Cloud Services

Comparison: Microsoft to
Amazon Web Services
For Microsoft Partners

2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. You may only copy and redistribute this presentation within your organization. It
may not be redistributed in any other way without the express permission of Microsoft. The information contained herein is for
informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because
Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and
Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO

Microsofts
Cloud Vision

Cloud OS

Customer

ONE

Microsoft

Consistent
Platform

Service
Provider

Enterprise-grade
Hybrid design
People-focused

Developme
nt

Manageme
nt

Microsofts vision of the

unified platform for
modern business

Identity

Transform the datacenter

Unlock insights on any data
Empower people-centric IT
Enable modern business apps

Data

Virtualizati
on
3

Transform the Datacenter

Hybrid
cloud

Todays
datacente
r
Datacenter
without
boundaries

Windows Server

Cloud
innovation
everywhere

Windows Azure

Dynamic
application
delivery

Microsoft System
Center
4

Journey to Hybrid Cloud Transformation

Drive business
agility and flexibility
Gain cloud economics
Ensure high service quality

Virtualize missioncritical workloads

Drive efficiency

Virtualize easy
workloads

Server consolidation

Highest levels of
performance & scale

Guaranteed levels of service

Optimal resource availability

Heterogeneous workload
support

Deliver hybrid apps

and infrastructure
on-demand

Seamless datacenter
extensions

Flexible workload mobility

Hybrid cloud storage

Federated identities for

single sign on

Hybrid application
management across the
lifecycle
5

Windows Azure Momentum

Customer Quotes
We looked at the Amazon solution, but we would still have had
to manage our servers, install updates, and do everything we
wanted to avoid. Windows Azure is more than infrastructure-as-aservice; its a fully managed platform-as-a-service. Thats the
way we wanted to go.
Roberta Kowalishin
Vice President of Web Technology

With Windows Azure, we dont have to worry about data center

infrastructure. Microsoft takes care of maintenance tasks so
we can focus on what we do best designing innovative mailing
solutions.
Paul Aronson,
Director of Engineering

We chose Windows Azure rather than in-house servers or

technologies from Google or Amazon because we could get a BI
solution up and running on the Microsoft platform very quickly.
Our business employees are also familiar with Microsoft tools and
so the learning curve would be minimal.
David Boyle,
Senior Vice President of Consumer Insight

Third-Party Validation
Microsoft has a
vision of
infrastructure and
platform services
that are not only
leading stand-alone
offerings, but also
seamlessly extend
and interoperate
with on-premises
Microsoft
infrastructure and
applications, as well
as Microsoft's SaaS
offerings. Its vision is
global, and it is
aggressively
expanding into
multiple
international
markets.
Gartner Magic Quadrant f
or Cloud Infrastructure
as a Service,
August 19, 2013
ID:G00251789

On average, the
highest-performance
provider over the
test period is
Windows Azure, and
the lowestperformance
provider is Amazon
EC2. The difference
in performance:
Windows Azure
scores 3 times
higher than Amazon
EC2 on average.
Cloud Spectator Study,
Cloud Server Performan
ce: A Comparative Analy
sis of 5 Large Cloud
IaaS Providers,
June 05, 2013

Not only did

Microsoft outperform
the competition
significantly during
the raw performance
tests, it was the only
cloud storage
platform to post zero
errors during 100
million reads and
writes.
Nasuni, The State of Clo
ud Storage,
A
Benchmark Comparison o
f Performance, Availab
ility
and Scalability, 2013

Microsofts strategy
for Windows Azure is
very strong for two
reasons. First, its
goal of creating a
single platform
spanning many
clouds is achievable,
valuable, and a
natural act for
Microsoft. Second,
Microsofts openness
to other platforms,
languages,
databases,
development
environments, and
tools is genuine and
virtually assures
Windows Azures
relevance as
technology evolves.
- The Forrester Wave
: Enterprise Public Clou
d Platforms
, Q2 2013,
August 8, 2013

