Updated: July 1, 2024
Published: January 11, 2022
Why is cloud computing better than traditional on-premise environments? What advantages do businesses get with it? How to select the right cloud service provider? We suggest drawing a detailed comparison of Azure vs AWS to answer these questions. It’ll be interesting to discover how market-leading providers set new standards and alter approaches to cloud computing.
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AZURE VS AWS MARKET SHARE
Cloud solutions have become unquestionably crucial for many industries and businesses. It eliminated the need to get back to the traditional environment when teams struggled with complex and costly in-house hardware and software.
At some point, cloud computing has changed how to streamline business processes and deal with data in general. It’s about the unique opportunity to create an entire network of different business areas located externally while being supported and maintained by a professional service provider.
In its turn, any company that decides to transition to the cloud has to select a particular service provider. It might be challenging as it requires a detailed analysis of the business-specific needs and a deeper understanding of the overall market situation.
So how do companies choose the cloud service provider? What aspects often turn out to be decisive? The side-by-side comparison of Azure vs AWS as top providers can serve as a helpful guide there.
The cloud computing market covers many areas like business processes, infrastructure, platform, security, management, analytics supported by cloud providers. According to the statistics, the global cloud market maintains steady growth and is estimated to reach $482 billion by 2022. It’s worth noting that the widely used platforms belong to such market aggregators as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. As a result, we can observe that top positions are taken by AWS, Azure, and GCP accordingly.
We’ll continue with an overview of Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS as market-leading cloud service providers. AWS has successfully maintained the top position over recent years when it comes to the market share. However, it’s worth noting that its main competitor Azure made significant gains over the last year. It’s related to both increasing popularity and revenue growth.
Microsoft has reported a 51% growth in Azure public cloud revenue in the previous quarters. Moreover, 2021 has become the most successful year for Microsoft in terms of annual revenue. For instance, only the cloud segment has earned $60 billion in revenue. Microsoft Azure is getting strong market positions and extending its services to meet all use cases.
As for Azure vs AWS revenue, the numbers state the following situation. The AWS annual revenue has also increased to $59 billion in 2021, making up 13% of the total income of Amazon. Being a market leader, AWS continues bringing new trends and approaches. At present, the great focus is shifted to supply chain management to improve cloud services for customers.
The tremendous popularity across all industries also explains the high cloud services distribution. Businesses of any specification feel the need to start the transition to the cloud as soon as possible. And companies that have completed it emphasize gained advantages like accessibility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, etc.
In the light of the comparison of Azure vs AWS, it’s worth mentioning organizations that use the services of these providers. The critical fact is that these are businesses from different industries, all of which have found their workable solution.
As for Microsoft Azure customers, check the following list.
- Energy – Shell, Chevron
- Financial Services – BCI, Manulife
- Healthcare – CDC, Adaptive Biotechnologies
- Retail – Starbucks, Walgreens, ASOS
- Gaming – Tencent, Mojang Studios
- Media and Entertainment – Endemol Shine Group
- Manufacturing – HP, Renault
- Governments
Among the customers of AWS, you can find the following organizations:
- Automotive – BMW, Toyota
- Consumer Packaged Goods – CCI, Kellog’s
- Energy – TC Energy, Storengy
- Financial Services – Capital One, Guardian
- Game tech – Epic Games, PlayStation
- Healthcare and life sciences – Moderna, Grail
- Manufacturing – Siemens, Autodesk
- Media and Entertainment – Netflix, Fox
- Advertising and Marketing – Salesforce, Hubspot
- Power and utilities – Enel, British Gas
- Retail – Petco, Neiman Marcus
- Travel and hospitality – Airbnb, Macdonalds
- Governments
There’s no chance to underestimate the importance of cloud computing across all industries as well as it becomes obvious why the cloud market is increasing at such a rapid pace. Before comparing AWS vs Azure, we suggest getting more specific on use cases for each cloud service provider.
WHAT IS MICROSOFT AZURE USED FOR?
