AWS vs. Azure – Which is better?

About AWS

AWS was introduced in 2006. AWS presently offers more than 100 services in the areas of databases, computing, application development, infrastructure management, and security. The locations where AWS maintains offices total 16.

About Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure was unveiled in 2008. It is a cloud computing service offered by a Microsoft-run global network of data centres. The three delivery models for these services are infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, and software as a service (SaaS) (IaaS). Also supported are a wide range of tools, programming languages, and frameworks.

AWS vs. Azure - Overview

AWS remains the industry leader for public cloud services with a 33% market share. Google Cloud comes in third with 6%, followed by Azure in second with 13%. – Synergy Research Group report

Both AWS and Azure offer the same basic adjustable compute, storage, networking, and pricing options. Both offer speedy deployment along with public cloud capabilities like autoscaling, self-service, pay-as-you-go pricing, security, compliance, and identity access management.

"With AWS, a new server can be up and running in three minutes and a 64-node Linux cluster can be online in five minutes (as opposed to three months internally)" (it used to take Eli Lilly seven and a half weeks to deploy a server internally).

With more than a million users, 2 million servers, 100,000 weather-forecasting computer cores, and $10 billion in yearly sales, AWS is the largest cloud computing platform. More than its three primary competitors put together, AWS has a 40% market share in cloud computing. The oldest and most experienced cloud provider, with 11 years of experience, offers a variety of computing services and functions for mobile networking, deployments, machine learning, and more. With 5 million organisations using Azure Active Directory, 4 million developers signed up for Visual Studio Team Services, 1.4 million SQL databases, and 2 trillion messages processed each week, Azure is currently growing at a rate of 120K new customers each month.

AWS vs. Azure – Which is better?

Although they both provide equivalent services, there are a number of areas where they differ. These can be differentiated based on their potential to generate revenue, flexibility, features, and adaptability.

Market share and income

AWS became one of the most well-known cloud computing service providers globally as its revenue reached $59 billion. This reflects a 37% increase in revenue from Q2 2021 compared to Q1 2021. Azure's revenue rose by 50%, although the precise amounts are confidential.

At the moment, AWS has a 40% market share, while Azure has a 30% market share. In terms of revenue and market share, AWS appears to be in the lead. The results of this competition between AWS and Azure may depend on a variety of other factors.

Open Source Community

Microsoft Azure is still trying to strengthen its relationships with the open-source community. Because of this, the way the industry sees Microsoft has not changed. This strengthens Amazon AWS's leadership in the cloud hosting industry.

Storage Volume

AWS's cloud object storage offering offers high availability and automatic replication between regions. Temporary storage on AWS starts working when an instance is started, and it stops working when the instance is shut. It also provides block storage, which is very similar to hard discs. It can be either independently maintained or connected to EC2 instances.

In contrast, Azure uses page blobs and temporary storage for its VM-based volumes. Block storage and S3 in AWS are equivalent.

Model for Machine Learning

AWS and Azure both offer machine learning studios for the development of machine learning models. In contrast to Amazon SageMaker, Azure's studio does not require a deep expertise of data engineering, Python programming, or open source libraries.

Pricing Scheme

Both Azure and AWS provide pay-as-you-go pricing as a feature. AWS is billed on an hourly basis, as opposed to Azure, which is billed by the minute. Azure is more accommodating when it comes to alternatives for short-term subscriptions. When comparing the two, Azure is more expensive. The price hikes linked to increased Azure instance sizes are clear evidence of this. The cost of a 256GB RAM and 64vPCU on Azure is approximately two times that of AWS.

Compatibility with Hybrid Cloud Market

When compared, Azure surpasses AWS in the hybrid cloud space, where AWS is still in its infancy.

Licensing and License Mobility

Thanks to Azure and AWS, customers won't have any problems with licencing or licence mobility. Simply pay for the services you actually use. You qualify for licence mobility if you have already paid for the service in Microsoft Azure.

AWS is more feature-rich and adaptable, while Azure is easier for Windows admins to set up. It is clear that most of the services provided by AWS and Azure are interchangeable. However, Azure beats AWS in areas like Azure Site Recovery, Azure Event Hubs, Azure Visual Studio Online, and Azure Scheduler.

The open-source community's adaptability and flexibility seem to be set by AWS. It also earns an extra point for revenue generation.