Web Services
Comparison

AWS Architecture
Amazons Cloud Computing Platform
Tools to Access
Services

Libraries & SDKs

Java, .NET, IOS,
PHP

Cross-service
Features

Deployment and Administration

Elastic Beanstalk, Cloud formation, IAM, OpsWork

Platform
Building Blocks

Parallel
processing
EMR

Infrastructure
Building Blocks

Management
AWS Mgmt. Console

Caching
Elastic cache

Compute
EC2, auto-scaling, ELB

Developer Tools

Content
delivery
CloudFront

Storage
S3, EBS, Glacier

Command Line
Interface

Messaging and
workflow
SQS, SWF, SES

Industry-specific
GovCloud
Elastic
transcoder

Database
RDS, DynamoDB, RedShift

Networking
Direct Connect, Virtual Private Cloud, Route 53

Amazon Global Infrastructure

North America (Northern Virginia, Northern California, Oregon, GovCloud), Europe (Ireland), APAC (Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney,
Beijing),
South America (Sao Paulo)
49 AWS Edge locations offering Amazon CloudFront and Amazon Route 53
9

Windows Azure Architecture

Windows Azure Computing Platform
Tools to Access
Services

Libraries & SDKs

Java, .NET, IOS,
PHP

Cross-service
Features

Deployment and Administration

Active Directory, Diagnostics & Service Management, APIs, SCOM pack

Platform
Building Blocks

Parallel
processing
HDInsight

Infrastructure
Building Blocks

Management
Systems Center

Caching
Shared/dedicate
d caching

Compute
VMs, web/worker roles

Command Line
Interface

Developer Tools

Content
delivery
CDN

Storage
Blob Storage, Azure Drive

Messaging and
workflow
SQS, SWF, SES

Industry-specific
Media services,
Mobile services

Database
SQL database, Tables

Networking
Azure DNS, Virtual network, Traffic Manager

Microsoft Global Infrastructure

North America: US North Central (Illinois), US South Central (Texas), US East (Virginia), US West (California)
Europe: Europe North (Ireland), Europe West (Netherlands), APAC: Asia Pacific East (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific Southeast
(Singapore)
Future Locations: Brazil, Japan East, Japan West, China (Shanghai), China (Beijing), Australia (East), Australia (Southeast)
10

Services Comparison
Windows Azure

Amazon Web
Services

8 (Standard and High

Memory)

29 (High Memory,
Compute, Clustered)

Support for
Microsoft workloads

Direct, Microsoft Support

Best Effort

Durability of OS and
data disk

Durable, Geo-replicated
storage, SLAs

Available within
Availability Zone

No conversion required for

Hyper-V VHDs

Conversion required to AMIs

Availability

SLA 99.95%

SLA 99.95%

Capabilities

Standard VPN, Secure IPv4

Subnet

VPC across AZ, Dedicated

Connection and Instances

Availability

SLA -99.9%

No SLA

Capabilities

Geo-replication, StorSimple,
Reliable Architecture

Server Side Encryption,

Versioning support, Glacier

Availability

SLA -99.9%

SLA -99.9%

Services
Instance variety

Virtual
Machines

VM portability

Virtual
Network

Storage

11

AWS Reserved Instance Pricing versus

Windows AzureMonetary Commitment
Discount
What you need to know
about AWS reserved
instance
pricing
The effective
rate you are paying is

What you need to know

about monetary
commitment
Discount you get applies to all

dependent on your utilization.

your spend1.

When making a reservation, you

need to specify exact instance type,
instance size, and datacenter
location. Your usage has to match
exactly to these dimensions in order
to get the reserved instance pricing.

When we reduce the Pay-As-YouGo price, the same price drop

applies to monetary commitment.
Single price model across all the
regions.
More images via direct hourly rate
(SQL Server EE, Biz Talk).

Once reserved, the rate is locked for

one or three years, despite price
drops on on-demand instances.

Excludes user-based services such as AD premium

12

Microsofts
Cloud Solution

Microsofts Comprehensive Approach to

Microsoft
Hybrid IT Amazon
Amazons view: Private clouds are illadvised and archaic.1 Any company that
does not use public cloud in a big way is
putting itself at a competitive
disadvantage2
Amazons efforts to improve integration
between
private datacenter and AWS revolve
around its
Direct Connect offering2
Applications will be developed in the
cloud
and pass data back to the Enterprise2.

Amazon is relying on a variety of 3rd party

partners to provide a singular view of onpremises and cloud deployments.

AWS users are locked into the AMI

format and can only export VMs that have
been imported onto the platform.

With Microsoft, enterprises can run their

workloads, either in their own datacenters or
in the cloud, deployed and monitored with
the same tools they use today.