It’s impossible to make a comprehensive comparison of Azure vs AWS without drawing particular attention to each competitor. It’s worth starting from the beginning and the evolution of provided services. Both representatives have gone a long way to present that wide range of services to meet many use cases.
Let’s start with Azure, a Magic Quadrant Leader by Gartner in 2021. It’s impressive to discover all the products and functionality this provider offers. They quickly met the full range of enterprise needs starting from SaaS to PaaS and IaaS. Moreover, they intensely focus on advancing edge computing and the extended cloud.
However, back in 2008, Microsoft hadn’t even imagined the impact building the new software platform, Windows Azure, would have made on the company’s future and its services. The innovative approaches in delivering software provided the firm basis for the well-known delivery model SaaS.
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In 2010, they launched Windows Azure, the PaaS, positioning it as an alternative to Google App Engine and Amazon EC2. They provided a few services like computing, Azure Bob storage, SQL Azure, and Azure Service Bus.
The rising market demands played a considerable role in advancing the cloud service from Microsoft. For example, they considerably revised the cloud strategy due to the need to transform the delivery model from PaaS to IaaS, thus renaming Windows Azure to Microsoft Azure in 2014.
Along with meeting customer needs for computing and storage, they continued extending services by presenting products dealing with analytics, Big Data, and IoT.
The next big step in advancing Azure was introducing the container strategy, as containers and microservices took the industry to a new level. Consequently, they managed to successfully launch the Kubernetes platform in 2016. They have proved their credibility not only in supporting Windows Containers but also in contributing to the container and Kubernetes developer community. Microsft Azure continues making its contribution and remains among Platinum Members of CNCF.
The other use cases worth mentioning are related to the advancement of the intelligence edge and intelligence cloud. They introduced many innovative solutions to accelerate AI models at the edge.
Also, Microsoft Azure has supported the need to work on the solid foundation of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud. It brings more control, flexibility, and easier transition for customers that decide to go with Azure.
The Azure evolution shows that the clear vision of market demands and the right strategy made the provider stay relevant. It helps with withstanding intense market competition and keeps the leading market position.
It is impressive to see how the provider’s products and services have changed over less than a decade. Here’s the list of main use cases customers can address with Azure:
- App development
- Cloud migration and modernization
- Data and analytics
- AI
- Internet of Things
- Hybrid cloud and infrastructure
- Security and governance
The great thing is that Azure provides customers with any solution they want. It delivers extensive experiences for any required area of cloud computing.
WHAT IS AMAZON AWS USED FOR?
The next step in comparing Azure vs AWS is to discover use cases for AWS and how they are different or similar to Azure.
Let’s use the same approach with going through the history of this provider and how it changed over the years. Cloud computing on AWS is the top choice for many companies. Its popularity among customers is impressive. It is the same with the ability to keep the leading market position for the entire period of providing cloud services.
There won’t be misleading to call AWS a trendsetter and a driving force in the cloud computing market. The fact is that the fast advancement of AWS services causes continuous service improvements from other providers. At the same time, the nearest competitors like Azure and GCP don’t stay behind, thus supporting the solid foundation for fair competition. It enables the steady growth of the cloud market that offers valuable services and products for customers.
The roots of AWS went back to the early 2000s when the known eCommerce company Amazon faced specific scaling challenges. In the attempt to add new apps for retail users, the team realized the need to present some new structures. For example, Amazon started to divide separate data units for goods, orders, and customers. Also, they offered the ready IT infrastructure for rent to sell products on Amazon.
The new structure enabled the opportunity to meet such customer needs in computing as storage, networking, and services. Great effort and a wise investment in service development and research allowed Amazon to successfully launch AWS in 2006. It included only several cloud products like Simple Storage Service and Elastic Compute Cloud.
