Microsoft Azure and Amazon AWS compete in the cloud services category, both offering robust functionalities and tailored solutions to enterprises. AWS seems to have an edge in IaaS capabilities and reliability, while Azure shines in integration with Microsoft products and PaaS offerings.
Features: Azure is well-regarded for its seamless integration with Microsoft applications, making it ideal for enterprises using Microsoft software. It provides a flexible environment supporting multiple platforms and languages. Azure excels in PaaS services, offering a wide range of tools for developers. AWS's strengths lie in its ability to offer scalable and reliable IaaS solutions. It supports a vast ecosystem ideal for various workloads and provides rich data analytics tools. AWS also boasts robust security protocols and flexible service selection to suit diverse business needs.
Room for Improvement: Azure's pricing model can be complex, causing user frustration in cost management. Its support and customization options sometimes fall short, and there are feature limitations such as R integration issues. AWS, despite its benefits, faces criticism for its high costs during peak usage times and a complex pricing structure. Users often struggle with its intricate documentation that lacks clarity and intuitiveness.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: AWS offers straightforward deployment but can overwhelm new users with its complexity. Customer service is efficient yet sometimes lacks immediacy during emergencies. Azure’s deployment benefits from its integration with Microsoft but can be perceived as complex due to the myriad options available. Azure's customer service quality is inconsistent, and users often depend on support tier purchased to get timely assistance.
Pricing and ROI: Azure's pay-as-you-go model is flexible, offering good ROI through cost savings on infrastructure. However, it requires careful cost management to avoid surprises. AWS offers competitive pricing and transparency upfront. Yet, its operational costs can climb over long use periods, which is a concern for businesses. Both platforms offer dynamic pricing models promising cost-effectiveness if managed efficiently.
The value for money is good, and Microsoft Azure has positively impacted our operational costs.
When we use Microsoft Azure, it provides enhanced security from our perspective, though I am not certain about the financial return on investment or benefits for our users as I do not have that information.
Reaching out to them and talking is different from receiving a complete solution to your problem.
Amazon AWS has good technical engineers available, making their customer service reliable.
Regarding technical support from Microsoft, I find they are responsive and helpful, depending on which support package you're on.
I rate technical support as excellent because we have not experienced many problems when calling for assistance.
The support from Microsoft Azure is good.
The scalability of Amazon AWS is excellent.
Amazon AWS provides strong scalability features, but the scaling process could be made more straightforward.
The scalability of Microsoft Azure is excellent for growth and adaptation, depending on company requirements.
Microsoft Azure is not just one product; it is a platform with multiple products within Microsoft Azure, and I would say it is scalable and would rate it a nine.
Scalability with Microsoft Azure is amazing, which is a primary reason for using cloud solutions.
Microsoft Azure is quite stable, but recent outages and security issues have slightly decreased my confidence.
Amazon AWS could improve its user interface to make it more user-friendly, especially for people who are not highly technical.
When using scripts for APIs to fetch data, they don't match the data exactly with the request.
There is still room for improvement in terms of pricing.
The administrative side is suitable for technical people, but our finance and HR super users find it less user-friendly, as they prefer drag-and-drop features to build their own solutions without contacting IT.
Recent outages and security issues are also a concern, causing a decrease in confidence, especially when partnering with third-party companies.
After three to four years, if you are not managing it correctly, you will be paying more than an on-premise solution, which applies to all cloud providers, so you must regularly maintain and manage for efficiency.
Currently, Amazon AWS is known to be on the higher price range because popular and in-demand services often come at a premium.
Microsoft solutions might be cheaper than some services like AWS, but some solutions may be more expensive depending on the services compared.
Copilot is expensive based on recent pricing for our POC.
Regarding the pricing for Microsoft Azure services, I would rate our satisfaction as very good.
One aspect I appreciate in Amazon AWS is their support team, which is excellent.
Their infrastructure is robust, allowing for increased capacity as user volume grows.
Power BI, another feature of Azure, is extremely elegant and has robust features that support forecasting using R and Python.
Microsoft Azure's scalability feature obviously supports business growth by scaling with the growth of the business, which is great, and it also scales with your requirements and aligns with your data strategies.
The scalability of Microsoft Azure is very good for growing and adapting to company requirements.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is an adopted cloud platform that offers more than 200 fully featured services from data centers located across the globe. This is a scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that is utilized by thousands of businesses of different sizes around the world. The product offers a wide variety of solutions for its customers, which allows them to launch applications regardless of their industry.