Microsofts platform has been built from the

ground up with on-premises integration
in mind.
Microsofts comprehensive platform allows
developers to build, extend or migrate
applications across on-premises and cloud,
with familiar tools and supporting
industry-standard practices and
protocols.
Microsoft enables enterprises to deploy,
monitor
and manage applications and infrastructure
without the need of 3rd party tools or
services.
With Microsoft's Cloud OS vision, customers
can easily move VMs between clouds and
will get a consistent experience across their
on-premises datacenters, Windows Azure,
and/or a hosting service provider's
datacenter
14

Microsoft Advantage: Key Compete

Points
Hybrid cloud

Microsoft provides a truly hybrid cloud platform with a common set of

technologies and capabilities across on-premises, Windows Azure, and
Service Provider clouds.
Microsoft customers can easily move VMs as-is across on-premises,
Windows Azure, and 3rd party hoster.

Trusted Microsoft brings more than 20 years of experience and expertise in serving
the enterprise market, along with a platform designed for the largest scale
enterprise
mission critical requirements.
partner

AWS doesnt support private cloud or any on-premises IT assets

other than limited third-party integration.
Locks customers into a proprietary AMI format that makes it
difficult to move VMs back to on-premises.
The majority of AWS customers are startups and developers.
AWS is just starting to focus on the enterprise, and most of their
experience is at the business unit level.

Best for Common engineering criteria used by Microsoft teams ensures that Windows AWS uses a proprietary format and therefore Microsoft workloads
Azure is the best platform for running Microsoft workloads. We provide direct,
are not tested on AWS. Microsoft workloads are not fully
Microsoft
end-to-end support for Microsoft workloads running on Windows Azure VMs.
supported on AWS and they provide best effort support.
workloads
Best Support for
Oracle

IaaS + PaaS

Microsoft and Oracle provide best in class, end to end, support for customers Oracle does not support AWS virtualization engine and assumes
running mission critical Oracle software on Windows Azure and Windows
no reliability or responsibility for data stored in AWS S3.For any
Server Hyper-V. Use your existing licenses to run Oracle software on Windows
virtualization or S3 infrastructure issues, users are directed to
Azure and receive full support from Oracle.
Amazon support.
Windows Azure offers a comprehensive IaaS+PaaS platform. For example,
customers can use SQL Server alongside SQL Database in the same
application (e.g., SQL Database for OLTP, SQL Server in VM for OLAP
reporting, Data Sync for data synchronization).

Unified System Center provides a single pane of glass for unified management of
on-premises environments and public clouds (Windows Azure, Service
management
Providers).
Best Platform for
Dev/Test

Windows Azure provides by-the-minute rather than hourly billing, saving

money when developing and testing applications.
There are no charges for stopped VMs and users can easily export VMs in
their test environment back to on-premises for production.
MSDN subscribers also get additional monetary benefits.

Amazon does not have a comparable PaaS solution to

complement its IaaS solution; RDS for SQL Server lacks features
such as data-sync, multi AZ deployment for SQL Server, and
read replica.
AWS doesnt offer common/unified enterprise management
between on-premises environments and AWS cloud. Partner
offerings come with limitations.
AWS locks customers into a proprietary AMI format that makes it
difficult to move VMs back to on-premises for dev/test purposes.
AWS billing is not as flexible as it is by the hour

15

Microsoft Platform
Differentiation
Trusted Enterprise
Truly Hybrid
Platform
Deployment choice:
While AWS is focused on
moving customers
workloads to Amazons
public cloud, Microsoft
delivers a truly hybrid
platform that offers
customers a choice in
where they run their
applications.

Partner

Proven in enterprise: In
contrast to AWS, which does
not have a long history with
enterprise customers,
Microsoft brings more than
20 years of expertise in
serving the enterprise
market.

Mission critical scale:

Microsoft offers a platform
Flexible environment:
designed for the largest
scale mission critical
Microsoft customers have
requirements. Microsoft runs
the flexibility to maintain a
some of the largest Internetconsistent platform with
integrated virtualization to
scale services in the world
(Xbox Live, Bing, Office 365)
move workloads between
that serve more than 1B
environments without
customers and 200M
change.
1
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsazure
/archive/2013/04/16/the-power-of-and.aspxbusinesses in 76 markets
worldwide.