Amazon was the first to present cloud services, though it realized the desperate need for continuous development. Over the following years, they offered different products to cover computing, storage, database, security, data flow, migration, etc. AWS delivered a significant contribution to cloud computing through the power of data analytics, AI, and other innovative technologies. Also, they spend billions of dollars on extending existing data centers and building new ones across the globe.
AWS managed to completely transform the cloud infrastructure and their available products like AWS Elastic Computing (2006), Amazon Simple Storage Service (2006), Amazon VPC (2009), Amazon RDS (2009), Amazon Aurora (2014), AWS Lambda (2014), DynamoDB (2015), Amazon Lightsail (2016), Amazon SageMaker (2017), and others have fastly gained tremendous popularity on the market. They focus much attention on advancing user experiences utilizing AI, robotics, machine learning, IoT, etc.
The success of AWS is also explained by the bright idea to make more use of technology via cloud computing. At present, AWS offers more than a hundred various products and services that address needs in:
- Compute
- Storage
- Migration and transfer
- Database
- Networking and content delivery
- Business apps
- Front-end web and mobile
- Game tech
- Analytics
- Containers
- Machine learning
- Security, identity, and compliance
Both small businesses and enterprises shift computing tasks to the cloud. It’s impressive how AWS has created a sizable ecosystem to address various needs. Being the first one to cloud computing, AWS keeps its leading position and evolves the effective strategy in giving customers better opportunities. It’s hard to compete against though there’s always room for improvement to provide cloud services.
Let’s check how cloud market leaders face the competition via the detailed comparison of Azure vs AWS features, products, and services.
AZURE VS AWS FEATURES
Cloud computing has gone a long way over the last decade, but it still is on the rise, and no one knows how far it can get in the future. As we’ve figured out the common use cases of cloud computing, it’s important to discover Azure vs AWS features and services they offer to their customers.
It’s an obvious thing that companies will start with comprehensive research on available functionality when choosing the cloud service provider. That is the solid foundation for learning product capabilities and how the provider can meet the business-specific needs.
The first thing to emphasize is the variety of products companies can choose from. Comparing AWS vs Azure use cases, it embraces similar areas. Thus, the choice between AWS and Azure gets even more difficult.
Let’s go with the main services and products to meet the common cloud needs.
Compute
Scalable computing customized according to the company’s needs is a fundamental feature to look for. Whether the company needs to scale instances or deploy the app to the cloud, they look for efficient computing tools.
Azure: The provider is often chosen due to quick instance configuration and provision. Azure leverages Virtual Machines that support on-demand computing. Also, there is a number of products like Azure Functions, Azure Spring Cloud, Virtual Machine Scale Sets, Azure Kubernetes Service, Batch, and others to set up the efficient infrastructure to implement cloud app development.
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AWS: Elastic Compute Cloud remains the core feature of AWS for scalable computing. It’s necessary to emphasize that EC2 has been among the first market products for providing computing services. Over a period of time, AWS keeps on presenting updates and adding new products like Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling, Amazon Lightsail, AWS App Runner, AWS Batch, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda, AWS Serverless Application Repository, etc.
Storage
That’s a vital functionality to draw attention to when comparing Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS. It isn’t surprising that storage capabilities remain among the decisive aspects. The good news is that both providers are known for great data processing, reliability, and security.
Azure: It’s impossible to run performant cloud apps without secure and scalable cloud storage. Microsoft Azure supports the storage of structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data. It leverages Azure Disk Storage (block storage for Azure Virtual Machines) and Azure Bob Storage (object storage). Moreover, it includes some other storage-related services like Azure Files, Azure Backup, Data Box, etc.
AWS: It presents the full set of features to address such needs as fast storage access, capacity management, infrastructure maintenance. Amazon Simple Storage Service stays at the core of AWS storage while being advanced by adding Amazon Elastic File System, Amazon Elastic Block Store, AWS DataSync, AWS Snow Family, AWS Storage Gateway, AWS Backup, etc.
Database
In the light of the Azure vs AWS comparison, it’s worth checking on database services. It’s great that any business needs can be addressed with all purpose-built and easily managed databases. Both AWS and Azure have different database types, including relational and NoSQL ones.
