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Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure: Choosing The Right Cloud Platform For Your Business

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Albert Smith
Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure: Choosing The Right Cloud Platform For Your Business

The most up-to-date data from Gartner on the worldwide Infrastructure as a Service market showcases annual revenues of $32.4 billion. A 31.3% growth from $24.7 billion in 2017.

According to Gartner, the market is controlled by five vendors responsible for almost 80% of worldwide IaaS cloud market share in 2018. These vendors are Amazon (47.8%), Microsoft (15.5%), Alibaba (7.7%), Google (4.0%) and IBM (1.8%). Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are among the leading public cloud providers. AWS commands with currently 51.8 percent market share, and Microsoft Azure increased its market share from 8.7% to 13.3% in 2017.

A duel between the giants is emerging in the Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), i.e., servers and storage from the cloud. The IaaS market leader Amazon Web Services (AWS) is pushing towards corporate customers. This is precisely where Microsoft wants to score with Windows Azure and is massively upgrading its portfolio.

The Similarities

AWS and Azure are similar in terms of standard functions for building cloud structures. Both provide virtual machines, networks, databases, and other cloud functions. Likewise, both are continuously working on expanding the range of services or optimizing existing functions. Both portals are managed via the respective web portals and CLIs. To use AWS and Azure successfully, you need an appropriate expert who sets the course for the cloud project, accompanies the migration, and takes care of the Infrastructure accordingly.

The Differences

AWS customers benefit from a global infrastructure and flexible cost accounting (pay as you go). AWS 'strengths lie in the flexible design of AWS resources. In this way, server instances can be easily scaled up when access to the web application increases.

Amazon Web Services can handle Linux optimally. Of course, you can also work with Windows in AWS. The Windows Study Guide provides further assistance
Azure relies on hybrid technologies. This means that almost all functions can be connected to local data centers. Of course, other Microsoft products (such as Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server, Office 365) can be integrated into the Azure Cloud. Azure focuses on Windows, but of course, Linux is also supported.

Azure's pricing model is less flexible than AWS. Microsoft is also globally positioned, but it is still much more complex to secure workloads across multiple regions.

Microsoft Azure: Hybrid cloud cheaper than with AWS

Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services both pursue an expense-based billing model. This means that you only pay for the exact usage time of the cloud instances. What Microsoft Azure differs significantly from Amazon AWS, however, relates to integrating existing local servers in the cloud environment.

Microsoft technology services provides the Azure hybrid advantage for this hybrid approach. This provides defined benefits if you, as a company, plan to transfer your existing servers to an Azure IT environment. However, the operating system versions Windows Server Standard Edition, Windows Server Datacenter Edition, SQL Server Enterprise Core, Standard Core, or an Azure SQL database must be installed on the local computers. Active software assurance or equivalent qualifying subscription licenses are also required.

This has the advantage that companies do not have to purchase additional Windows server licenses. In this case, Microsoft also offers free extended security updates for Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2.

Tip: Using the Microfin calculator, you can calculate the cost of using Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure-based on the planned cloud usage. An efficient tool for an initial assessment.

Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 (Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud) is the top service from AWS and is used intensively by customers. EC2 is one of the first compute services in the cloud and has evolved steadily since its availability in 2008. In particular, the geographical range, the different VM types, the support of different operating systems, and the different types of supply and the ecosystem are currently the measure of things in the cloud.

Based on customer feedback, Amazon is continually expanding the service with improvements and new functions. Amazon responded immediately to corporate customers' requests for better I / O throughput for Oracle and SAP workloads and provided new SSD instance types. Enterprise solutions from Microsoft, Oracle, Red Hat, SAP, IBM, and other software providers are certified to operate on Amazon EC2. Customers can choose between on-demand, reserved, and spot instances to process their workloads with the appropriate computing power.

Conclusion

Which provider is best suited ultimately depends on the particular project? If extreme load scenarios are to be expected, AWS is the best choice. Azure is recommended if it is primarily Microsoft-based workloads or if existing Microsoft applications are to be supplemented with the cloud component. In these cases, customers receive free Azure capacity. Thus, many companies use Azure as a second cloud platform next to AWS and therefore rely on a multi-cloud strategy.

So there are many options. The first step in choosing the right platform is to analyze your requirements. In the next level, you should then assess which provider fits best. AWS provides a checklist with over 150 criteria, which can help with the decision.

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Albert Smith
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