Business spending for cloud technology is expected to rise by 16% in the next half a decade. A forecast by Forbes claims that the valuation of cloud computing will have reached $411 billion by the year 2020. Cloud will serve IT infrastructure of the future and proliferate itself around digital enterprises. Visitors into the world of cloud computing always battle the wide variety of choices available for getting started with cloud technology. To get around the trouble of finding a brilliant cloud solution, it’s important to familiarize yourself with existing cloud vendors; especially, by evaluating the leading cloud service providers. There are many insights about the world’s leading cloud service provider and most sources will cite Amazon Web Services as the visionary tool for cloud success. However, other technologist disputes this and find Microsoft’s azure as the undisputable hot bed for cloud technology. The fact is that both services have 99% equivalence and that is the reason both of them have attracted massive scholar and enthusiast interest.  Although the battle between Azure and AWS is clouded by the need to remain relevant to as many businesses as possible, it’s impossible to rate one against the other. Why? Because the decision between Azure and AWS is more of a business decision that depends on the needs of each individual business. Probably, an organization looking for Platform as a Service (PaaS) would find more comfort in Azure, while an organization looking for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) would find AWS more preferable. According to

Right Scale  2018 State of Cloud Report

, The adoption of Microsoft Azure increased from 43% to 58%, while AWS increased from 59% to 68%. Despite a rising interest in Microsoft Azure’s high end client innovation, the cloud report claims that

80% of enterprises run their applications of AWS

, while those that find Azure as their preferred platform for app hosting and testing is 22%.

Azure and AWS Specs

We will shed light on the known ways we can compare

Azure vs AWS

, through their various distinctive features and available tools.

Application Deployment

Azure offers scalable opportunity for hosting applications. Azure technology deploys application on multiple virtual servers that are built from Platform as a Service features.  The Microsoft cloud technology has many application deployment tools, namely; cloud services, batch, functions, app services, container services and file sync troubleshooting in Azure.

Networking

AWS implements a virtual cloud service to network. Additionally, the cloud also initiates cross premise connectivity through an API gateway. On the cloud platform, you will network through an elastic load balancing approach. Azure implements a virtual network for content delivery and networking. The platform uses a VPN for cross premise connectivity. The load balancer and application gateway are essential for the platform’s load balancing.

Storage

AWS offers storage as one of its main solutions. The cloud platform use an S3 (Simple storage) approach to provide the longest running cloud storage platform. Azure offers storage services using the storage block blob approach. This approach is based on the idea of storage blocks and uploads. The main advantage of azures storage is its ability to offer efficient blob uploads. However, AWS storage is more long running compared to Azure storage.

Database

Probably, 99% of cloud vendors provide a database solution that is implemented in either NoSQL or SQL. AWS uses the relational database service (RDS) to offer database solutions as a service. The platform uses an elastic cache and also uses Dynamo DB to implement NoSQL. Azure uses MySQL, SQL databases and postgreSQL to offer relational database services. Redis Cache serves the caching purpose and Cosmos DB for NoSQL solutions.

Conclusion

It is not recommendable to compare between AWS and Azure mainly because the relevance of either of them mainly depends on your requirements. It is more advisable to use Azure for larger and complex projects. Revenue comparisons might not hold mainly because Microsoft publishes its figures as part of its Commercial Cloud Business. Additionally, both companies are different and carter for a different audience. For instance, Azure was created as a way of moving existing Microsoft infrastructure into the cloud.

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