Azure: Companies find an excellent choice of features to grow faster with Azure databases. Azure SQL database is based on MS SQL Server. However, you can find different database products for other database engines: Azure Database for MariaDB, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, or Azure Database for MySQL. Also, Azure offers caching services as Azure Cache for Redis.
AWS: It’s a great option to set a fully-fledged database environment. The main difference between Azure vs AWS is that Amazon RDS supports such database engines as Amazon Aurora, MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL, and Oracle. In general, AWS presents more than fifteen purpose-built engines. The other known AWS database products are Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift (relational database), Amazon DynamoDB (key-value database), Amazon ElastiCache (in-memory database), etc.
Containers
The adoption of containers makes it possible to manage the chosen infrastructure easier and faster. It is applicable for both the cloud and on-premises. Therefore, it’s always a good idea to run containers on Azure or AWS. They have proven the service quality by scalability, security, and reliability in both cases.
Azure: The container services by Azure can become a compelling reason to select Microsoft Azure. Containerized apps are great for deployment and management, so Azure offers all the necessary products in one place – Web App for Containers, Azure Container Instances, Azure Container Registry, Azure Red Hat OpenShift, and Azure Kubernetes Service.
AWS: For container orchestration, companies can use either Amazon Elastic Container Service or Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service. Besides, Amazon offers several options to run containers leveraging the following products: AWS Fargate (without managing servers), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (with server-level control), Amazon EC2 Spot Instances (fault-tolerant workload), and numerous tools to support containers.
Migration
Let’s find out what tools and products companies apply to accelerate and simplify migration through Azure vs AWS services. Like other use cases, both providers prepare the functional set of products to make migration smooth and fast.
Azure: The migration with Azure always starts with the defined strategy and plan. Whereas offered products like Azure Migrate, Azure Database Migration Service, Data Box, and Azure Site Recovery help migrate and modernize the outlined workflows. The combination with other Azure services enables further scaling and optimization.
AWS: It’s simple to find AWS support to outline business-specific migration needs. Migration Evaluator builds individual business cases, and customers can track the entire process through AWS Migration Hub. As for the known migration products, we can mention AWS Application Migration Service, AWS Database Migration Service (app migration), AWS DataSync (storage migration), etc.
Security
Businesses need to take advantage of cloud security. Choosing cloud-based solutions is also about getting great data, account, and workload protection. As for Azure vs AWS security, they offer quality services to establish secure connectivity, protect the infrastructure and enforce compliance.
Azure: Built-in security services with Azure focus on efficient compliance enforcement. Besides, they support the security of multi-cloud and hybrid environments. Microsoft Defender for Cloud enforces workload protection on-premises and in the cloud. Application Gateway, Microsoft Sentinel, Azure information Protection, VPN Gateway are advanced Azure products to address various security challenges.
AWS: The provider supports all the required security standards and compliance regulations. In general, AWS security services can be divided into several categories: data protection, access control, infrastructure protection, detection, incidence response, and compliance. Amazon Cognito, AWS Security Hub, AWS Identity & Access Management, AWS Network FireWall, Amazon Detective, and others will help secure workloads on AWS.
Analytics
The data-driven market has introduced new approaches for running the business, connecting with customers, and withstanding intense competition. Moreover, every company realizes the importance of analytics there. Along with gathering and storing the data, they need efficient tools to analyze and visualize it.
Azure: The great thing is Azure customers can choose from the set of analytics services, including real-time analytics, data integration, enterprise-grade analytics, etc. Azure products aim at creating a unified analytics platform via fast, easy, and collaborative approaches. The known analytics products are Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Databricks, Data Factory, HDInsights, Azure Analysis Services, etc.
AWS: Quality analytics greatly depends on the opportunity to scale and automate data. The integrated environment supported by AWS is an excellent option to get valuable data insights for the best business performance. Companies favor such AWS products as Amazon Athena, Amazon Cloud Search, Amazon EMR, Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue, Amazon Kinesis, and others.
