive into the landscape of AWS vs Azure cloud platforms to decide the better one.

What is AWS?

AWS stands for Amazon Web Services and it is one of the broadly adopted cloud platforms in this digital world. Being secure and durable, it simply helps you to focus on innovation rather than infrastructure. It can efficiently assist you with database storage, on-demand computing service, content delivery and other functionalities. This Amazon based cloud platform offers three kinds of services i.e.,

1. IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)
2. PaaS (Platform as a Service)
3. SaaS (Software as a Service)

Why AWS is advisable?

It has everything that any company needs

Daniel, founder of Daniel Foley suggests that “Azure is still not in a complete stage and therefore cannot be compared at all to the beast that is AWS. It has everything that you need, without the need to worry about more updates coming in the future to disrupt your workflow. It has a real dominant market position that I do not see moving anytime soon. And with their extensive offerings, it cannot be matched with the incomplete Azure at this time. They offer support for larger organisations, perfect for companies who want to branch out in the future, or can see their success growing. They have a global reach, with a lot of training too. However, it can be difficult to use for first time users, and the costs need to be managed.”

It has straightforward approach to implement simple things

Chris Love, Owner of Love2dev suggests that “I think Microsoft has done a wonderful job creating and delivering machine learning and AI services, aka Cognitive Services. But I think many of the other services are behind or just missing compared to AWS.

I have strong Microsoft background, but around 5 years ago I became so frustrated with Azure I decided to give AWS a try. I was amazed at how much easier it was to do simple things required to build web applications. Since then Microsoft has improved, but still lags behind AWS.

AWS accelerates in the breadth of services available. I mean they have a service to manage your satellites and I mean what business doesn't need that! Seriously though there are many AWS services I use that either are not available in Azure or much more complicated to use.”

It is solid, stable, and secure

James Major, Owner and Founder of Insurance Panda suggests that “We looked at both AWS and Azure for our company. Ultimately, we went with AWS simply because we were more familiar with Amazon. We also received recommendations for AWS from multiple sources we trust.

AWS' platform is solid, stable, and secure. We're nearing 5 years of uptime so far with no disruption whatsoever. Due to the nature of our business, downtime is a big deal, so AWS' track record in keeping services online is crucial for us.

From my research, AWS is faster and more robust than Azure. The provisioning of AWS resources is also much faster when compared to Azure. Integration with third-party development tools is also much better with AWS.

When deciding which platform we were ultimately going to use, I spent hours looking at the documentation for each platform. AWS, I felt, had much better documentation than Azure.”

It has a larger community of qualified and experienced specialists

Gwen Rivet, Chief Marketing Officer at Bitdegree suggests that “From the user's point of view, there's no massive difference between AWS and Azure: the products each of them offers are often direct equivalents to the other's services, and the global coverage, while not absolute, is fairly sufficient in both cases. However, being the more experienced and more prominent player in the field, AWS has a larger community of qualified and experienced specialists, so going with it is definitely a smarter strategy for a company in terms of talent acquisition.”

It is perfectly suitable for IaaS provider

Israel Gaudette from Link Tracker Pro suggests that “Picking out a clear winner between AWS and Azure is just like deciding who to go with when your parents get divorced. You really don’t know until you’re presented with preferences. When I was working as a software developer, it usually took us 9 months to make just a simple new program. Out of it, 3 months is intended for the software development and the rest will be for making the machines running. But when we were asked to finish it in less than six months, AWS vs Azure debate happened. The main goal was to make the process faster. And our best option was to bypass IT and buy infrastructure from AWS - for a few hundred bucks extra cost. If the preferences were the other way around, we would have chosen Azure.

The bottom line, determining which is better between AWS and Azure all depends on your business’ requirements and workloads. If your main focus is to have a robust PaaS provider, then Azure is the better choice. But for a software development company that is looking for a various set of tools and is capitalizing on IaaS, then there’s no need to rethink and should choose AWS. Ultimately, the best thing to do here is to assess first what requirements are needed in “each” project then choose which one can deliver it better. To be precise, it’s a matter of choosing the right tool on the right project - independently.”

It built for enterprise-friendly environment

Andrew Ryan, Founder & Director CEO of Newtec Services suggests that “There is no one size fits all solution when it comes to AWS or Azure. In the past few years, AWS has been the crowd favorite for its widest range of functionality and most mature cloud offering. However, a Goldman Sacs technology survey was recently published that revealed many CIOs prefer to use Azure for public cloud services, despite AWS being the leader in the market in terms of revenue.

It's easy to see why CIOs prefer Azure. The Azure Management Portal makes collaboration easier between developers and IT pros, offering end-to-end integrated DevOps solutions. This is attractive to experts in the field.

That said, AWS is still the number one Cloud service provider for businesses in a wide range of fields, including software development companies. AWS is reliable and offers great customer service support, a low rate of data loss, and third party support and customization capabilities. All of its offerings are built to be enterprise-friendly. While there are pros and cons to both systems, we find that AWS is the way to go for many of our business clients.”

What is Azure?

Azure is a Microsoft-based public cloud computing platform that is innately flexible, Scalable, fast, and affordable. It offers a sustainable solution for deploying applications and projects using three types of services i.e., Iaas (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service). Having a reasonable pricing structure, Azure helps you with content delivery, on-demand computing service, data storage, and other functionalities very efficiently.

Why Azure is advisable?

