AWS vs. Azure: Unlocking Business Potential with Leading Cloud Platforms
Summarize With:
A few weeks ago Amazon Web Services announced its new industrial IoT support platform — AWS IoT Sitewise. Not long before that, Microsoft Azure launched a Healthcare Emergency Response Solution. Even in tough times, these two cloud services have stayed committed to growth.
Now, product development organizations consist of remote and distributed teams of skilled and cost-effective talent from across the world. Of course, the pandemic has driven the sudden dominance of the cloud. Expanded 'Work from home' measures are accelerating cloud adoption.
In that scenario, both AWS and Azure have much to offer. While AWS is committed to aiding businesses of all kinds with flexibility and scalability, Azure has been allowing businesses to develop and deploy their services uninterrupted.
Some businesses are still struggling with stepping up to cloud adoption. The lack of technical experience has put them in a peculiar situation. They are skeptical about accepting the cloud as the new normal, but they cannot deny its necessity.
For such companies, let's take a look at how both AWS and Azure can accelerate business impact now.
Based on these benefits, organizations can know AWS and Azure better. They may thus be able to make a choice based on what works best for them.
- Native Tools and services: Over, time AWS and Azure, both have evolved from being mere cloud computing and storage facilitators. AWS is capable of providing complex services that take care of database management, software development assistance, networking, mobility, analytics, etc. On the other hand, Azure offers an array of specific applications for business needs. These applications have been aiding various industries like healthcare, financial service, and even governments. The native tools and services provided by AWS and Azure have been aiding businesses with cloud computing, security, administrative compliance, and access to a new age technology stack, among other benefits. Businesses of all sizes can be relieved of the burden of picking and investing in good infrastructure and third-party tools from multiple vendors. Moreover, native tools and services help with better monitoring and tracking at different stages of management and administration. These are savings in both capital and operational expenditure for the businesses.
- Storage Capacity: Let's start with AWS. In the storage front, AWS can handle a business' current needs and allow future growth as well. The storage capacity is practically unlimited. AWS saves businesses from crippling data storage limits. The distributed cloud storage also makes the data less vulnerable to malware or cybersecurity issues. More on that later. These storage services offered by AWS are very well handled by the AWS Storage Gateway. For the same context, Azure offers a platform called the Azure Storage platform. This cloud storage solution has been built to handle new-age software needs like scalability, virtual machine handling, communication data, etc. Azure storage is meant to offer qualities like — durable storage, high availability, data security, easy accessibility, and more
- Security: Security is front and center for both services. Azure, for instance with its multiple compliance certifications, is deemed safe for even high-risk industries. That is the reason, many governments and healthcare organizations adopt it for cloud services. With features like network security, key logs, multi-factor authentication among others, Azure ensures that both the business services and the end-users are safe. Security with AWS is about safe information exchange, trusted infrastructures, etc. AWS has multiple data centers spread out globally. The business and end-user data and processes are all safe and secure. AWS offers security features like Identity Access Management, Cloud Trail, S3 security, etc. All of these come together to relieve businesses of all their security concerns.
- Agility: The core idea behind business agility is faster development and provisioning for future changes of direction. With practices like DevOps, agile principles are wedded to automation and cloud services. Obviously, it makes sense for two of the most popular cloud services to provide agile features from the get-go. AWS, for instance, offers all its resources at one stop. This makes development faster and more agile. With its storage capabilities, security assurance, and reliable infrastructure, AWS can encourage even conventionally non-agile organizations to attain agility at scale. Azure too has been allowing businesses to evolve from their legacy processes and bring business agility with a move to the cloud. Applications can be built, managed, and deployed in minimal time. Both AWS and Azure support DevOps along with technologies like Microservices, Containers, Serverless, etc. This means that even for more futuristic products and services, provisions for agile development are already in place.
- Affordability: With all these services, both AWS and Azure can help businesses achieve acceleration. In addition, even for start-ups, they can prove to be very cost-effective. AWS offers infrastructure on demand. This means that the business can use whatever resources they need for however long they need them. Azure is capable of scaling its services and resources as per the business size and needs. The pay-as-you-go price model allows small scale businesses to employ only the required services and resources. In fact, both AWS and Azure, encourage businesses to optimize resource utilization. They offer the preferred Operating System, technology stack, network management, etc. at an affordable price and 100% brand reliability from Amazon and Microsoft.
Conclusion:
Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure have been giants in the cloud-computing game. Both have vast experience and committed customer bases. There is also the trust that comes with the Microsoft and Amazon brands. Both cloud solutions are committed to helping businesses of all scales and sizes to evolve at a steady pace. The cloud adoption choice has never been easier for organizations to make. The hard part is separating the vendors. That often comes down to the specific features you want to use and the commercial deal available to you at that time. One thing is sure. AWS or Azure are both proven solutions.