Cloud Providers comparison: AWS vs Azure

AWS vs Azure

It has been known for some years now that a large number of companies with large infrastructures started migrating their on-premises services to the cloud, be it Azure or AWS (Amazon Web Services).

In most cases, security drove the decision for migrating, followed by the need for lower costs in hardware maintenance, and the time invested in these tasks by IT departments.

It is true that at the beginning there was certain reluctance to send data outside company servers, but slowly users became conscious of storing large amounts of information in computer systems in general — risks present both on-premise and in the cloud.

Then why migrate to the cloud?

1-Improved security
2-Cost reduction
3-More comfortable
4-More mobility
5-Better scalability
6-Better performance

I wouldn’t dare to say one option is better than the other, but from my personal experience, each provider adapts better to different types of customers. This all depends on the type of business they run. In some cases, a multi-cloud solution is the best option.

It’s also worth mentioning that Amazon pioneered in cloud services in 2006. Azure didn’t appear later until 2010, which gave Amazon significant time to establish their position in the market, obligating Azure to play catch-up once it was in the marketplace.

A comparative of the services offered.

Computing Services

                                                                               AWS                                              Azure

Database Services

                                           AWS                                             Azure

Storage Services

                                           AWS                                              Azure

Networking services

                                                AWS                                                Azure

It’s generally difficult to compare prices between AWS and Azure; this is due to the high speed of change, and continuous improvements offered in the environments.

An informal study revealed Azure to be 4 – 12 percent cheaper than AWS. (For those interested here are the links to the calculators on which I based this claim: AWS & Azure)

In the evaluation of which provider is cheaper, there is another variable to consider: whether on-premise infrastructure can be cheaper than the cloud.

Personally, I consider that the cloud still remains the more affordable option, especially when we talk about companies with a large amount of infrastructure.

IT Budgets can be contentious issues. One advantage to the cloud is that there we have predictable costs, this allows us to generate a tight budget including licenses, maintenance and support for high severity problems, which will prevent the customer from having surprises later.

Both provider work hard at constantly improving their costs and services in order to compete with new clients.

In terms of time in business, the “winner” is AWS, as I mentioned above, appearing in 2006. Azure appeared four years later. However, Azure sustains a 75% growth rate that has allowed it to match the size of its rival.

In terms of the physical location of the infrastructure, there are several locations known as regions and each region has several isolated zones which are called availability zones. AWS has around 77 availability zones versus 60 availability zones in Azure. This makes AWS lead the global market with +/- 40%, against +/- 30% leadership of Azure.

The popularity of both is defined by the large clients that each provider handles, for example, for AWS we have clients such as Netflix, Facebook and LinkedIn among others, while for Azure we have Samsung, eBay and Adobe, to mention some of the most well-known. In both cases, these are high-end clients, so in my opinion there is not one of the two that stands out more than the other in this respect.

Security is another of the main issues and one of the main concerns of companies considering that they generally store a large volume of information.

In the cloud, on the other hand, we have access from anywhere (mobility) while the information that is on-premise is hosted only on servers that are within the company or Data Center and although in general there are VPN connections, here we are also subject to Hardware or Software on-premise.

In the case of the cloud, the contracting and/or maintenance of Data Centers is no longer a concern for the client, since it is all managed by the cloud and we are free of those issues/costs.

Undoubtedly, the flexibility offered by the cloud is not achieved with on-premise servers, this means that cloud implementations should not necessarily start with the payment of two robust servers foreseeing future growth, since being in the cloud we will have the opportunity to grow or decrease services quickly.

In conclusion, the cloud is a great option for companies that are not willing to pay large investments in infrastructure. They will have greater agility, security, mobility and will not have to worry about physical locations or personnel to maintain them.