Research
What is the Difference Between AWS and Azure?
Amazon Web Service and Microsoft Azure are two big public cloud vendors. Through my research, I read about the comparison of IT capabilities of Azure and AWS services. In my Enterprise IT Architecture Class, I used Amazon Web Services to build a cloud application deployment infrastructure. I launched an application using node.j and used instance-based and application-based methods to deploy an API.
AWS’s strengths lie in the depth of its services, providing more than 175. AWS leads in translating its scale into economic benefits for customers. Machine learning has been a big race in the cloud computing area as well. AWS launched SageMaker in 2017 which brings together a hosted environment for Jupyter notebooks with built-in model management. SageMaker makes machine learning simpler by using an automated spin up of training environments using EC2 instances and HTTPS endpoints for hosting capabilities with Amazon S3. Image recognition (AWS Rekognition), text to speech deep learning models (Polly), and the engine that powers Alexa (Lex) are all a broad set of off the shelf machine learning services. Next, for computer AWS offers EC2 instances. EC2 instances can be made with a large number of options. Ec2 instances also provide related services like Elastic Beanstalk for app deployment, the EC2 Container service, ECS for Kubernetes, AWS Lambda, and Autoscaling. In my Enterprise IT architecture class, I worked with the EC2 instances and autoscaling for my project. AWS supports relational databases with Amazon Relational Database Service. The storage in AWS includes Simple Storage (S3), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Elastic File System (EFS), Import/Export large volume data transfer service, Glacier archive backup and Storage Gateway. AWS began hybrid deployments in 2018 with the launch of Outposts. AWS pricing is similar to other clouds as well.
Microsoft is a strong number two to AWS and is often seen as a safe global option. Microsoft does well with executives that know they can consume a lot of enterprises all in one place. Since most clients have more than one vendor they will get AWS and Azure. Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning allows clients to write, test, and deploy algorithms. The developer can also access a marketplace for off-the-shelf APIs as well. Microsoft Azure’s compute is focused around Virtual Machines, with other tools like Cloud Services and Resource Manager to help deploy applications on the cloud, and its Azure Autoscaling service. Azure supports relational databases and uses an Azure SQL Database. Microsoft Azure storage includes its main Azure Storage service, Azure Blob block storage, as well as Table, Queue, and File storage. Azure also offers Site Recovery, Import Export and Azure Backup. Microsoft has been the leader for hybrid deployments with Azure Stack. Azure Stack provides customers with the tools to deploy Azure public cloud services from a local data centre.
AWS and Azure are very similar platforms. AWS and Azure both offer many capabilities with global coverage. Some organizations even choose to use both platforms for more choice and flexibility. Using both AWS and Azure will also decrease risk and dependency with a multi-cloud method.
Bibliography
“AWS vs AZURE: 6 Most Amazing Differences You Should Know.” EDUCBA, 23 Apr. 2020, www.educba.com/aws-vs-azure/.
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.