Cloud wars: Microsoft Azure vs Amazon cloud
As per Gartner’s 2015 Magic Quadrant, Microsoft and Amazon are leaders in cloud services. Amazon was first to launch its cloud services–Amazon Web Services (AWS)—and, without a doubt, it has been the most popular option among developers. The company made significant advances to its services to meet the pace of the changing business requirements. Microsoft was a late entry and is making waves in the industry with its legacy services and credibility. Essentially, both the offerings have same features with different names, hence a tough competition. However, there are some points of differences where one company is having an edge over the other.
Security and storage: Both the companies understand that when it comes to moving to cloud, security is the biggest concern for businesses. However, Microsoft Azure has surpassed Amazon Web Services with 99.9% guarantee of safety for all operations and data and approval from data protection authorities of European Union and the Article 29 Working Party. Amazon cloud is designed on Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) to ensure a protected cloud. Azure cloud follows the cloud privacy international standards of ISO 27018. Azure technology is built with an automated security assessment service that automatically accesses applications and checks for any deviations from the standard practices or vulnerabilities. Hence, the Azure has an in-built capability to improve applications while they are still under development.
Also, Amazon and Microsoft offer highly scalable, durable and accessible storage services. However, Azure service, including blob storage, file storage, tables and queues, have been recognized by the Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for storage.
Tools: While Azure technology include cloud services, virtual machines, and application services; Amazon is centered on Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and requires configuration with virtual machines. Azure offers tools to explore possibilities with Internet of Things (IoT). Amazon is now testing the waters of hybrid solutions. Both the companies offer highly customizable offerings but Microsoft takes the advantage of its technology expertise and offers familiar operating system, databases, frameworks, languages, and tools; plus, simpler integration with third-party tools reduces the time of integrating all the services and fastens development process.
Network: Azure Virtual Network (VNET) and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) groups the virtual machines of users to enable smooth collaboration in work such as private IP address range, firewall protection, and network gateways. These cloud solutions offer seamless connectivity between on-premise data centers and public cloud. However, Amazon offers a unique DNS web service called Route 53. On the other hand, with Azure software, one can easily move the load from servers to data centers and back.
Support: The companies offer 24×7×365 support for these solutions. There are discussion forums and online and offline self-service support offered for both the services. However, Azure has a service dashboard and offer easy billion and subscription management service. That being said, Azure service support plans are cheaper than AWS.
Pricing: Cost is a big differentiator among the two solutions. Though both the companies offer flexible pricing model, Microsoft has a pricing model in which the billing is done rounding up the minutes used. Also, Microsoft offers Azure software priced three times better than AWS and gives it in a package deal with Office 365.
In the cloud wars, since every player is participating with exceptional features to explore the potential of cloud, we just cannot predict the future. However, it is sure that this is not the end of the war.