Most businesses used to depend on bulky, on-premise IT infrastructure which is not only heavy on the pocket, but also difficult to manage and upgrade. Business models are going through a rapid shift, and so are the technologies empowering them. Cloud platforms and services have simplified the way businesses deploy technology and have made IT infrastructure less susceptible to failures and potential downtimes. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are two key players in the cloud segment, and have their own sets of distinct advantages. Continuing the discussion, the blog post discusses the technological and pricing aspects of both cloud platforms, to help you make the right selection for your business. Take a look.
Amazon Web Services versus Microsoft Azure –
#1 The Basic Model
Both AWS and Azure share a few common features such as self-servicing, instant provisioning, security, compliance, and identity management. Both cloud services providers constantly strive and invest to meet the demands of complex business requirements. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, for instance, provide extensive support for Hadoop Clusters through Elastic Map Reduce and HDInsight, respectively. Both platforms are capable of real time processing and also allow your IT department to quickly build virtual machines and deploy business-specific applications in no time. By leveraging the power of AWS and Azure, your business can tap the potential of cloud to build mobile apps and highly scalable computing environments to support its diverse needs.
Related read- 5 Reasons Why AWS is the Technology Businesses Need to Invest
#2 Storage and Databases
In Amazon Web hosting, there is a provision for short-term or temporary storage that is allocated whenever an instance is started, and gets destroyed with its termination. AWS provides block storage, which is identical to hard disks and can be attached to a particular instance or kept isolated. The storage includes diverse capabilities, such as Simple Storage (S3), Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Elastic File System (EFS), large volume data transfer service, and archiving services integrated with glacier to support on-premise or in-house infrastructure.
Microsoft Azure offers its core Azure storage service, blob block storage, along with Table, File, and Queue storage. While temporary and Page blobs are provided for VM based volumes, block blobs and files are meant for object storage. Microsoft Azure hosting also provides site recovery, import/export data transfer, and backup services. It also supports noSQL and relational databases and Big Data, just like Amazon Web Services.
#3 Networking and Compute
Both AWS and Azure offer cutting-edge mechanisms that are capable of taking your existing in-house data center model to a more fault-proof and redundant public or hybrid cloud. If you are looking for compute capabilities, AWS has a number of EC2 instances and services, such as Elastic Beanstalk, for application deployment on the cloud, Elastic Load Balancing, Lambda and Auto Scaling. It also offers diverse computing and networking services, allowing you to perform a lot of operations including provisioning virtual servers, setting up firewalls, and opportunities to scale up on the infrastructure level to meet growing customer demand.
Just like AWS, Microsoft Azure leverages a Virtual Network (VNET) to run your virtual machines and applications securely on the cloud and allows users to provide a private IP address range, define a network topology, and create subnets, network gateways and route tables. Azure combines the power of Platform-as-a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a service (Iaas), thereby giving you more flexibility and scalability in building and deploying apps on the cloud. Moreover, intra-Azure traffic traverses within the network, irrespective of the Azure source and destination and doesn’t flow over the internet, giving you both, more control on the deployed applications and enhanced security.
Related read – Microsoft Windows Azure Platform: A Brief Overview
#4 Pricing
Pricing is a big factor before you decide to move your business to the cloud. AWS charges customers on a per-hour basis, and the minimum usage is one hour. You can, therefore, opt for AWS from any of the three models:
- On demand – Pay as you use without any upfront costs.
- Reserved – Customers can reserve instances for a fixed period, say one to three years and need to pay an upfront cost depending on the utilisation.
- Spot – Bidding is required to use the extra capacity.
Microsoft Azure hosting, on the other hand, charges you based on the number of minutes used for on-demand. Generally, Microsoft Azure Hosting services are offered as prepaid or monthly subscription services. Both AWS and Azure, however, offer introductory tiers before charging customers.
The Bottom Line
Amazon Web Services has been in the cloud business since 2006, whereas Microsoft Azure is relatively new to the market. Both the vendors, however, have emerged as the backbone of cloud based operations and therefore, are the top contenders for when a business decides to migrate their applications to the cloud. While AWS has 5 availability zones within 13 geographic regions around the world, Azure supports 26 regions at the moment and plans to add more to the list. Whether your business selects Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure web hosting, i2k2 networks has got you covered. Leveraging over a decade of IT expertise, our consultants are ideally positioned to help you select the right cloud solution for your business and assist in a cost-effective and hassle free migration. To learn more, fill out our contact form or call us at +91-120-466 3031.