MIS 3406 Project
Nicholas Harris
MIS 3406 Pro Points Assignment
I have chosen to look at and compare the differences between Amazon’s AWS platform and Microsoft’s Azure platform. While both are two of the leaders in the space of cloud platforms there are some features that set the two apart. Both of these platforms include a mix of IaaS, PaaS, and Saas. Both offer a long list of varying services to support cloud computing and storage needs for the user. Currently AWS remains the leader in public cloud services, with 33% of users choosing AWS, followed by Azure who accounts for 13% of users. Looking at differences one of the key ones I notice is pricing, AWS’s pricing system is much more adaptable user to user while Azure’s is not. Following this AWS has a reported easier to understand user interface in comparison to Azure, this is purely preference though. Besides from this the only difference are the names and ways that both systems complete various tasks. For example EC2 on AWS, something we used often in class, used to deploy instances has a direct counterpart known as virtual machines through the Azure platform that can complete the same tasks. As we look through more of AWS’s popular services we continue to see that Azure offers something nearly the same just with a different name. With so few differences between the two it is hard to really determine which is the best, the only answer I could give to this is that it would come down to user preference and time spent on both platforms.
This builds directly off of the material covered through the course since AWS was used throughout the entirety of the semester. After gaining a relatively strong understanding of AWS it is interesting to look at the features of one of their competitors. Without this course I would have no basis for comparison between the two, but after learning how AWS works I am able to look at some of the service on Azure and quickly understand there use and purpose. This doesn’t end with Azure though, there are many other competitors in the field all with their own platform looking to accomplish the same goal. While AWS and Azure don’t work with one another they are very closely related, that being through how they are direct competitors. Both are looking to gain as many users as possible by strengthen their system. Both are aiming to appeal to the casual user, but also to major companies who will run their businesses through the platform. For example 95% of Fortune 500 companies use Azure is some way. This shows a massive amount of trust they have in the platform, they are storing sensitive data within Azure and have to trust that their platform is secure enough. These tools are and can be applied in many different ways. In class we used AWS to deploy instances, store data within these instances, deploy lambda functions, and many other ways. Azure can be used to complete all of these tasks as well. As mentioned prior though while there are capabilities to using these platforms this way they are also hoping for certain users to do the same but on a much larger scale
Sources:
https://www.techtarget.com/searchaws/definition/Amazon-Web-Services
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/cloud-computing-dictionary/what-is-azure/