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Amazon AWS vs Microsoft Azure comparison

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Amazon AWS
Read 173 Amazon AWS reviews.
42,604 views|38,519 comparisons
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Microsoft Azure
Read 197 Microsoft Azure reviews.
54,070 views|46,408 comparisons
Q&A Highlights
Question: Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
Answer: We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful. We also like that it has security rules to control database read/write operations in real time. We feel the stability and performance of Google Firebase to be very good. We feel it would be advantageous for Google Firebase to have capabilities to work offline. If Google Firebase had faster migration and support for more languages it would be a more attractive solution. Amazon AWS has been great in helping us move clients easily and seamlessly to the cloud and offers a wide range of cloud services within the growing AWS ecosystem. It interacts very well with on-premise data centers. You can scale up to an unlimited number of processes very quickly. They offer a price forecasting and billing dashboard broken down by service, with budgets and alerts that have helped us recognize and shut down services we no longer needed (thereby reducing costs), which has been a very big win for us overall. You really have to watch your costs for processes and such if you go with AWS, as they can add up very quickly. Also, although AWS is available globally, not all service centers offer every service, so it causes some functionality issues in different markets. Microsoft Azure is extremely scalable with the capability to build an environment quickly. The automation and agility of Microsoft Azure is very valuable. It offers a great information protection feature - you can create custom labels for different documents and files. This keeps data more organized and secure. Support with Microsoft Azure depends on the plan you purchase; lower-tier plans get limited support. Microsoft Azure can be a very expensive solution overall and can be complex to set up and manage. Integration with other products needs to be better. Microsoft Azure seems to be a bit slow in catching up with what other solutions have to offer. Conclusion: All of these solutions are very good and offer many of the same features and perform similar functions and capabilities. Although Google Firebase tends to be a slightly cheaper and more flexible option, at the end of the day it boils down to which ecosystem you or your client are more heavily vested with as each of these solutions has attributes that make them more valuable and more efficient within their prescribed ecosystem.
Featured Review
Valeria Quintanilla
Researched Microsoft Azure but chose Amazon AWS: It's easy to configure and has high availability
PriteeshSinha
Researched Amazon AWS but chose Microsoft Azure: Optimized cloud solution with reliable recovery and fail services
Buyer's Guide
Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure
May 2022
Free Report: Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure
Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: May 2022.
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Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Scalability is one of the biggest benefits we have.""We are mostly using EC2 compute and other resources. Most of our managed services are in AWS, which some of our clients prefer.""The technical support is good.""We pretty much like everything and we are excited about the seamless capability the EC2 service is offering.""Easy to access and secure, two important features.""The most useful feature of Amazon AWS is it can be accessed from anywhere.""The services that we are using have frequent updates, at least twice a year. They provide a new version that has more capabilities or features that fit our process and procedures.""Amazon AWS has a better portfolio. They have an impressive technology and service portfolio."

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"There is the potential to scale.""I like the functionalities and the price. I'm very satisfied with Microsoft Azure.""The initial setup is straightforward.""We are using Microsoft Azure because our organization uses a lot of Microsoft solutions. We have used Microsoft technology for a long time and we have internal engineers with great capability that understand the technology. This is why Azure is the best for us.""There are many different components such as SaaS, PaaS, and API so every month they are releasing a few hundred new features.""It's a flexible solution.""The product has been very stable for us so far.""We've found the solution to be extremely flexible."

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Cons
"Some features may be better in Azure or some other portal. AWS could add some of those features.""We have had several issues with the products and services but as of now, there are no good alternatives.""AWS support could be better.""This solution could be improved by a better licensing model, especially for third-party software. Amazon AWS could also potentially be improved by more free storage, but I think that it's okay when compared to competitors' products.""I want to use AWS as a full solution for my website - for domain and website hosting, and everything in between - however, I was not able to find everything together.""The price could be better.""I would appreciate more direct support from AWS.""I would like to receive some alerts when my consumption is getting out of the normal range."

