Comparing Cloud Vendors — Operations Products

This is the third post in the series. Please see the first one and second one. In this, I will focus on Ops focused offerings. Ops services include Management tools, Security & Identity and Legacy/Enterprise Integration.

Disclaimer: This is not an indepth analysis of all products, just a high-level comparison of offering suite. The main aim here is to inspire discussion and hear differing views.

Note: I took products from AWS Products page and Azure Products page — if something is missing here, its because that product is not found there ( or I made a mistake :)- do let me know ).

Management Products

The main products in management tools are:

Advantage: AWS. AWS has been building management tools native for the Cloud much longer and have more mature solutions. Microsoft understands management requirements of enterprises, but its still transitioning from on-premises model to a cloud model.

Security and Identity Products

The main products in security & Identity are:

Advantage: Microsoft. AWS has been little slow to address security and identity requirements and it shows. They are still working to mature their IAM models, have hurriedly packaged third party products for HSM. AWS has recently started on the directory offering and its not clear if they can do an effective job for addressing enterprise needs yet. AWS has work to do in this area, while Microsoft has to ensure that they don’t make it too complex for Cloud adoption by requiring use of AD model, which in some cases is not optimal.

Enterprise/Legacy Integration:

Here we only find Azure products.

Advantage: Azure

This is an area where AWS is weak and it is expected. However, they are offering migration services lately with database migration, snowball device etc. I do not think this makes any organizations adopting AWS hesitate, because they typically tend to move to newer model vs preserving legacy.

Summary

This really comes down to what organization wants to do. If they are a current Microsoft customer that wants to preserve some legacy apps and move to Cloud on their own time table, Azure wins hands down. If they are looking to Cloud as a way to propel themselves into next generation app development, AWS will help them adopt better cloud hygiene.

Thoughts? If you want to offer a clarification or disagree with this, tweet or reply here and where appropriate, I will note it here.