Better Price to
Performance
Leads in price to
performance: Microsoft
has been proven to lead
AWS when it comes to true
price to performance. (
Cloud Spectator and
Nasuni studies).
Price matching and
value: Microsoft pricing
also matches AWS in all
commodity public cloud
offerings. Microsoft
customers get the best
value, combining the
lowest price with the
flexibility of a hybrid
environment and an
enterprise-ready platform.
16

Cloud
Scenario
Comparison

Three Key Scenarios

1. Develop
& Test

2. Cloud
Storage

3. Datacenter
Extension

Extend the
development and
testing environment to
leverage on-demand
public cloud resources

Deploy best-in-class
storage, backup, and
disaster recover
solution in private and
public cloud with a
single provider and
contract

Extend the datacenter

to leverage Azure
services for workloads
such as SharePoint, SQL
Server and tier 2 & 3
applications

18

Scenari
o
1 2 3

Microsoft Develop & Test in the Cloud

Enable innovation and speed
time-to-solution with
development and testing in
the cloud

Speed the application lifecycle

with an end-to-end platform
for agile, team-based
development
Get Azure credits, discounted
hourly rates, and easy license
portability with MSDN
Use existing development
tools and languages
Access on-premises resources
when needed

Fast, scalable dev

and test
environments

Release

On-premises

Refine

Visual
Studio

Familiar tools across

on-premises and cloud

19

Develop & Test Comparison

AWS Claim
What They Say
AWS offers developers a fast,
inexpensive way to set up test
environments in the cloud with tools
like Elastic Beanstalk and Cloud
Formation1.

The Facts
Once in the cloud, AWS locks
customers in by converting VMs into
proprietary AMI format, which makes it
difficult to port VMs back to the onprem environment2
Amazon doesnt have any of their own
development tools, instead relying on
3rd-party offerings3
*Footnotes documented in speaker notes of
slide

Scenari
o
1 2 3

Why Microsoft is the Better Choice

Hybrid flexibility: Microsoft customers have
flexibility to easily move VMs back and forth
between on-premises and Windows Azure4.
Automatic geo-replication: Windows Azure VMs
are built on durable Azure Blob storage which are
geo-replicated. EBS requires manual effort to
replicate5.
Familiar tools: With Microsoft, customers can
use familiar development and management tools
such as Visual Studio and System Center
Lower cost availability: EC2 runs on EBS, which
is limited to one availability zone, so customers
have to buy S3 at an additional cost to get needed
reliability and durability. Windows Azure blob
storage includes geo-replication at no additional
cost6.

20

Dev and Test Case Study: Health Insurance Company

Uses
the Cloud to Reduce Mobile Development Time by Half
Business Challenge

Needed to expose the data in a thirdparty application for mobile access

Wanted to maintain desired security and
privacy controls
The required resources to support these
new apps were already engaged in other
high-priority projects.

Key Benefits

Decrease time-to-market by 50 percent

Low up-front and ongoing costs
Cost-effective scalability
Superior reliability and security
Familiar development environment

With Windows
Azure, we cut the
time and effort
required to deliver
our new Wellmark
Mobile Service in
half.
Brad Hoyt
IT Innovation Manager
Wellmark Blue Cross
and Blue Shield

See complete case study here.

21

Scenari
o
1 2 3

Microsoft Hybrid Storage Solution

Get storage, data backup, and
disaster recovery in one
integrated solution that
combines the best of onpremises and cloud
Leverage secure, lower-cost
public cloud storage for selected
volumes and manage with onpremises capacity using a single
console
Scale storage capacity at lower
cost per TB without sacrificing
performance
Enable self-provisioning,
management, recovery
operations using a System Center

Windows
Azure
Blob Storage

On-premises

Physical or Virtual
Servers File, NAS, SAN
storage

StorSimple

22

Cloud Storage Comparison

AWS Claim
What They Say
Amazon S3 offers a highly-scalable, reliable,
durable, and low-latency virtual
infrastructure at a relatively low cost for
data storage and disaster recovery.
AWS Storage Gateway is a service for
seamlessly and securely connecting onpremises IT environments with storage in
the AWS Cloud.

