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AWS Identity and Access Management vs Azure Resource Manager comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Identity and Access Man...
Average Rating
9.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
Identity Management (IM) (6th)
Azure Resource Manager
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.2
Number of Reviews
8
Ranking in other categories
Cloud Resource Access Management (1st)
 

Featured Reviews

SumitMundik - PeerSpot reviewer
IAM improves cloud security management with hybrid network capabilities and global role access
In AWS Identity and Access Management solutions, CloudFormation tools are used to create templates. Having predefined templates available from the AWS team would be beneficial. Currently, security teams work on policies and scripts for creating generic AWS Identity and Access Management roles. If AWS could provide an option to automatically create templates based on desired access requirements, it would be extremely beneficial, especially for documentation and troubleshooting purposes. Storage gateway creation has limitations, allowing maximum of 50 SMB file shares per gateway. While it is costly to access S3 buckets via AWS Identity and Access Management role through storage gateway, companies invest in this for enhanced data security, particularly in financial sectors where data integrity is crucial. There is an ongoing issue where files are sometimes sent twice to S3 buckets, despite MoveIt logs showing single transmission. As a workaround, Lambda functions are implemented with a five-minute delay before processing files to downstream applications.
BhanuChidigam - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good documentation and reliability
The most valuable feature of the solution is Azure Blueprints. With Azure Blueprints, you can define a template. The tool helps where you can define or where you can incorporate your policies and identities along with resource groups. You can also provide options to accept the inputs. There are a few things that the tool should allow you to customize according to your needs. I may want to use Bob as an administrator, while someone else wants to use Alice as an administrator. Prompting that user input while executing that template is what I mean when I say input. I found the tool's look helpful in minimizing your rescan compliance.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Constructing permissions is easy and very robust; you have a lot of flexibility with IAM permissions, how you can define them, using wildcards, and you can have explicit deny, explicit allow, and different conditions that certain conditions have to be met that this IAM policy will be executed or respected."
"The most beneficial aspect of AWS Identity and Access Management is the ability to manage security."
"Identity and Access Management allows organizing policy users into groups and defining policies and roles."
"AWS Identity and Access Management allows for creating, modifying, and deleting users or integrating with directories."
"From my experience, AWS Identity and Access Management is a strong solution."
"A significant advantage is that unlike access keys and secret keys that require regular changes every 30-90 days based on organizational policy, AWS Identity and Access Management roles, once set up, do not require periodic changes."
"AWS IAM is beneficial as it provides standard access and identity management policies and roles for monitoring and logging."
"The ease of control and the ability to manage group policies and individual policies are valuable features."
"The Azure Resource Manager is complete, where we can manage all the resources."
"ARM templates make parameterizing and using variables in your DevOps pipeline easy."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy, as the documentation and information were very good."
"The most valuable feature is the vast resources available online."
"On the management side, Azure Resource Manager helps with things like team management. It also helps on the expert side. It helps us manage projects and services centrally, and it's very useful."
"It's user friendly and it's easy to manage reserve incentives ."
"The features for managing the subscriptions and assigning a group of resources to a project team are the most valuable."
"Azure Resource Manager is extremely user-friendly and easy to deploy and understand."
 

Cons

"I would like to see scalability improvements in AWS Identity and Access Management, such as better integration with existing systems and applications."
"I would like to see scalability improvements in AWS Identity and Access Management, such as better integration with existing systems and applications."
"AWS IAM could be improved by providing a graphical user interface which would simplify permissions management, making it easier for beginners to quickly understand and manage permissions."
"The documentation and policies could be more straightforward."
"There is an ongoing issue where files are sometimes sent twice to S3 buckets, despite MoveIt logs showing single transmission."
"Currently, the IAM solution does not allow one user to create multiple access and secret keys, which can be distributed in a diverse manner."
"AWS Identity and Access Management has an intuitive user interface that is simple to use."
"The user activity tracking in AWS Identity and Access Management should be enhanced to provide detailed descriptions of user activities."
"They should focus more on AI features such as Copilot."
"Lacks a common line within the user interface for automating or scaling a reserve deployment."
"They can maybe improve the interface."
"Compared to ARM templates, Terraform is often preferred because it is more versatile and user-friendly. With Terraform, you can create a single, generic script that works across multiple cloud environments, including AWS, Azure, GCP, and even Oracle Cloud. This eliminates the need to write separate scripts for each platform."
"At a group level, if I apply a policy, it gets cascaded to all the resources underneath it, but it is not possible when it comes to tags. When I apply tags at a group level, it should go to the resource under it."
"Unlike Terraform, Azure Resource Manager is hard to maintain and modularize and has room for improvement."
"They have created multiple roles, but I would rather they simplify the roles they already have. The main goal is to work with efficient data. Their support could also be better."
"The latency has room for improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

Information not available
"The solution is open-source."
"We pay $15,000 to $20,000 a month for the service and it is worth the cost."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
No data available
Financial Services Firm
18%
Manufacturing Company
16%
Computer Software Company
15%
Comms Service Provider
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business9
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise3
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business2
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with AWS Identity and Access Management?
In AWS Identity and Access Management solutions, CloudFormation tools are used to create templates. Having predefined templates available from the AWS team would be beneficial. Currently, security ...
What is your primary use case for AWS Identity and Access Management?
When attempting to access Windows UNC paths from MoveIt, it will request user ID and access. For instance, if ITS-MoveIt is the local user utilized during installation, that particular user should ...
What advice do you have for others considering AWS Identity and Access Management?
The AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer is not utilized in our implementation. The policy simulator feature is also not being used. Information about the pricing aspect of AWS Identi...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Azure Resource Manager?
Regarding licensing costs, if we talk about the Azure license or the subscription-based license offered separately by Microsoft, there is a huge difference, as the Azure pay-as-you-go model lets us...
What needs improvement with Azure Resource Manager?
It totally depends on Microsoft, and I am not the concerned person for Microsoft to amend the services. Microsoft involves the Copilot for Azure, which also gives benefits to the customer. There ar...
What is your primary use case for Azure Resource Manager?
I am asking about the main use cases for Azure Resource Manager, which is to manage resources and provide a single link to view all services in a particular resource group. Azure Resource Manager m...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

1. Amazon.com2. Adobe3. Accenture4. AT&T5. Bank of America6. Cisco Systems7. Coca-Cola8. Dell Technologies9. Equinix10. GE Healthcare11. Google12. Hewlett Packard Enterprise13. IBM14. Intel15. JPMorgan Chase16. Kroger17. LinkedIn18. Lockheed Martin19. Mastercard20. Microsoft21. Netflix22. Nike23. Oracle24. PayPal25. PwC26. SAP27. Siemens28. Spotify29. Tesla30. Toyota31. Visa32. Walmart33. World Bank
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Identity and Access Management vs. CyberArk Identity and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
867,676 professionals have used our research since 2012.