It takeover AWS’s growth rate

Dusan Stanar, Founder & CEO of VSS Monitoring suggests that “Both Azure and AWS are well-respected cloud domain members. They are struggling for a greater slice of the cloud pie and, while doing so, they are taking the planet by storm. Azure accounts for about 30% of all installed application workloads, while AWS accounts for 41%, and Google accounts for only 3% of all installed application workloads. In 2017, the market share of AWS was 47.1 percent, with $3.66 billion in Q4 sales. With a turnover of $6.9 billion, Azure's market share did not grow above 10 percent (of note, Microsoft's revenue figures are higher since both Azure and Office 365 are part of their cloud division). However, Microsoft's revenue from Azure increased over 90 percent this year in its latest Q1 FY 2018 earnings report, doubling AWS's growth rate.”

It is easy to use

Shayne Sherman, CEO of Techloris suggests that “Personally, I think that Azure has developed very quickly over the years and that they would be the one I would choose out of the two of them. Their computer services such as virtual machines, container instances and service fabric are something that cannot be matched by AWS at the current moment. Their storage services for Disk, File, Queue, Blob and their Data Lake Store are just a lot more intuitive and easy to use. AWS can be a little more complicated. However, their machine learning still needs work, but I am sure that this will be coming in the very near future. While the tool is incomplete, there are a lot of positives going for Azure, and I would recommend it most.”

It is slightly cheaper per hour when comparing with AWS

Julian Goldie, CEO of Goldie Agency suggests that “The short and honest answer, based on the criteria we have examined, is that there is no clear winner. Both services offer similar features and performance. Although Amazon is a pioneer in cloud services, Microsoft has done a good job of updating in recent years. If price is your biggest concern, Azure is slightly cheaper per hour when comparing Azure directly to AWS.

Google also entered the competition using its enormous resources in an effort to enter the same market, with customizable virtual machines and an impressive $ 300 free credit for new users. Of course, you may want to create your own cloud storage with a Raspberry Pi if you prefer the DIY method. AWS, Microsoft also offers 12 months free to try some Azure services. You also get $ 200 in credit to try any service for 30 days.

You are also charged per second for the services you use, unless you are willing to pay upfront for one to three years for a huge discount. In a similar comparison to the instance, while an AWS “t2.medium” instance costs $ 0.046 per hour, a similar Azure “B1MS” instance (with two virtual CPUs and 4 GB of RAM) costs $ 0.04 per hour , or about $ 30.36 an hour.”

It is perfectly suitable for PaaS provider

Abby from Wellpcb PTY LTD suggests that “We all know that Azure was much in trend in the past years and had higher revenue growth rates but after Q3 2020, AWS has significantly grown its popularity and achieve higher revenue than Azure. But that doesn’t mean Azure has lost its value. Well, picking up between these two always depends on the other factors of every organization such as cost, performance, operations, and security. So, current data & trends are showing that AWS is holding a 32% market where Azure is holding 19% as per the Canalys source. So, you can say that AWS ahead of Azure. However, Azure gives a stronger and faster PaaS capability, which nowadays is a more important part of Cloud infrastructure. So it depends on the organization which clouds service provider they want to use according to their need.”

It has some extra properties and its rate of innovation is outstanding

Jeff Walker, Founder/CEO of Best VPN Canada suggests that “Azure is better than AWS. Based on my experiences, Azure has a lot to offer than AWS. When I was working with a renowned software development company, I got to experience both how Azure and AWS looks like to work with. And Azure sure stands out. Aside from that Azure is cheaper than AWS, it also lets you have some extra properties and a lot of free stuff. Working with the Azure team gave us faster results. They are seriously taking all our feedback and continuously adding more functionality and features based on the feedback and pain points we’ve raised. To be precise, its rate of innovation is outstanding. Azure also offers better and extensive PAAS capabilities. With Azure, quickly moving from the concept stage to the end product is possible for developers. It’ll enable them not only to be cost-efficient but more productive as well.

For any software development company, you need to choose Azure over AWS. And it’s even ideal if you have a team of Windows developers. It’ll enable them to easily integrate anything between their development desktops and Azure cloud instances. With it, they’ll have a seamless workflow having everything they need at their fingertips.”

Can you use both?

Multi-cloud strategy is in high demand

Peter Schoeman, Founder/CEO of The Dog Adventure suggests that “Both are excellent options, offering availability, security, and compliance. The services are similar and so are the charging methods.

The services offered by Amazon make this seen as its great quality, however, this can also be its weakness. Knowing and managing the complexity of AWS is quite difficult, even for the best IT professionals.

Azure integrates with other Microsoft services, which makes it easier to work and develop applications. So if this is your case, in addition to the integrations, Microsoft offers discounts. But it is less suitable for critical applications, so it is good to evaluate this point.

If the company already uses Microsoft environment and products, Azure would be the best option due to familiarity, integrations, and discounts. Now, if what you need is high scalability, the ideal would be to opt for AWS.

So should I use both?

The use of the cloud has a truth that many IT professionals forget - or are unaware of - that is: the possibility of enjoying the best of each provider. Being dependent is outdated. Competition improves quality, allows customization, better products, savings, and, consequently, growth and success.

The company may have different needs, so in that case, it would be best to opt for the two clouds - or more -, why not? The use of more than one cloud is a multi-cloud strategy, that is, it allows you to enjoy the best of each supplier.”

Conclusion

Keeping an eye towards the future, today almost every business has started adopting the cloud. AWS and Microsoft Azure are the two leading cloud platforms in the current market. Deciding the best among them is quite a daunting task. However, the decision could be dependent on the unique needs of the company. Here in this blog, we have discussed the importance of AWS and Azure platforms each one with the reasons to adopt. It would effectively help your business to decide what platform you should go with.