Azure vs. AWS
Why Azure is the right choice
Organizations all over the world recognize Azure over AWS as the most trusted cloud, because it offers:
- More regions than any other cloud provider
- Unmatched hybrid capabilities
- The strongest intelligence
Trust the cloud that helps protect your work
When you compare AWS versus Azure, you’ll find that Azure has more comprehensive compliance coverage with more than 60 compliance offerings, and was the first major cloud provider to contractually commit to the requirements of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). To protect your organization, Azure embeds security, privacy, and compliance into its development methodology, and has been recognized as the most trusted cloud for U.S. government institutions, earning a FedRAMP High authorization that covers 18 Azure services. In addition, Azure IP Advantage provides best-in-industry intellectual property protection, so you can focus on innovation, instead of worrying about baseless lawsuits.
“It felt like companies that needed to be compliant were being punished for it by having to pay more. Now, with Microsoft Cloud’s scalable and pay-as-you-go model, we can be competitive while offering world-class service, flexibility, and security.” Ed Anderson, Managing Director, Dyrand Systems
Innovate with unmatched intelligence
Build intelligent solutions at scale using cognitive APIs, bots, machine learning, and blockchain as a service (BaaS) capabilities that you’ll only find with Azure. By pairing these capabilities with powerful GPU-based compute, you’ll accelerate deep learning, enable high-performance computing simulations, and conduct real-time data analytics using NVIDIA GPUs in Azure.
“Thousands of partners sign in to our platform every hour. The response time from the Face API is incredible, enabling us to verify our drivers without slowing them down.” Dina Kovalev, Product Manager, Uber
Expand globally with the most regions
Achieve global scale with 42 announced Azure regions—more than any other cloud provider. Our priority on geographic expansion means you can choose the datacenter and region that’s right for you and your customers, with the performance and support you need, where you need it.
“All the traffic that we had—and it was more than we ever had before—went through the new Azure architecture and it was remarkably trouble-free.” Bob Strudwick, Chief Technology Officer, ASOS
Get IT flexibility with a truly consistent hybrid cloud
Optimize your existing assets by taking a hybrid approach to the cloud. Azure offers hybrid consistency everywhere—in application development, management and security, identity management, and across the data platform. This helps reduce the risk and cost of a hybrid cloud environment by enabling a common set of skills and offering portability of applications and workloads. Plus, save up to 40 percent when migrating Windows Server virtual machines to Azure using the Azure Hybrid Benefit.
“With the hybrid environment, we have the flexibility to place our applications and data on the appropriate cloud, based on our business, technology, and regulatory needs.” Tan Kok Meng, Chief Information Officer, Malaysia Airlines
Build on the leading cloud platform
Rely on the only cloud provider recognized in the industry as having leading solutions in infrastructure as a service (IaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and platform as a service (PaaS)—in fact, according to this Forrester Total Economic Impact study, you’ll be more productive and increase your ROI with Azure PaaS services. Azure also offers the broadest support for container platforms, supporting DC/OS, Docker Swarm, and Kubernetes.
“In my opinion, Microsoft has a far stronger PaaS offering than Amazon does, and PaaS was always our ultimate destination.” Brian McFadden, Vice President and General Manager of Technology Services, MedPoint Digital
Develop and deploy your choice of open source technology in the cloud
Develop and build the way you want in Azure, with your choice of tools, applications, and frameworks. As a leading open source contributor on GitHub, Microsoft actively supports the open source community and has a unique partnership with Red Hat to offer coordinated, multi-lingual support.
“Microsoft support for open source is very helpful. It means we can use whatever technologies make sense for us and have them fit in seamlessly with the rest of our stack.” Hanna Landrus, Data Scientist, BitTitan
Dig into big data with a complete business analytics solution
Bring limitless elastic scale to your applications with Azure Cosmos DB. Then, turn your data into a competitive advantage using business analytics solutions, such as demand forecasting and inventory optimization. Rapidly build, customize, and deploy best practices with solution templates and Cortana Intelligence.
“Microsoft Cortana Intelligence capabilities are helping us filter the signal from the noise across large data sets, so we can focus on finding the real value in the data. Our vision of future digital capability will need to aggregate many sources of data and provide a platform for collaboration with customers.” Nick Farrant, Senior Vice President, Rolls-Royce
Easily implement ready-to-use IoT
Quickly start with the most common Internet of Things (IoT) scenarios, such as remote monitoring and predictive maintenance, using preconfigured solutions in Azure IoT Suite. It’s open and customizable by design, and 46 percent of Azure Certified for IoT devices run on Linux, Android, or other open source technologies.
“We compared different cloud platforms and how they could support devices, connectivity, infrastructure services, IoT, and so on. We found that Microsoft Azure is the best cloud for this solution based on its flexibility. Azure also has a huge portfolio of very rich services that we can use, especially for IoT.” Rene Grohman, Azure Platform Architect, T-Systems
Take your Azure investments further with the Microsoft Cloud
Get even more value out of your investment in Azure by using one of our industry-leading SaaS services, including Office 365, Dynamics 365, and Enterprise Mobility + Security. Azure shares many foundational capabilities with these services, such as identity management through Azure Active Directory and mobile device management through Intune.
“Digital transformation is not an end, it’s a means for continual improvement. We use Azure cloud analytics to gather operational and customer insights, and we use Office 365 to share that information to drive business value. The future for Hershey is very exciting—with Microsoft cloud solutions, we are in control of our digital journey, connecting everyone to work better together and share the goodness.” Carlos Amesquita, Chief Information Officer, The Hershey Company
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