Research
What’s the difference between AWS and Azure?
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are both cloud services platforms. They can mainly be used as a way to design IT architecture to operate on demand via the internet rather than on-premises data centers. During my semester as a student of the Enterprise IT Architecture class at the Fox School of Business, we used AWS to ultimately construct a cloud infrastructure, and launch an application using Node.js. In this write up I will be comparing and contrasting AWS to Microsoft Azure.
Amazon Web Services has historically been a market leader in cloud computing platforms since its conception. AWS has been revered for their easy to use interface, and friendly open source model. However, Azure has recently made massive improvements in their platform and made investments in their infrastructure engineering causing a rise in its use as a platform. Azure has become a close second to AWS in terms of usage. Two things have been driving the change in Microsoft Azure: One is the success of their office 365 program (Personal cloud storage), and the second is that many retailers compete with AWS due to competition with amazon. A lot of retailers do not use AWS due to cross selling services.
Fundamentally, their platforms are similar as far as service offerings such as IaaS, (Infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (Platform as a service). During my research I discovered that deciding between the two services can come down to the differences between AWS and Azure’s IaaS and PaaS. Traditionally, AWS has a better infrastructure for incorporating Infrastructure as a Service, while Azure is better if the company is in need of a strong Platform as a Service. However, this is a subjective statement, and it really comes down to an array of needs that your company wishes to fulfill. Some examples of the two that we learned in our MIS 3406 class were the use of Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) as infrastructure as a service, and the use of Elastic Beanstalk as PaaS. The two service offerings that Azure provide are Virtual Machines/Virtual Machine Scale sets as IaaS, and Cloud Services as PaaS. In larger companies, Azure can be more applicable as a conducive economical platform if you’re leveraging Microsoft for desktop operating systems, and collaboration tools.
My father, the Director of Global Infrastructure for a major company, uses Microsoft Azure every day at work. He explains that prior to using cloud services, his company would spend millions building data centers and servers. Now, they are using Azure as a cloud platform because of the pay-as-you-go model associated with the utilization of the cloud. Now the company spends less money building and maintaining the servers that they use. They can simply spend money strictly on the services they are using, and they no longer need to dedicate all of their budget and effort dealing with the older IT architecture model. The fiscal model of cloud services can be superior if implemented properly.
Although AWS and Microsoft Azure are extremely similar platforms, they can be leveraged differently, and accomplish separate tasks that a business might need to be done. Each platform has their own strengths and weaknesses. It should be noted that more often than not, large companies find themselves using the two services in tandem.
Bibliography
“AWS vs Azure-Who Is the Big Winner in the Cloud War?” DeZyre, Project Pro, 29 Aug. 2019, www.dezyre.com/article/aws-vs-azure-who-is-the-big-winner-in-the-cloud-war/401.
“Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Microsoft Azure.” Azure Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) | Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Azure, azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/what-is-azure/iaas/.
Beal, Vangie. “Cloud Service.” What Is Cloud Service? Webopedia Definition, Webopedia, www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/cloud_services.html.
Carey, Scott. “AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: What’s the Best Cloud Platform for Enterprise?” Computerworld, Computerworld, 23 Jan. 2020, www.computerworld.com/article/3429365/aws-vs-azure-vs-google-whats-the-best-cloud-platform-for-enterprise.html.
O’Donnell, Liam A. “Director of Global Infrastructure for a Major Company.” 28 Apr. 2020.