AWS vs Azure: Where to Invest in the Cloud War

As more companies migrate their on-premises workloads to the cloud, all major cloud managers are doing business fast to keep customers happy wherever they are. In the long run, this saves businesses money, and the cloud wars provide multiple solutions for customers.

Amazon Web Services

The full form of AWS is Amazon Web Services. AWS is a wonderful and simple cloud platform tool provided by Amazon. This platform supports Infrastructure as a Service IaaS, Platform as a Service PaaS and Software as a Service SaaS.

Azure

Microsoft Azure is a public cloud computing platform with solutions such as Infrastructure as a Service IaaS, Platform as a Service PaaS, and Software as a Service SaaS that may be used for services including analytics, virtual computing, storage, networking, and much more.

Cloud War

Cloud war is a term coined for the market battle among Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM to govern the general public cloud.

Cloud

Cloud refers to servers accessible over the Internet and the software and databases that run on those servers. Cloud servers are mostly found in data centers or physical locations around the world.

AWS use cases

AWS_logo_RGB

Some of the companies that use AWS are Netflix, NASA, and Facebook.

Use cases of AWS

Some of the companies that use Azure are Walgreens, Alaska Airlines, and Vodafone.

Market share and revenue

AWS has become one of the most popular cloud service providers in the world with revenues exceeding $59 billion. Currently, the global cloud market share of Amazon AWS product is 33%, while that of Microsoft Azure product is 21%. In terms of market share and revenue, AWS seems to be the leader.

Storage

In AWS, temporary storage starts functioning whenever an instance starts and it stops when an instance gets terminated. It supports block storage which is similar to hard drives. On the other hand, Azure makes use of page blobs and temporary storage for VM-based volumes. Its block storage is similar to S3 on AWS.

Pricing model

Both Azure and AWS provide pay as you go pricing model. Comparing the two cloud providers, Azure is expensive

Hybrid cloud market

Hybrid-Cloud

Azure excels in the hybrid cloud market compared to the AWS product infrastructure.

Latency

This is the delay between the request from the client and the response from the cloud service provider.

Cockroach Labs 2021 Cloud Report compared the network latency of Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud Provider. Their research confirmed that AWS performed with the lowest network latency ever, followed closely by Azure and finally Google Cloud Provider.

Data centers

Amazon owns the largest data centers in the world. They are found in nine regions of the world, three in the United States and six strategically dispersed around the world.

Virtual network

Both platforms allow the user to manage the virtual network environment, including IP address ranges, subnets, access control rules, and routing. In general, virtual networks are virtual versions of physical networks, of data center network.

Services

When it comes to the number of services, AWS is the winner.

Azure allows in integration with open-source and on-premise systems, such as MS tools, that are mostly used in companies.

Conclusion

However, this research has taught us that this solution can change based on every enterprise’s unique requirement. So, while AWS may seem better overall, your research on your business may lead you to determine Azure as a great choice for you. So, on this cloud battle, there’s no clean winner or loser yet. It’s an unpredictable game of chance, and anytime a wild card can flip the boat upside down.