The most common use cases for AWS are:
Amazon AWS supports a global cloud infrastructure with AWS Region and Availability Zone models, which contribute to the high availability of enterprise applications running on the solution. Amazon AWS has an extensive array of products that serve different purposes, including:
The products and services that Amazon AWS delivers to these sectors provide a large computing capacity which is quicker and cheaper compared to building a physical server farm. Among the most popular services are Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as "EC2," and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as "S3."
Amazon AWS Features
The wide array of products that Amazon AWS offers consist of different functions that utilize cloud computing across different sectors. The features of this solution can be categorized in the following ways:
Amazon AWS Benefits
This product delivers various benefits across all industries that utilize its services. The greatest advantages of using Amazon AWS include:
Reviews from Real Users
Greg G., a chief executive officer at a tech services company, ranks Amazon AWS highly, as he states that the solution is flexible, scales well, and offers good stability.
A technology manager technology at a computer software company values Amazon AWS because it is extremely cost-efficient, easy to upgrade and expand storage with greatly improved interfaces.
Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform, where developers can create, deploy, and maintain their apps. This cloud application platform allows developers to concentrate on the actual applications, while it takes care of all the elements behind the apps.
Windows Azure works across multiple frameworks and languages. It is fully scalable, localized in that it is hosted globally in many datacenters, and has widespread capabilities with elements of application development, deployment, and management.
Azure is comprised of several different service modules, including Infrastructure; Web; Mobile; Dev & Test; Big Data; Media;Storage, Backup & Recovery; and Identity & Access Management.
Microsoft Azure works as a:
Platform as a service (PaaS)
Software as a service (SaaS)
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Microsoft Azure is available:
On-premises
Hybrid
Multi-cloud
At the edge
Compared to its competitors, Microsoft Azure:
Has more affordable features
Has easier migration for organizations already using other Microsoft tools
Has several educational resources available
Provides robust support
Is ideal for small and large businesses
Microsoft Azure Features:
Scalability
Stability
Flexibility
Azure Site Recovery
Active Directory
Monitoring features
Cloud-based
Automated tasks
Change capability cadence
Showback capabilities
Information protection
Azure Data Lake
Excellent portal
Intuitive user interface
Remote desktop
Fast provisioning
Data security
Data resiliency
Speed of service
Integrated delivery pipeline
Disaster recovery
Robust templates
Flexible coding languages
Virtual systems testing
Benefits of Microsoft Azure:
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Because Microsoft Azure is an IaaS, organizations can deploy as well as manage applications easily and quickly. Azure also provides you with the ability to customize the cloud software to meet your specific business needs.
Seamless integration: Microsoft Azure is built to seamlessly integrate with existing IT departments via hybrid databases, secure private connections, and storage solutions.
Cost-effective: Because Azure can harmoniously exist in your business environment with your data center, it is a very cost-effective solution.
Analytics support: Azure is designed with built-in support that is used to analyze data and provide key insights. Azure offers Cortana Analytics, Stream Analytics, Machine Learning, and SQL services.
Unique storage system: Compared to other cloud services, Microsoft Azure has more data centers and delivery points, which helps create an optimal user experience and also helps deliver content faster. In addition, Microsoft Azure makes it possible for organizations to exchange content across several virtual machines.
Enhanced flexibility: Azure provides extreme flexibility by allowing you to choose any level of functionality you require. It also supports many of the same technologies IT teams and developers usually depend on, making it easier for them to manage.
Easy implementation: Microsoft Azure is easy and quick to deploy. If necessary, you can change web apps to Azure with almost zero downtime.
Reviews from Real Users:
"It is a flexible solution that is straightforward to use," says the principal consultant at a computer software company.
OmarJ., future datacenter consultant: Microsoft Azure Cloud at a tech company, adds that "The user interface is very nice and makes everything easy to use."
“You can build an environment in minutes. It's very good in terms of being an infrastructure as a service, and I found that really fascinating,” says an information technology consultant at a computer software company.
"I think Azure's level of automation to achieve efficiency or agility is valuable. I also like the change capability cadence, the showback capabilities, and understanding what our costs are," says an enterprise architect at an energy/utilities company.
Marco C., Ing. at Wolters Kluwer, says "The valuable features of Microsoft Azure are that it is cloud-based and has good storage. The storage is completely managed by Azure. We do not need to do any patching of security because it is handled by Azure which is a benefit. The solution is fully compatible with the Microsoft technology stack and is very scalable."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is it has everything together in one place. It is one large tool with lots of small tools that are updated often," says the owner of a media company.
We monitor all Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.
