AWS vs Azure, which is the better choice?

Hello Everyone, thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to join us today for our webinar.

We will be going over “business on the cloud” and diving into whether AWS or Azure for cloud and hybrid environments is a better solution for businesses.

Cinter Introduction

Before we begin, we would like to take a quick minute to introduce ourselves. My name is Daniel Kang and I am a systems Engineer from LA, and am joined by my colleague Slaton Meyer, who is also a systems Engineer from Houston; and we are with Cinter Technology. We also have a special guest, Hattori Atsunori who is the information security expert and cloud architect for Cinter Technology.  At Cinter Technology, we have been bringing IT solutions to businesses both large and small since 2013, and you can see just some of areas in the IT field and specializations that we can assist your company with. And we have offices across the United States, and provide services nationwide, as well as, in some select International Markets. 

Content Summary

We’ll be exploring the key differences and factors that may help with your decision-making process when choosing between today’s two most popular cloud services, AWS and Azure. The most driving factor is of course the cost of either product. Cost is almost always the first thing to be considered, and for good reason, but it is usually just the starting point. This is a key oversight, and the main issue that we want to address as we have seen so many businesses in the past year get the lowest cost option, which is fantastic, but seeing how much a business can miss out on, how many services that could make the business more efficient, which in turn makes it more profitable, is not so fantastic. We’ll guide you through some of the values that closely resemble clients or industry leaders, but also give some usable insight when considering either service. We hope to be able to work with you for a better understanding that will give you and your business a solution for the long term.

Goals

Before we jump into the details of either service, we want to highlight the most important thing a company can do before any of these decisions is made. To put it simply, it is to understand your exact business needs. Some of the questions you may ask yourself will sound like this:

 Do you have a full team of software engineers and IT staff or do you have a small crew just to get you by each month? Are you looking at explosive growth in the near future or is your market analysis showing more of a slow and steady climb? Maybe you are looking for something that will have better cost savings just to get us through this volatile short term? Knowing what you need to succeed looks different for every individual and every business, so this list can’t possibly show every outcome or option, but we just want to stress the importance of asking similar questions before deciding which method is best for your business. So for now, let’s just assume we did our homework, we have our list, and those things have been checked off. Now we’ll evaluate the two services and even go over some situations where one service may be better than the other.

Again, before any of this, businesses should really identify their business needs with:

Key Takeaways for Goals

• In the technological sense
• In the business/growth sense
• In the financial sense

AWS:

Started in 2006, almost 4 years ahead of Azure; lots of support can be found in open source forums and intelligence research, but a lot of troubleshooting and solutions must be done from your end. Usually, it allows for more client controlled customizations, and for systems that aren’t dependent on Microsoft Environment or for businesses that utilize Linux. AWS can be less expensive than Azure overall, if being very selective on services and constant monitoring and management is available for the organization. AWS is not the best Hybrid Cloud offering. But AWS does have better Linux options than Azure. 

Key Takeaways: Zero setups, Detail Monitoring, Auto-scaling groups.

Azure

Officially launched in 2008, but in reality, it became commercially available in 2010, Microsoft’s Azure has built-in support from Microsoft Azure engineers and tech support specialists. For businesses already established in the Microsoft environment, such as Windows Operation System, or Microsoft/Office365 applications, Microsoft SQL Server, etc), almost 5 times more cost efficient to go Azure due to package pricing options. Azure allows for easy integration within Microsoft systems and is the better choice for Hybrid Cloud models. With Azure, businesses can easily integrate on-site servers to cloud offerings. One drawback may be that Azure has Limited Linux options, though it is constantly being worked on and is expanding rapidly

Key Takeaways: Startup friendly, High performance, Low cost.

Map For the Future:

So here are some basis for choosing one service over the other based on some real-world scenarios that seems to be consistent through the industries, but again, reminder to please keep in mind that your business needs are dependent on what your business needs.

So let’s go over some situations for businesses and explain why one service would be a better solution than the other:

Let’s take an example of: a small business looking to scale, they’re on a lean budget, can’t hire or expand immediately for in-house software architect, but plan to in the near future. They’re currently utilizing Microsoft 365 E5 license and are very heavy on utilizing Sharepoint for team workflow, utilizing Active Directory for user management, Microsoft Server, and Outlook for communications. Then obviously, they should go with AWS (just kidding); of course it is better to go Azure in this situation. BUT, in this same scenario, let’s say that they are getting ready to close a big round of investment funds, and will be using that to exponentially grow their workforce with software developers, architects, information security personnel and so forth, then it really is a situation where AWS may be in fact a better choice for them; this further shows that you really have to know your business needs, and your business goals for the future.

• Small business just completed startup round, 3-5 years in; now a growing force of 30 employees, with growing revenue and plans for immense growth in the next 5 years. Using Office 365, but core team are software engineers and they are mostly utilizing Linux and Macs. Better to go with AWS for cost efficiency for scalability for their particular business.

On-Demand Pricing: 

Let’s take a look at an average, By-The-Hour, Pricing map from October of 2020. 

In the case of AWS, a very basic instance that comprises 2 virtual CPUs and 8GB RAM costs around $0.092/hour. In a similar instance, Azure costs around $0.096/hour. Azure tends to be costlier than AWS when the architecture starts growing upwards. When a bigger instance with 256GB RAM and 64vPCU is considered, AWS charges $3.20/hour whereas Azure will charge around $6.76/hour for the same specifications.

But that is only looking at the cost of the service, businesses also need to consider the cost of staff that will be working on the systems.

When looking for an Engineer for your Team, an AWS engineer average salary will be $140,000+/yr for software architect; Azure engineer average salary will be $110,000+/yr for software architect.

Real World Cost:

This is a real world cost for a client, with 2 options given for their IT solutions model.  It is a per-month cost with contractual agreement with AWS and their situational instance of 2 virtual CPUs, 4gb RAM, and 8GB of temporary storage; it will grant access to 30 users, with a usage of about 220hrs per month.  

Side note, whether you are working with us, or any IT solutions company, contractor, or consultant; they should be giving you at least a couple of options for the best solutions for your business and be able to differentiate the two to let you know exactly what you are getting. 

We’ve heard many cases of “well, the IT consulting company told us to go with this because it was the best one,” is not always the best answer, so if that does happen, it would probably be best to get a second opinion and to shop around.

Conclusion:

AWS and Azure are the top Cloud Service Providers in the world, and really you can’t go wrong with either one. We hope some of the details and specifics that we’ve discussed helped or will help with your decision making process, or if you’re already on one 

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