It appears more understandable how these cloud service providers keep their market position. They have all the features customers might need. Besides the mentioned above products, there’s still a wide variety of products for integration, management, networking, media, governance, etc. The comparison of Azure vs AWS features shows that companies certainly get the required functionality no matter the choice.
AZURE VS AWS COMPARISON: OTHER PRACTICAL ASPECTS
Companies need to go beyond just functionality when looking for a good cloud service provider. Some related aspects cannot be left behind when choosing between Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS.
It’s worth noting that business aspects should always accompany the good technological decision. Therefore, we continue the Azure vs AWS comparison by outlining the following things: integration and deployment, developer tools, service pricing, job opportunities, and salary. Also, you can check on some service ratings provided by Gartner.
Integration and deployment
Ease of deployment and integration is an essential part of cloud computing. It’s known that cloud-based solutions can be quite complex projects that require some tools to simplify the overall process.
Azure: Developers have access to multiple app deployment tools to simplify the process. As for the integration, Azure offers products like Logic Apps, Service Bus, API Management, Service Bus, and Event Grid to integrate processes and data across the organization.
AWS: As a result of complexity, AWS could be more challenging in terms of deployment. That is explained by various deployment methods leveraging AWS Lambda, AWS CloudFormation, Amazon ECS, and others. One more disadvantage of deployments with Amazon ECS is that it isn’t supported in all regions.
Developers tools
It’s a vital aspect to consider since the development team needs some efficient operational tools. There won’t be a clear winner between AWS and Azure as both of them provide an excellent set of tools for their communities and customers.
Azure: Being the product of Microsoft, it might be easier to introduce Azure to business. Developers receive all the necessary tools for any language or platform. It helps them streamline the development process by using Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, SDKs, Azure Monitor, and Azure Load Testing.
AWS: Like Azure, Amazon AWS presents similar products to conduct and manage the development process. It includes Amazon CodeGuru, AWS Cloud API, AWS CDK, AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodeDeploy, etc. AWS also offers additional services for developer collaboration and communication.
Pricing
The cost remains a decisive factor in moving the business to the cloud. Paying service fees is less expensive than business spending on on-premise solutions. AWS vs Azure pricing comparison is quite challenging due to deployed services, regions, committed use discounts, or price changes. As for the Azure vs AWS pricing models, both of them apply pay-as-you-go structures. The good thing is that businesses can get their benefits due to the high market demand and competition. For example, both providers offer free trials to get customers acquainted with their services.
Azure: In comparison to AWS, Azure charges per minute that supports more exact pricing. Azure customers are offered short-term commitments like monthly or pre-paid charges. As for comparable services, they provide the price-match guarantee against AWS for transparent price setting. Another benefit is that they have a particular set of products always available for free. It includes Azure Cosmo DB, Azure App Service, Azure Event Grid, Azure Kubernetes Service, etc.
AWS: The first difference between AWS vs Azure pricing is that AWS charges per hour though the pricing structure remains the same. Many customers find AWS more flexible in terms of pricing as they don’t require complex licensing or provide long-term contracts. The distinctive benefit of AWS pricing is that they offer volume-based discounts to committed users. Also, they offer AWS cost management services and tools to reduce cloud service costs on AWS.
Service Price Match | Service Price Match | Starting Price |
---|---|---|
Amazon S3 Standard | Block Blob storage (ZRS HOT) | from $0.023 per GB/month |
Amazon S3 Standard-Infrequent Access | Block Blob storage (ZRS COOL) | from $0.013 per GB/month |
AWS Lambda | Azure Functions | from $0.20 per million executions |
AWS EC2 | Linux virtual machines | from $0.004 per hour |
Job Market and Salaries
With the tremendous growth of the cloud market, we are also experiencing some changes in the job market. Cloud computing has presented so many job opportunities. According to CRN, cloud computing jobs have increased by 42% over the last few years. As for the most in-demand jobs, we suggest checking the top ten list provided by CRN with included U.S. average salaries in 2021.
