Amazon Web Services vs. Microsoft Azure

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon Web Services
Score 8.6 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing services. With over 165 services offered, AWS services can provide users with a comprehensive suite of infrastructure and computing building blocks and tools.
$0
per month
Microsoft Azure
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.
$29
per month
Pricing
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Editions & Modules
Free Tier
$0
per month
Basic Environment
$100 - $200
per month
Intermediate Environment
$250 - $600
per month
Advanced Environment
$600-$2500
per month
Developer
$29
per month
Standard
$100
per month
Professional Direct
$1000
per month
Basic
Free
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsAWS allows a “save when you commit” option that offers lower prices when you sign up for a 1- or 3- year term that includes an AWS service or category of services.The free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Features
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Product A and Product B
Amazon Web Services
8.2
Ratings
2% above category average
Microsoft Azure
8.5
Ratings
6% above category average
Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime9.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Dynamic scaling9.00 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Elastic load balancing9.70 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Pre-configured templates7.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Monitoring tools7.00 Ratings8.40 Ratings
Pre-defined machine images6.30 Ratings8.00 Ratings
Operating system support8.00 Ratings8.90 Ratings
Security controls8.30 Ratings9.00 Ratings
Automation8.70 Ratings8.00 Ratings
User Ratings
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(0 ratings)
8.9
(0 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
9.4
(0 ratings)
10.0
(0 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(0 ratings)
9.5
(0 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(0 ratings)
6.8
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
7.2
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
Online Training
7.0
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
10.0
(0 ratings)
8.0
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Web ServicesMicrosoft Azure
Likelihood to Recommend
We are using RDS for the database services. With RDS, we don't have to manage much, as most of the DBA tasks are automated. For development purposes, we are using Kubernetes pods, which makes it easy to deploy applications and scale up as needed. AWS integration with in-house applications is seamless, making it easy to keep a data-sensitive application on-premises while still utilizing AWS services.
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Actually, migrating to Microsoft Azure is a good solution for almost any situation, especially when all components of your network are ready to become cloud-based. The only drawback I personally encounter frequently is that older software packages cannot always be easily picked up and moved to Microsoft Azure in an optimal manner.
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Pros
  • Starting an instance and accessing it for testing purpose, demo or production deployment its always easy.
  • All the things which are available over AWS are pretty well managed and easy to use.
  • You might find everything you required for an product and other development over AWS.
  • Its suitable for both either an enterprise or an startup
  • Various resources and documentation are available in case you struck somewhere.
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  • Azure simply provides end to end life cycle. Starting from the development to automated deployment, you will find [a] bunch of options. Custom hook-points allow [integration] on-premise resources as well.
  • Excellent documentation around all the services make it really easy for any novice. Overall support by [the] community and Azure Technical team is exceptional.
  • BOT Services, Computer Vision services, ML frameworks provide excellent results as compare to similar services provided by other giants in the same space.
  • Azure data services provide excellent support to ingest data from different sources, ETL, and consumption of data for BI purpose.
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Cons
  • The AWS Management Console can be overwhelming. so a better dashboard and organizing it would improve usability.
  • The pricing models are complex. We need a more clear price calculators and cost management tools to manage our expenses better.
  • Enhancements in cross service compatibility and easier third party integrations could streamline workflow.
  • Simplifying model training in SageMaker and improving IAM for granular access control would make AWS more user friendly
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  • In our experience, Azure Kubernetes Survice was difficult to set up, which is why we used Kubernetes on top of VMs.
  • Azure REST API is a bit difficult to use, which made it difficult for us to automate our interactions with Azure.
  • Azure's Web UI does a good job of showing metrics on individual VMs, but it would be great if there was a way to show certain metrics from multiple VMs on one dashboard. For example, hard drive usage on our database VMs.
