Difference between Microsoft Azure & Amazon Web Series | Cloud Computing

Adi Sharma
7 min readNov 19, 2020

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Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the distribution over the Cloud of computer services, including servers, storage, databases, networking, applications, analytics and knowledge, to enable quicker creativity, scalable infrastructure and economies of scale. You usually pay only for cloud services you use, helping lower your running costs, operate your infrastructure more effectively and scale as your business needs shift.

A broad range of options are now provided by cloud computing platforms, from the fundamentals of storage, networking, and processing capacity to natural language processing and artificial intelligence and traditional office applications. The cloud will now provide virtually any service that doesn’t need you to be physically close to the computing hardware you are using. With cloud computing, we have now varied options spread across the three layers of the cloud computing stack: software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

Infrastructure as a Service

Cloud networking systems are made up of highly flexible and automated computing capabilities, known as Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). For accessing and controlling machines, networking, storage, and other resources, IaaS is completely self-service. IaaS helps organisations to purchase on-demand and as-needed services instead of having to buy hardware directly.

Microsoft Azure Iaas implementation provides pay-as-you-go services which allows organization to only pay for what they want, which helps in avoiding the expenses and scale up and down with demand. Each resource and service is offered as a separate offering in the Platform, and the system automatically assigns you the resources that you need.

Platform as a Service

Cloud platform services, also called Platform as a Service (PaaS), offer such apps with cloud elements while being used mostly for applications. PaaS provides developers with a foundation they can draw upon and use to construct personalised apps. The enterprise or a third-party vendor can handle all servers, storage and networking, while developers may retain programme maintenance.

Azure PaaS implementation provides a full server, storage , networking, and middleware development infrastructure, such as business intelligence ( BI) services, database management systems, etc. In PaaS, a complete platform is provided where the client can host their applications without having to worry about managing the servers and their operating systems.

Software as a Service

The most widely used alternative for organisations in the cloud industry is Software as a Service, also known as cloud application services. SaaS uses the internet to distribute to its customers software that are operated by a third-party provider. Most SaaS applications run directly from your web browser, ensuring they do not need any client-side downloads or installations.

Azure Software as a service implementation (SaaS) allows businesses to connect to, and use over the Internet, cloud-based applications. Outlook emails, calendars and office applications (such as Microsoft Office 365) are some common cloud-based services. Microsoft Azure SaaS services give you access to full software solutions that are purchased from a Microsoft partner as user licences on a pay-as-you-go subscription. You subscribe to your team’s software, and your users connect to the software over the Internet, normally via a web browser. In the Azure cloud’s data centres, all the underlying app softwares, app data, middleware and infrastructure are located.

Cloud Service Provider

A third-party corporation providing a cloud-based platform, infrastructure, server or computing facilities is a cloud service provider. Businesses usually tend to pay only for the amount of cloud services they need as business specifications require, just like a homeowner would pay for a utility such as power or gas.

Besides the pay-per-use model, cloud service providers often deliver a wide variety of advantages to enterprises. Businesses will take advantage of scalability and availability by not being restricted to on-site server physical limitations, multiple data centre redundancy with multiple redundancies, versatility by configuring servers to the specifications, and responsive load balancing that will quickly adapt to evolving requirements. While organisations should also assess security implications in storing data in the cloud and ensure that business configurations and policies for access and enforcement management are implemented and fulfilled.

Amazon Web Series and Microsoft are the top cloud service providers worldwide.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft has created a core public cloud computing platform for building, deploying and managing applications and its services anytime, anywhere with solutions.

Azure provides Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for organisations to entrust Microsoft with all of their computing and network needs and Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS) that lets its users add cloud capabilities to their existing network that can be used for services such as analytics, virtual computing, storage, networking, and much more.

Microsoft Azure implementation provides next generation cloud platform for organisations Infrastructural, Analytical, AI app and BI app needs. It is a fast and a flexible platform with cost-effective solutions and capabilities, making it the best public cloud offering on the market.

