There was a time when people used to run applications and software downloaded to their own devices or servers. Thanks to the revolution brought about in the cloud computing industry, people can access all the applications through the internet, regardless of their location. This solution has become popular over the years, especially among small and medium enterprises that run on a modest budget.
According to the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), 84 percent of all the companies in the United Kingdom have adopted at least one cloud service. Research also shows that about 78 percent of companies in the country adopt two or more cloud services – and even use it for accounting on the go. The technology has evolved in phases, starting from utility and grid computing, application service provision (ASP) and the latest Software as a Service (SaaS).
There are innumerable reasons that have contributed to the remarkable success of cloud hosting:
- Flexibility: Need more bandwidth or storage space instantly? The cloud has you covered. The ability to meet ever-changing business demands is what cloud services are known for.
- Disaster recovery: You no longer need a sophisticated disaster recovery plan as cloud computing would take care of it. As a matter of fact, using a cloud service reduced the time to resolve issues by as much as 50 percent.
- Software updates: According to statistics released in 2010, UK-based companies spent over 400 hours each month to manage website security. On the other hand, cloud computing suppliers such as Microsoft and Amazon would take care of this.
- Work from anywhere: According to a recent survey, 42 percent of employees in the UK would give up some of their salary if they were given the option to telecommute. This would have a positive effect on the person’s work – life balance.
- Eco-friendly: Businesses that require cloud services only use the space they need. This reduces carbon footprint by a considerable margin as switching onto a cloud is known to decrease energy consumption by as much as 30 percent.
Comparing Arch Rivals – Amazon Web Services versus Microsoft Azure
Both Microsoft and Amazon are head over heels in grabbing the market share with their cloud-based services. While Amazon did have an amazing head start, Windows Azure is soon catching up. Both these companies have the resources to lure individual as well as enterprise customers.
Amazon Web Services vs. Windows Azure: Computing
Amazon employs an Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), which allows users to configure virtual machines in a pre-configured fashion or customize them according to their needs. Users get to choose the size, power, memory capacity and number of VMs. In addition, they can also choose the location and availability zone. Load balancing and auto scaling are a couple of additional features supported by EC2.
Windows Azure was made available to consumers in May 2013. Users of this service could choose a virtual hard disk to create a virtual machine. This can either be pre-defined or user-defined. You would have to specify the number of cores and memory capacity.
Amazon Web Services Vs Windows Azure: Storage and Databases
Amazon Web Services use temporary storage, which is allocated once an instance begins and gets destroyed once it has been terminated. Storage is provided that can either be attached to an instance or kept separate. Amazon also has full support for relational and NoSQL databases as well as Big Data.
Similar to AWS, Azure user temporary storage as well as Page Blobs (Microsoft’s block storage) for virtual machine–based volumes. Azure also provides complete support for relational and NoSQL databases and Big Data, made available through HDInsight and Windows Azure Table.
Amazon Web Services Vs Windows Azure: Networking
Amazon’s virtual private clouds and Azure’s Virtual Network give users the flexibility of grouping virtual machines into isolated networks on the cloud. Therefore, users would be able to precisely define a network topology and create route tables, subnets and private IP address ranges.
Amazon Web Services vs. Windows Azure: Pricing
While customers using Amazon Web Services are charged by rounding up the number of hours used, Microsoft charges customers based on the number of minutes used on demand.
