(Amazon web services) AWS vs azure

AWS and Azure are perhaps the largest and most popular cloud computing platforms in the world. In this AWS vs Azure comparison, let’s see how they differ.

In this AWS vs Azure article, we will explore all the differences between the two cloud computing giants and also learn which is better for career, what their pricing is, what the market share of the two platforms is, and discuss a few other related topics, including the following:

• What is AWS?
• What is Azure?
• AWS vs. Azure
• AWS vs Azure certification List?
• AWS vs. Azure- Pricing
• AWS vs Azure- Which Is Better for Career?
• AWS vs Azure: Market Share for 2021-2022
• AWS or Azure: Future Leader Of Market?

But first, let us understand the concept of What is AWS and What is Azure?

What Is AWS?

AWS services coordinate with each other and work together to offer a scalable and effective solution. All the services offered by AWS are broadly categorized under the platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and software as a service (SaaS).

Released in 2006, AWS has become the most popular and one of the best cloud computing platforms. This platform has various benefits, such as a reduction of management overhead and reduced costs.

What Is Azure?

Launched in 2010, Microsoft Azure is also considered one of the biggest cloud computing platforms for companies and large enterprises. Its integrated cloud services include storage, database, computing, analytical, networking, mobile application, and website development solutions that work together with your infrastructure for improved scalability.

AWS vs Azure- Why so much competition?

You may not realize it, but cloud computing platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure make your lives a lot easier on a daily basis. Even if you don’t use these services directly, these services touch our lives in various ways.

In fact, Netflix, the streaming giant that you use on a daily basis, uses Amazon Web Services for their cloud computing needs.

AWS and Azure are the biggest rivals in the industry, and in their battle, you can never tell which one is better unless you dig deeper and take a closer look. Although you may find that AWS has a more edge over Azure by looking at it from the surface, the final verdict is not that easy.

To decide which one is the best cloud service provider, you will need to factor in various aspects such as their pricing, their services, data availability, and the rate of data transfer loss.

So let’s begin and see who the real winner is in this detailed AWS vs. Azure comparison.

AWS by Amazon is a cloud computing platform that provides various computing services from storage to delivery to computations. Amazon’s suite of computing services is designed to help businesses, individuals, and governments to scale and grow their websites or applications. You can use these services to create and introduce various applications on the cloud platform.

On the other hand, Microsoft Azure Microsoft is another major cloud service that offers various solutions, including storage, compute, database, networking, and other aspects that help businesses scale and grow their platforms.

Microsoft Azure provides services broadly as platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) that is used to develop and deploy websites and applications on the cloud.

AWS vs Azure – Comparison

1. AWS vs Azure- Compute

The basic role of any computer is to calculate data, process it, and then compute. But if you have the best cloud computing service, it can scale to millions of processing nodes in just a short time.

Faster computing is the need of many organizations. They need lightning-fast graphics rendering and data analysis speeds. They can either choose to maximize their hardware or switch to the cloud. And that’s what public cloud platforms are there for.

The EC2 instances of AWS offer on-demand and flexible computing that can also be customized according to your needs. AWS also offers related services such as Autoscaling, Elastic Beanstalk, AWS Lambda, and the EC2 container service that makes your operations more efficient.

Azure’s computing, on the other hand, depends on the VMs and many other tools like the Resource Manager and Cloud Services that will deploy your mobile or web applications on the cloud.

AWS gives their customer a huge number of services, as compared to Azure. It offers about a hundred different services for databases, analytics, management tools, storage, security, and other solutions.

2. AWS vs Azure- Storage

The reason why companies turn to cloud services is because of their storage capabilities. If you are using cloud services for your data processing needs, you will need that data saved somewhere in the future. AWS has one of the best and most dependable storage services. But Azure’s storage services are also not less.

Both the platforms are pretty reliable in this aspect and come with all the basic features such as data encryption on the server side. The storage service offered by AWS is called Simple Storage Service (S3), whereas that offered by Microsoft Azure is called Blob storage.

AWS’s S3 has an automatic replication feature across all regions and offers high availability. It also offers block storage like hard disks and can be integrated with any instance of EC2 or left separately.

Azure has temporary storage and uses page blobs. Its Block Storage feature is very similar to AWS’s S3. Its storage is classified into two classes, Hot and Cool. The Cool storage is more inexpensive as compared to Hot storage, but it requires extra read and write costs.

3. AWS vs Azure- Databases

All websites and mobile applications need a database to store all their data in. And as you can expect, both Azure and AWS offer both relational and NoSQL database services. Azure’s SQL Server database and AWS’s Relational Database Service are both extremely reliable and come with automatic replication.

AWS works amazingly well with both relational databases and NoSQL to offer a mature cloud platform to handle big data.