Amazon Web Series

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Amazon’s robust, evolving cloud computing network, which provides a combination of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and offers of bundled software as a service (SaaS). AWS services may include resources for an enterprise, such as computing power, management of databases and distribution services for information.

In 2006, AWS released the internal system developed by Amazon.com to manage its online shopping operations. AWS was one of the first organisations to launch a cloud computing pay-as-you-go platform that scales to deliver processing, capacity or throughput to users as desired.

Azure vs AWS

Computing Power

In order to build a VM, Azure users have selected a Virtual Hard Disk (VHD). Microsoft, the consumer, or a different third party may pre-configure this. For scalability purposes, it relies on virtual scale sets.

AWS uses elastic cloud computing (EC2), which is when cloud computing can increase or decrease the available resource footprint on demand, with a local cluster providing all jobs with only part of the resource pool available.

Storage

Azure provides temporary D drive storage, block storage for VMs via Page Blobs. Block Blobs and Files also act as storage for objects. Supports relational databases by Azure Table and HDInsight: NoSQL and Big Data. For additional archive and restore options, Azure also provides site recovery, Upload Export and Azure Backup.

AWS provides Specific instances are linked to storing-temporary storage is assigned once per instance and destroyed when an instance has been ended. It is also possible to attach block storage to a hard disc-like instance. They often have block storage, which can be separate or connected to an instance (same as hard drives). With S3, object storage is provided; and with Glacier, data archiving services. Relational and NoSQL databases and Big Data are completely supported.

Network

Azure uses a virtual network that enables users to build isolated networks and subnetworks, private IP fields, tables and network gateways.

AWS uses a private virtual cloud (VPC) to create isolated private cloud networks. It uses cross-location API gateways from there. It uses elastic load balance during networking to ensure smooth operation.

Integration

Azure provides windows programming tools such as VBS, SQL database, Active Directory with native integration. Use the same AD accounts you already need to sign in to Office 365 or Azure SQL examples, for example. Azure is fantastic for the developers of .net, too. Microsoft has not always adopted the paradigm when it comes to open source, however Azure is catching up with companies who can now run Azure’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Apache Hadoop clusters.

Amazon has had a stronger partnership with the open source community, and there are more open source integrations, like Jenkins and GitHub, available on this website. It’s friendlier to Linux servers as well.

Pricing

Both Azure and AWS Pricing models offer pay as you go structure. AWS charges you on hourly basis whereas Azure charges you on per minute basis. When it comes to short term subscription plans, Azure gives you a lot more flexibility. In case of certain services, Azure tends to be costlier than AWS when the architecture starts scaling up.

Hybrid Cloud Capabilities

With Azure, hybrid clouds are smoother, partially because the need for hybrid clouds was foreseen by Microsoft early on. Azure provides extensive hybrid cloud support where you can run your software on the Azure Stack using the on-site servers. Where required, you can also customise your computational resources to tap cloud-based resources. This makes it seamless to move to the cloud. Apart from that you can maintain and control hybrid clouds such as Azure Stack, Hybrid SQL Server, and Azure StorSimple by using many Azure offerings. When it comes to the hybrid cloud, the long experience of Microsoft operating on enterprise IT gives them an upper hand.

Amazon recognises that it wants to improve its services to support hybrid clouds, it is also catching up, with further acquisitions earmarked for hybrid clouds. Nevertheless the retail giant actually has a handful of options for enterprises who want hybrid cloud installations, such as Storage Gateway, Direct Link, and DynamoDB Local.

Conclusion

As shown above, both cloud systems display strong strengths and it is impossible to select a specific choice. Azure is perfect when it comes to Hybrid Cloud and product stack convergence with Microsoft, while AWS provides more simplicity and added functionality. It boils down so much to the needs you or the institution has. Hence, you n eed to choose carefully.

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