The Facts
Customers need to manually achieve georedundancy (by creating EBS snapshots in
S3)1
Windows Azure charges only for the
incremental differences when snapshotting
a blob2 whereas Amazon S3 customers have
to pay for an entire snapshot each time3.
Storage Gateway customers still have to
purchase an on-premises appliance for a
4
*Footnotes documented
in speaker
notes
hybrid
solution
. of

Scenari
o
1 2 3

Why Microsoft is the Better Choice

Geo-replication: Windows Azure Blobs are
geo-replicated, whereas S3 is only available
in a region. S3 replication outside a region
requires manual effort.
Availability and durability: Local
Redundancy Storage is more durable and
highly available compared to S3.
Hybrid storage: Based on StorSimple,
Microsoft offers the best of on-premises and
the cloud for scalable, cost-effective storage
solutions.
SQL Server solutions: Windows Azure
offers SQL Server backup and disaster
recovery options; thats not the case with
AWS5.

slide

23

Cloud Storage Case Study: United Airlines Boosts IT

Efficiency, and Business Resiliency with Private Cloud
Solution
Business Challenge

IT infrastructure needs to be reliable, cost

effective, and highly adaptive
IT staff wanted to ensure its infrastructure
had the resilience & scalability
Existing manual failover scenarios and
expensive storage arrays were complex to
manage

Key Benefits
Multipurpose solution provides extra value
Resilient disaster recovery reduces
downtime
Simplified recovery orchestration reduces
IT management
Increased flexibility saves bandwidth

Now that we are more

virtualized, we are looking
at a whole new approach
to DR, where flexibility and
cloud computing combine
to provide a resilient
solution that we can tailor
to meet our needs, says
Wilson. It made sense to
continue on our cloud
journey with a Microsoft
DR solution.
Richard Wilson
Principal Architect, United Airlines

See complete case study here.

24

Extending the Datacenter: SQL

Public Cloud
Database
SQL Server in a Windows
Windows Azure
Extend on-premises apps by
deploying SQL Server and
SQL Database on Windows
Azure
Full SQL Server 2012 capabilities
including the new AlwaysOn
Availability groups to provide you the
HA for your database within the VM.
Common identity solution makes
application access seamless whether
it is on-premises or in the cloud.
Transparent data encryption and
auditing capabilities for additional
security.
Library of VM templates so that you
dont have to manage the installation
of SQL Server on top of the virtual OS.

Azure Virtual Machine

Scenari
o
1 2 3

SQL Database

Move Existing SQL

Server Apps

Develop New
Cloud-Designed Apps

Develop and Test

Backup and Restore
Database to the Cloud
Extend On-Premises Apps
to Windows Azure VM

Extend On-Premises Apps

to Windows Azure SQL
Database

KEY
SCENARIOS
Use both SQL Server in Windows Azure VM and
Windows Azure SQL Database in a single app.

25

Extending the Data Center Comparison: SQL

Database
AWS Claim

What They Say

Amazon RDS is a scalable relational
database in the cloud the provides
cost-efficient and resizable capacity
while managing database
administration.

The Facts
At this time, Amazon RDS does not
offer a high availability solution with
RDS/SQL Server.
AWS doesnt offer common/unified
enterprise management between
on-premises environments and AWS
cloud.

Scenari
o
1 2 3

Why Microsoft is the Better Choice

VM portability: Easily move and back
up SQL Server virtual machines
between your datacenter and Windows
Azure. AWS locks you in proprietary AMI
format.
Multi-tiered cloud applications:
Customers can easily build multi-tiered
cloud apps by leveraging SQL Server
and Azure SQL Database in the same
app. The same experience is not
available on AWS.
Lower cost: Windows Azure SQL
Database is more cost effective, since
customers do not pay for compute or
file storage costs.

26

Extending the Datacenter Case Study: 3M Unit Boosts

Revenue
by
50 Percent with Choice of Cloud Service
Business Challenge
Wanted to avoid heavy, upfront
investments to buy and run testing
hardware
Wanted to utilize current development
skills without taking the time to learn how
to utilize new tool sets
Needed ability to scale deployments as
needed, and pay only for actual use.

Key Benefits
Using Windows Azure and SQL Database,
3M eliminated need for additional
hardware or personnel
Gained big cost savings by choosing
Windows Azure over on-premises
development
Scaled by 400 percent since initial
deployment
See
complete
case studyreduced
here.
Significantly
management cost

The similarities
between Windows
Azure and our own
development
environment gave
us a huge
advantage.