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"Auto ML could be improved technically.""They can add more documentation about the solution.""An issue I encountered was around the integration of Identity. I lost some important information and I would like to see improvements with this.""The security of the solution could always be much better.""I think better accelerators and better tools that can be used to migrate and leverage the existing models and data schemas are needed.""I haven't checked the console for some time, however, compared to the AWS console, the interaction console of the web part, the web services, it's not so easy.""There should be be better support for microservices and containers.""There should be more language options for the Azure Functions apps. It supports programming languages, but there are only a few options. It could have more programming languages."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "I find that Amazon AWS is expensive."
  • "The Oracle licensing is higher than it is with Amazon AWS."
  • "I think they've done a pretty good job with their pricing."
  • "Its price is kind of okay. When we do a migration from on-premises to the cloud, we typically use the lift-and-shift model. Based on the studies that we have done, cost savings are definitely there when we moved from on-premises to the cloud."
  • "The price could be lower."
  • "There are many variables involved in pricing service in AWS and overall the pricing is a bit on the higher side."
  • "AWS is not an expensive product."
  • "AWS is expensive and the cost should be reduced."

    • More Amazon AWS Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "Reducing the price would be of benefit to our customers."
  • "The pricing for us is higher because we are using IaaS."
  • "Pricing of Microsoft Azure services depends on the build of what you prepare to deploy."
  • "It is important to consider ROI when looking at the cost of a subscription."
  • "The cost is a little high and can be more competitive."
  • "Monthly billing convenience reduced cost overheads up to 70 percent."
  • "The pricing model is subscription-based and it's not an expensive solution."
  • "It is not cheap. Its price could be a little bit less."

    • More Microsoft Azure Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    How does OpenShift compare with Amazon AWS?
    Top Answer:Open Shift makes managing infrastructure easy because of self-healing and automatic scaling. There is also a wonderful dashboard mechanism to alert us in case the application is over-committing or is… more »
    How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS?
    Top Answer:How is SAP Cloud Platform different than Amazon AWS? Amazon AWS offers options both in terms of upgrading and expanding capabilities as well as acquiring greater storage space. These upgrades can… more »
    Looking to compare Google Firebase, Amazon AWS, and Microsoft Azure
    Top Answer:We like Google Firebase hosting and authentication and also the excellent cloud functionality. Our team found the flexibility of handling and dealing with the database through EDL to be very useful… more »
    Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
    Top Answer:IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity… more »
    Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
    Top Answer:One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with both… more »
    Read all 2 answers   →
    How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
    Top Answer:I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure… more »
    Ranking
    2nd
    out of 61 in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
    Views
    42,604
    Comparisons
    38,519
    Reviews
    167
    Average Words per Review
    426
    Rating
    8.4
    1st
    out of 61 in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
    Views
    54,070
    Comparisons
    46,408
    Reviews
    187
    Average Words per Review
    438
    Rating
    8.3
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Amazon Web Services, AWS
    Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
    Learn More
    Amazon
    Microsoft
    Overview

    Amazon Web Services (AWS), is a collection of cloud computing services, also called web services, that make up a cloud-computing platform offered by Amazon.com. These services operate from 12 geographical regions across the world. The most central and well-known of these services arguably include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as "EC2", and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as "S3". Amazon markets AWS as a service to provide large computing capacity more quickly and more cheaply than a client company building an actual physical server farm.

    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:

    1. Platform as a service (PaaS)
    2. Software as a service (SaaS)
    3. 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.



    Offer
    Learn more about Amazon AWS
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    Learn more about Microsoft Azure
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    Sample Customers
    Pinterest, General Electric, Pfizer, Netflix, and Nasdaq.
    BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company30%
    Financial Services Firm14%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company24%
    Comms Service Provider16%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company5%
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company25%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Comms Service Provider7%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company26%
    Comms Service Provider18%
    Financial Services Firm8%
    Manufacturing Company6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business46%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise37%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise70%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business40%
    Midsize Enterprise16%
    Large Enterprise44%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise69%
    Buyer's Guide
    Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure
    May 2022
    Free Report: Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure
    Find out what your peers are saying about Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: May 2022.
    DOWNLOAD NOW
    607,127 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Amazon AWS is ranked 2nd in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 173 reviews while Microsoft Azure is ranked 1st in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) with 197 reviews. Amazon AWS is rated 8.4, while Microsoft Azure is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon AWS writes "Flexible, scales well, and offers good stability". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Microsoft Azure writes "This helps us meet multiple requirements other PaaS solutions do not but there is a lot of room for improvement". Amazon AWS is most compared with OpenShift, SAP Cloud Platform, IBM Public Cloud, Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Oracle Cloud Platform, whereas Microsoft Azure is most compared with Oracle Cloud Platform, Google Firebase, Pivotal Cloud Foundry, SAP Cloud Platform and IBM Public Cloud. See our Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure report.

    See our list of best Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) vendors and best PaaS Clouds vendors.

    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.