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Likelihood to Renew
I would gladly rely on AWS for any large-scale application deployment. For prototyping and small-scale applications, a more heavily managed environment on top of the 'bare metal' virtual infrastructure, such as Heroku or Elastic Bean Stalk, is probably a more productive approach in most cases
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We have been very satisfied with Windows Azure and now a lot of our business depends on it as more teams are now deploying their applications into Azure. Our next step is to have our Infrastructure team move their resources to Azure. It will take awhile for that to happen but we are positive that it will.
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Usability
Amazon Web Services is a great tool when it comes to middle size organizations like us. It provides multiple tools and functionalities in low costs. The best feature we have to pay as we go. No financial burden on company for the unused instances. It also comes with greater level of security such as two level authorization such as multi factor authorization.
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Microsoft Azure's overall usability has been better than expected. Often times vendors promise the world, only to leave you with a run-down town. Not the case with our experience. From an implementation perspective, all went perfect, and from the user-facing experience we have had no technical issues, just some learning curve issues that are more about "why" than "how"
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Reliability and Availability
Availability is very good, with the exception of occasional spectacular outages.
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It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
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Performance
AWS does not provide the raw performance that you can get by building your own custom infrastructure. However, it is often the case that the benefits of specialized, high-performance hardware do not necessarily outweigh the significant extra cost and risk. Performance as perceived by the user is very different from raw throughput.
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No answers on this topic
Support Rating
The customer support of Amazon Web Services are quick in their responses. I appreciate its entire team, which works amazingly, and provides professional support. AWS is a great tool, indeed, to provide customers a suitable way to
immediately search for their compatible software's and also to guide them in a
good direction. Moreover, this product is a good suggestion for every type of
company because of its affordability and ease of use.
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Support is easy with all the knowledge base articles available for free on the web. Plus, if you have a preferred status you can leverage their concierge support to get rapid response. Sometimes they’ll bounce you around a lot to get you to the right person, but they are quite responsive (especially when you are paying for the service). Many of the older Microsoft skills are also transferable from old-school on-prem to Azure-based virtual interfaces.
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Implementation Rating
The API's were very well documented and was Janova's main point of entry into the services.
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As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
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Alternatives Considered
In my personal experience, AWS is superior to both GCP and Azure in the majority of usable applications. GCP suffers from the near total misunderstanding of how support system is even supposed to work, and while _some_ services are pretty nifty and well-polished, some are mindbogglingly designed black boxes with self-conflicting documentation. Some of it comes from having legacy systems, sure, but AWS somehow manages, even having a rather big lead start. Azure, from my limited experience, is limited to people somehow coerced into its usage by external constraints. That being said, IF you can design and implement something there, it will probably run fine.
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I feel that Microsoft Azure typically outperforms Google Cloud Platform in hybrid cloud capabilities, integration aspects, and, primarily, security compliance features. Azure offered superior integration with Microsoft's enterprise software ecosystem, and it's second to none in my opinion. This made it the natural choice for most, especially if heavily invested in Windows, Office 365, or Active Directory deployments. We chose Azure over GCP because we simply needed Windows workload support as a strong driver, more access to global regions, and let's not forget that most tech teams in an organization are Microsoft Certified, which makes skillset transfer from on-prem to cloud a minimal learning curve over shifting to a different provider.
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Return on Investment
  • Provisioning resources like large database instances is really quick. We can easily scale our instances up or down as per need.
  • Storing files in S3 instead of onprem NAS drives is much more economical, especially for the files stored in glacier deep archive for compliance purposes.
  • Backup snapshots of EBS volumes and RDS instances may increase the cost of cloud if not cleaned up properly.
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  • Times and growth went into it. By balancing on-premises maintenance with continuous cloud improvements, we’ve budgeted and planned endlessly increased capacity.
  • In today’s world of cyber-crime, clients can put even more faith in what they’ve heard. We built an innovative single-sign-on hub for all users. Also, other business platforms use Azure application gateways, reducing worker switching time and increasing productivity.
  • Its step can automate to improve the investment. In addition, we can integrate our organization’s credentials into an authorization for other systems.
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ScreenShots