Like AWS, Azure also supports NoSQL and relational databases, allowing big data storage through Azure Table and Azure HDInsight.

Amazon’s database supports 6 major database engines, including MySQL, Microsoft SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB, whereas Azure’s database only supports MS SQL Server. However, its interface and features make it more convenient to carry out different database operations.

4. AWS vs Azure- Pricing

When AWS vs Azure decides on which computing platform to choose, its pricing is perhaps one of the most important factors. Due to the fierce rivalry between all the major cloud computing platforms, there has been a downward trend in their pricing.

Both AWS and Azure have free pricing tiers for beginners with limited usage. So if you are a beginner, you can try both services out for free and decide which one works best for you. The two computing giants also offer credits to attract entrepreneurs and startups to their platforms.

AWS follows a pay-as-you-go structure and will charge you per hour. Azure has the same pricing model as AWS, but it charges per minute. If you have increased usage, you will end up saving more with AWS because you will pay less when you use more of its services.

You can either purchase AWS instances through their Reserved instances model that works for 1-3 years, their On-demand instances model where you pay as you use, and their Spot instances model where you will bid for additional capacity.

Azure provides short-term commitments where you can choose between their monthly or prepaid charges model. AWS is more flexible than Azure in terms of pricing. Find the detailed cost comparisons here.

5. AWS vs Azure: Better Pay scale (Salary)

With the data available as per the research over the US job postings, it’s evident that the people having skills on Microsoft Azure have an average salary of $100,000 approximately. It is also evident that AWS skills also provide an almost equivalent salary. The demand for jobs with these skill sets is increasing day by day.

6. AWS Vs Azure: More Jobs

It is very well known that AWS was launched way before Azure. So, the market share in jobs in AWS is much more than in Azure. The simple reason behind this, the clients have already started using AWS way before Azure was launched hence more job opportunities.

7. AWS Vs Azure: Difficulty Levels

The most important question that comes to every single person who is trying to or starting to learn cloud is this.

As per my personal experience as a cloud practitioner, AWS is the simplest because the documentation provided by AWS is fantastic, easy and understanding. We have plenty of training materials available for AWS as compared to any other cloud platform.

8. AWS vs Azure- Networking Services

Every cloud provider has dedicated networking services for its clients. Both AWS and Azure provide a lot have services in common of-course with different nomenclature, so lets a have a look at them:

AWS vs Azure- Which Is Better for Career?

If you search both the keywords (Azure and AWS) on LinkedIn, you will instantly see that the jobs for AWS are WAY more than those for Azure. AWS has significantly higher job opportunities than Azure.

But you should also consider the launch date of the two platforms because AWS came before Microsoft Azure, so more companies are dependent on AWS than they are on Azure.

AWS vs Azure: Market Share for 2021-2022

Having a market share of 31% AWS is leading in the market in the 2nd quarter of 2021 in the cloud business.

With a 22% market share, Microsoft Azure is running second in the cloud industry.

AWS or Azure: Future Leader Of Market?

This is a very difficult question to answer, the reason being both of them are doing really well in the market. Both have dedicated clients and some clients even go for both AWS and Azure.

AWS was launched earlier so it was the only choice at that point in time, they are constantly launching new products with time to gain more clients and they are doing awesome.

On the other hand, even though Azure was launched late still they have impressed the market and the clients with their good products and competitive pricing structure.

AWS vs azure certification List?

The list is pretty big so I have tried my best to cover as much as I can in the below table from beginner to pro-level certification for both.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) On AWS vs Azure

• What Is AWS Lambda
• AWS Vs Bluehost
• Hosting Websites On AWS For Free
• How Secure Is AWS And How Does It Work
• AWS Vs Google Cloud: Key Comparison
• Overview Of AWS Cloud Management Tools And Usages
• How To Delete AWS Account [Suspended | Partner | Training]
• Introduction To IAM AWS And How It Works
• Introduction To VMWare AWS Hybrid Cloud?

Conclusion

In this AWS vs Azure article, we outlined all the differences between the two cloud computing giants and also learned which is better for your career, what their pricing is, what the market share of the two platforms is, and discussed a few related topics including:

• AWS vs. Azure
• What is AWS?
• What is Azure?
• All the services offered by AWS- Which is better for a career (Quora)
• AWS vs. Azure- Pricing

We hope we have answered all your questions in this detailed comparison.

Keep Clouding!!

Steve

I am an Amazon Web Services Professional, having more than 11 years of experience in AWS and other technologies. Extensively working in various AWS tools like S3, Lambda, API, Kinesis, Load Balancers, EKS, ECS, and many more. Working as a Solution Architect and Technology Lead for Architecting and implementing the same for different clients. He provides expert solutions around the world and especially in countries like the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, etc. Check out the complete profile on About us.