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The choice between your cloud services provider is an important one, and making the right decision could save your business money in the long run.
In terms of deciding which cloud provider you should use within your organisation, it is definitely a case of comparing the advantages of the different products that each one has, specifically in the sector that you have the greatest need for.
This post will help to highlight some of the features of two of the key players in the game: Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. There are other providers, such as Google Cloud Platform and Oracle Cloud Solutions, however the range of products offered by both AWS and Azure make them the heavy hitters.
The good news is, both providers have a free tier. The free tiers admittedly restrict the functionality that you might require, but will definitely give you the feel of the products that each provider has to offer.
The AWS costing structure is largely based on a general ‘pay as you go’ system, upon which money can be saved by ‘reserving’ capacity up front, and there are slight price reductions when you increase the amount of resource you use. The AWS total cost calculator can be found via this link.
The advertised pricing structure on AWS for their tiered pricing when storing data
In terms of pricing for hosting applications – Microsoft Azure is incredibly competitive, in what seems like a bid to corner the market when hosting on the cloud. You can check pricing for Azure using their pricing calculator found via this link. The calculator will answer the question you have regarding the cost of hosting in the cloud vs on-site hosting, and the estimated cost savings migrating to Azure.
The advertised pricing structure on Azure
An add on that Azure provides is their ‘Hybrid Benefit’, where Microsoft will cover the cost of the OS on two virtual machines, when you only pay for computing costs, furthering the savings that you can make when using Azure.
Each provider seems to draw upon their proven strengths – Amazon Web Services are well suited to large databases, and deploying applications to the cloud is evidently suited to Microsoft’s computing background.
The large global infrastructure created by Microsoft means that Azure is hosted in 38 regions worldwide, this allows you as the customer to choose where your data is stored, and have the options available to provide for locational project needs.
As a very brief overview of the products provided by AWS and Azure see the table below:
See the full list of products for each service here (Azure) and here (AWS).
Both Azure and Amazon Web Services offer similar products, which could make them difficult to choose between if you require a host of different services, however a standout feature is that Microsoft claims to have more security certification ‘than any other cloud provider’.
The security accreditations held by azure.
This does not mean that AWS is not a secure means of deploying applications to the cloud, but if you have a business need for a certified secure system with all the benefits of being cloud based - Azure can certainly provide assurance when it comes to the ever growing need for internet security.
One of the Azure security benefits is Azure IP Advantage, a way of safeguarding intellectual property in an environment where IP infringement is a large risk when delivering software and services. IP Advantage includes features such as:
In a world where IP is an important issue, Microsoft are providing this add on as a way to persuade companies who value the protection that they can provide, to use Azure as their cloud hosting partner.
The important thing to keep in mind when comparing cloud providers is what you want to achieve. Azure, AWS and the other companies all have their strengths and advantages but it is about finding out what plan works for your needs and how you can best achieve them.
This could be why companies such as Uber, Callaway and Mark Jacobs have been migrating their services to the cloud using Azure.
Here at Solidsoft, some of our largest projects have been developed on, and deployed to the cloud using Microsoft Azure - so our track record shows how diverse and complex the solutions created on Azure can be, such as the European Medication Verification System (EMVS), which is using Azure features such as Service Fabric, CosmosDb, Web Services and Logic Apps to produce a complex, cloud based system.