Jim Graham
Technical Manager, 3M

27

Extending the Datacenter: Hosting SharePoint

Server on Windows Azure
Go beyond the resources you
have on-premises by
deploying a scalable
collaboration platform in the
cloud

Design, implement, and develop

on SharePoint 2010/2013 without
upfront hardware costs.
Develop custom Internet sites
and collaboration apps not
supported in a software-as-aservice model.
Burst compute, storage, and
database for your SharePoint
farm when you need it.

On-premises

Scenari
o
1 2 3

Remote Workers

Windows Server
Active Directory
INTERNE
T

VPN

Windows Azure
Windows Server
Active Directory

SharePoint
Server

28

Extending the Data Center Comparison: Hosting

SharePoint Server on Windows Azure
AWS Claim
What They Say
Amazon EC2 running Windows Server
is a secure and dependable
environment for customers to deploy
Microsoft SharePoint quickly and cost
effectively.

The Facts
Microsoft workloads are not tested on
AWS
AWS deployment scripts are buggy and
unreliable.
Any error during stack creation can roll
back the entire configuration.
Customers get limited support for
running SharePoint on EC2.

Scenari
o
1 2 3

Why Microsoft is the Better Choice

Microsoft compatibility: SharePoint
architecture and configurations are
tested by Microsoft.
Lower cost: Windows Azure charges
only for the incremental differences
when snapshotting storage for
SharePoint, whereas Amazon S3
customers have to pay for an entire
snapshot each time.
End-to-end support: With Windows
Azure, customers get first party and
end-to-end support (infrastructure and
software) for a SharePoint server
running on Azure.

29

Extending the Datacenter Case Study: Telenor Uses Windows

Azure
for Development and Testing of company-wide SharePoint 2013
Business Challenge
Platform
Testing a big new deployment like
To improve collaboration and best practice
sharing
Bolster process efficiency
Facilitate a more agile and responsive
organization

Key Benefits
Dramatically reduced the cost needed for
test, development and demo
environments
Reduced the time to make the
environments available to the project
Saved on long term investment in
hardware that would have only be used in
the short term.

this is essential to success, but

development and testing can take up
a lot time and it normally requires
that we buy many extra servers that,
once testing is concluded, we dont
really need anymore. And that costs
us considerable money and other
resources.
Thats why Windows Azure Virtual
Machines was such a good solution for
us. We could develop and test using
IaaS instead of investing in servers at
our hosting providers. The time
savings throughout the process was
enormous. Were eagerly looking
forward to taking advantage of all the
benefits of SharePoint 2013.
Andreas Hgberg
Director, Telenor Group

See complete case study here.

30

Summary

Learn More

Server and Cloud Plat

form
Why Cloud OS
Trial page

Windows Azure
Azure vs AWS
Azure case studies

2014 Microsoft Corporation. All rights

reserved. You may only copy and redistribute
this presentation within your organization. It
may not be redistributed in any other way
without the express permission of Microsoft.
The information contained herein is for
informational purposes only and represents the
current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the
date of this presentation. Because Microsoft
must respond to changing market conditions, it
should not be interpreted to be a commitment
on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot
guarantee the accuracy of any information
provided after the date of this presentation.

32

Appendix

AWS Price Comparison

Amazon Web Services
Region: US East (N. Virginia)
Linux/UNIX Usage

Windows Usage

Small (Default)

$0.060 per Hour

$0.091 per Hour

Medium

$0.120 per Hour

$0.182 per Hour

Large

$0.240 per Hour

$0.364 per Hour

Extra Large

$0.480 per Hour

$0.728 per Hour

Standard On-Demand

Windows Azure (Linux)

Computer Instance Name

Microsoft announced a pricematch commitment for

Amazon Web Services on
computing, storage, and
bandwidth.
April 26 2013
th

Windows Azure (Windows)

Virtual Cores

RAM

Price Per Hour

Computer Instance
Name

Virtual Cores

RAM

Price Per Hour

(GA Price Starting Jun
1st)

Shared

768 MB

$0.02
(~$15/month)

Shared

768 MB

$0.02
(~$15/month)

Small (A1)

1.75 GB

$0.06
(~$45/month)

Extra Small (AO)

Medium (A2)

3.5 GB

$0.12
(~$89/month)

Small (A1)

1.75 GB

$0.09
(~$67/month)

Large (A3)

7 GB

$0.24
(~$179/month)

