If you are running an IT team, you know the cloud is going to be a big part of your future if it isn’t already a big part of your present. But if hybrid cloud is a core part of your strategy, and it is for most companies, be sure to take a close look at what AWS can and can’t do for you. Don’t get boxed in by a cloud service that is missing important parts of a hybrid solution.
Hybrid done right is all about a platform that connects your data center to the cloud with common tools and tech that bridge what you know and have today, to where you are going. Microsoft provides a hybrid management solution for infrastructure and apps across private partner and public clouds. This means it is straightforward to move virtual machines to the Azure cloud and back again or to another cloud including a software license you already own.
In contrast, Amazon isn’t very interested in what you have premises. Their goal is to get your VM’s into proprietary format on a WS, making it tough to move them off the Amazon cloud. They also offer no management tools for on-site systems or other clouds. It is the same story when it comes to extending your data center to the cloud, Microsoft has built a deep stack of hybrid services based on trusted technologies that deliver what you need at every layer: compute, networking, storage, management, identity, and data while AWS only provides the minimum to get your apps and virtual machines on their cloud.
AWS has been out longer than Azure from a platform standard concept. So you have some advanced features and some new stuff that is incorporated that is already built in the platform and Azure, on the other hand, has an entry point into the enterprise market because it has already had a lot of on-premise enterprise involvements for its services and applications.
So a lot of times when you see the AWS and Azure environments, you will see that a lot of startup companies will go towards AWS platforms and a lot of enterprises and already pre-developed solutions or companies that have already been in marketplace for a while will tend to lean towards the Azure side.
Both have very similar features but have some very unique niches that will be able to utilize some specific certain services that you will be able to use.