Cloud Computing Jobs | Average Salary in the USA |
---|---|
1. Cloud Engineer | $118 000 |
2. Software Architect | $135 000 |
3. Cloud Consultant | $112 000 |
4. Development Operations Engineer | $122 000 |
5.Senior Sofware Engineer | $130 000 |
6. Software Developer | $106 000 |
7. Software Engineer | $110 000 |
8. Full-Stack Developer | $108 000 |
9. Data Engineer | $130 000 |
10. Platform Engineer | $125 000 |
Azure: Although the cloud computing market has presented new job opportunities, many companies notice the shortage of available tech workers. Besides, it’s important to look for Microsoft-certified Azure specialists with firsthand experience. To simplify the hiring process, you need to specify the expert’s duties you need. It’s obvious that building Azure web apps could require different technical skills from optimizing the backend database on Azure.
AWS: In the light of the Azure vs AWS comparison, the AWS job market experiences the same things as Azure. It becomes a challenging task to hire a good AWS specialist due to the talent pool shortage and high job demand in cloud computing. It’s always better to look for an expert with some experience to deal with AWS specifications. Practical knowledge should remain the key requirement in addition to attained AWS certifications.
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AZURE VS AWS: WHY DO BUSINESSES CHOOSE THESE CLOUD PROVIDERS?
When teams choose between Azure and AWS for their cloud solutions, they typically consider various factors, such as the specific services and features offered, pricing, and the level of support and integration with other tools and systems. In this context, it is important to mention that Azure and AWS are popular cloud providers offering a wide range of services and features. Both providers have a long history and have continuously innovated and added new services to their portfolios.
Azure, developed by Microsoft, offers a wide range of services, including virtual machines, storage, and databases. It also offers services for artificial intelligence, the internet of things, and blockchain. Azure is popular among teams using Microsoft products, such as Windows and Visual Studio, and they want to maintain consistency and compatibility across their technology stack. Additionally, Azure offers strong integration with other Microsoft products, which can simplify management and administration for teams already using these tools. Azure also offers a range of services for app development, such as Azure DevOps and Azure Kubernetes Service, which can help teams to streamline the development process and improve collaboration.
AWS, developed by Amazon, is considered a pioneer in cloud computing and is one of the most popular cloud solutions. AWS offers a wide range of services, including computing, storage, and databases and services for machine learning, analytics, and the internet of things. One of the main advantages of AWS is its scalability and flexibility, which allows teams to scale up or down their resources as needed easily. Additionally, AWS has many third-party integrations available, making it easy to integrate with other tools and services. AWS also offers a range of services for security and compliance, such as AWS Identity and Access Management and AWS Key Management Service, which can help teams to secure their cloud infrastructure and comply with regulatory requirements.
Another important aspect to consider when choosing between Azure and AWS is their pricing model. Both providers offer pay-as-you-go pricing but have different pricing models and pricing options. AWS has a more flexible pricing model and offers more options for reserved instances and spot instances which can help teams save costs. Azure, on the other hand, offers more options for hybrid scenarios and has a more predictable pricing model.
Ultimately, the choice between Azure and AWS depends on a team’s specific needs and requirements. Both platforms have their own advantages and disadvantages, and teams may choose to use a combination of both depending on their specific use case. For example, a team may choose to use Azure for their virtual machines and storage and AWS for their machine learning and analytics needs. It is also worth mentioning that both Azure and AWS have a large and active community, which can help teams to find solutions and best practices for their specific needs.
AZURE VS AWS: WHICH IS BETTER?
Knowing the success stories of both providers and going through the exceptional services they offer, it might be a challenging task to make a final decision on Azure vs AWS choice. They have proven their leading market positions by quality products suitable to the needs of different organizations.