Medium (A2)

3.5 GB

$0.18
(~$134/month)

Extra Large (A4)

14 GB

$0.48
(~$357/month)

Large (A3)

7 GB

$0.36
(~$268/month)

Extra Large (A4)

14 GB

$0.72
(~$536/month)

Extra Small (AO)

*Based on 744 hours per months

35

Amazon Web Services vs Azure Support

4 Paid support
offerings $50$15,000+ per month
Basic
Developer plan offers 1:1
support via Web during
PST business hours 49$/month
Business tier adds 24x7
phone support - start at
$1000
Enterprise add 15 min
response for critical
issues start at $15,000

Lacks customization/
add-ons/proactive

Amazon

Azure

Basic

Amazon

Azure

Amazon

Azure

Developer

Starter

Business

Standard

MSDN
Whitepapers, best
documentation
practices
How To Guidance

E-mail support
business hours

E-mail support
business hours

3 Phone incidents/month
Phone/Chat/E-mail
Unlimited E-mail support
Support 24x7
24x7

Support through
forums

Support through
forums

Support through
forums

Support through
forums

Support through
forums

Support through forums

No SLA

No SLA

12 hour response
time

> 8 hour response 1 hour response

time
time

> 4 hour response time

$0

$0

$49/month

$29/month

Greater of $100 or
$300/month
10% of bill/month

Amazon

Azure

Azure

Azure

Enterprise

Pro-Direct

Premier

Premier + Rapid
Response

Unlimited Phone/Chat/E-mail
Support 24x7

Unlimited phone/e-mail
support 24x7

Unlimited phone/e-mail
support 24x7

Unlimited phone/e-mail
support 24x7

Dedicated Support Escalation

Resource (reactive only)

Managed Support Escalation

Dedicated Support Delivery

Resource

Dedicated Support Delivery

Resource

Automated Proactive Checks

Automated Proactive Checks

Automated Proactive Checks

Automated Proactive Checks

Architecture Assistance/
Support Service

Self Service Guidance

Proactive Services, Custom

Advisory Services Assigned
Technical SME

Proactive Services, Custom

Advisory Services, Assigned
Technical SME

15 minute response

<1 hour response time

$15,000+/month

$1000/month

<1 hour response time

$3K+/month

15 minute response from

Dedicated Support team with
customer solution knowledge
$24,500+/month
36

Comparison of Key Capabilities

Capability
Compute

Virtual Machines, Worker role, Web role w/elevated privileges, Web role

Elastic Compete Cloud (EC2)

Hosting (lightweight web

apps)

Web Sites

Web Sites

Database

SQL Database (formerly SQL Azure)

Amazon RDS, Amazon RedShift (DW Solution)

Big Data

HDInsight

Elastic Map Reduce

Blob storage

Windows Azure Blobs

Simple Storage Service (S3)

Table storage

Windows Azure Tables

SimpleDB, DynamoDB

Storage Drives

Windows Azure Drives

Elastic Block Storage

App Deployment

Automatically handled

Amazon Elastic Beanstalk, CloudFormation, OpsWorks

Storage Archive

Expected H1 FY15

Glacier

Hybrid Storage

StorSimple

N/A

Messaging

Windows Azure Service Bus, Queues

AWS SNS, SQS

Networking

Virtual Network, Connect, Traffic Manager, Azure DNS

Direct Connect, VPC, Elastic Load Balancer, Route 53

Caching Service

Windows Azure Managed & In-Memory Cache

AWS ElasticCache

Content Delivery

Expected Q3 FY14 (See OneList)

AWS Cloud Front

Management

Management Portal, Power Shell, System Center 2012

AWS Management Console

Monitoring

Diagnostics & Service, Management APIs, SCOM Pack

CloudWatch, Alarm

Authentication &
Authorization

Windows Live, Accounts and Subscription, Federation Future, Windows Azure

Active Directory

Identity & Access Management (IAM), Multi-Factor

Authentication (MFA)

Development Tools

Toolkit for Eclipse and Visual Studio

Toolkit for Eclipse and Visual Studio

Supported Libraries and

SDKs

.NET, PHP, Java, node.js, Python

Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby, Python

Industry Specific

Windows Azure Media Services, Mobile Services

AWS GovCloud , Elastic Transcoder

Desktop Virtualization

N/A

WorkSpaces
37