The most important aspect is that these providers are a great choice for quality cloud services. There can’t be a wrong choice as the well-outlined strategy always helps to address the defined needs and meet set expectations. We suggest focusing on the final details that could become helpful in selecting between Azure and AWS.
Maturity. That’s an advantage of both providers. For less than a decade, they have evolved robust cloud infrastructures that support any type of cloud service. Of course, AWS might have a little benefit as they were first in the market. Despite being a newer representative, Azure keeps a strong market position while catching positions with AWS.
Cloud services and products. It’s one of the first things to look for when choosing the cloud provider. In the case of AWS vs Azure product comparison, that’s an impressive variety of functionality. And it’ll be no problem to find a matching product from one provider if you find it from the other. Cloud offerings include IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, with all the capabilities for cloud computing.
Compatibility. Both Azure and AWS enable teams to select any operating system, database, and programming language. Moreover, developers have access to multiple frameworks and tools. As a result, it’s a great capability to create, maintain and deploy apps with any cloud provider the business chooses. However, the obvious fact is that it’s easier to integrate Azure with Microsoft products.
Pricing. Due to the cloud market competition, businesses have gained certain benefits. Pricing is one of them as strong competition helps to regulate pricing rates where providers themselves guarantee the price-match for their customers. In Azure vs AWS pricing competition, providers try to offer some flexible purchase offers as well as loyal customer discounts. The pay-as-you-go model allows finding the individual plan to meet the required needs at a reasonable cost.
Service support. Being backed by big market aggregators like Amazon and Microsoft, they managed to build a supportive community worldwide. They encourage partnership with different tech and service providers. Also, they provide support for the developer community through various events, conferences, online tech talks, training, and certifications.
Organization type. Cloud computing is applied across various industries and organizations. Only along long with the careful analysis of business requirements can companies choose the cloud service provider. It’s worth mentioning that nonprofit organizations widely leverage cloud computing. Governments, public healthcare, education institutions are often customers of AWS and Azure. Moreover, they can apply for special grants and programs that support the public sector. As for the Azure vs AWS choice for other businesses, it is important to consider the size of your organization. AWS is considered more suitable for enterprise’s needs, whereas Azure might be better for building and growing startups.
IN CONCLUSION
It’s interesting to discover how cloud computing has changed businesses. The adoption of cloud approaches has become advantageous to any organization and industry. It has presented so many different solutions to streamline business processes, improve performance and productivity, support data management and security.
Due to the increasing number of cloud service providers, it’s important to choose the one that suits your business needs. We hope that the comparison of Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS will be used as a helpful guide to make the final decision and choose the right cloud provider for your organization.
The leading market positions are proven by gained popularity among developers and companies that greatly benefit from the services and products of these providers. Of course, that both Azure and AWS have their pros and cons. However, each of them has all the necessary functionalities to be applied in different use cases.
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Frequently asked questions
What is cloud computing?
Cloud computing embraces the delivery of IT resources to the cloud. It helps present such distinctive benefits as speed, productivity, performance, and security to organizations of any specification. Typical computing services include storage, databases, software development, analytics, networking, etc.
What is AWS used for?
AWS, a market-leading provider, offers a wide range of cloud services. The most common cases to choose AWS are:
- Cloud migration
- Content delivery
- Database migration
- Web and mobile app development
- Hybrid cloud architecture
- Serverless computing
- Machine learning
- Edge computing
- Storage
What is Microsoft Azure used for?
Azure provides a similar set of services like AWS so their customers can address all the necessary needs in:
- Application development
- Cloud migration
- Hybrid cloud and infrastructure
- Analytics
- AI
- Compute
- Internet of Things
- Storage
Azure vs AWS: which is better?
The services of both cloud providers have their advantages and disadvantages. However, the main point is that they can quickly meet customers' needs in most cloud computing cases. Azure and AWS offer an impressive variety of products with extensive functionality and keep on their advancements. If the business defines the needs and sets the right expectations, there can be the wrong choice.