Monday, September 12, 2022

The era of Cloud Computing

 

which is good for a beginner AWS or Azure

AWS vs. Azure: Which One Is Better and Which One Should You Choose as a beginner?


AWS vs. Azure is almost an evergreen comparison since AWS and Microsoft Azure are the two most established leading names in the cloud computing space. As of now, AWS is bigger in terms of revenue while Azure has a bigger user base. Over here, we will try to understand the impact of the two and find out the winner of the ‘AWS vs. Azure’ battle. 

About AWS

AWS was launched in 2006. At present, AWS offers more than 100 services related to databases, computing, application development, infrastructure management and security. AWS has its offices located in 16 geographical locations.

About Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure was launched in the year 2008. It is a cloud computing service offered through a global network of Microsoft-managed data centres. These services are provided in three ways: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). It also supports several tools, programming languages and frameworks.


AWS vs. Azure – Which is better?

While both provide similar services, there are certain factors based on which the two differ. These can be segregated in terms of revenue generation, flexibility, features and adaptability.

Market share and Revenue

AWS has become one of the most popular cloud computing service providers in the world with its revenue crossing the mark of $59 Billion. This is a 37% positive revenue growth in Q2 2021 w.r.t. Q1 2021.  Azure has seen a 50% growth in revenue with the numbers not known publically.

At present, the market share of AWS is 40% whereas Azure has a 30% hold on the market. In terms of market share and revenue, AWS appears to be leading. Several other parameters can be a game-changer in this battle of AWS vs. Azure. 

Open Source Community

Microsoft Azure is still in the process of becoming friendly to the open-source community. This hasn’t changed the industry’s perception of Microsoft. This also contributes to the domination of Amazon AWS in the cloud hosting space. 

Storage Capacity

AWS’s cloud object storage solution offers high availability as well as automatic replication across regions. In AWS, temporary storage starts functioning whenever an instance starts and it stops when an instance gets terminated. It also provides block storage which is quite similar to hard disks. It can be either be attached to EC2 instances or can be kept separate. 

On the other hand, Azure uses page blobs and temporary storage for VM based volumes. Its block storage is similar to S3 in AWS. 

Machine Learning Model

Both AWS and Azure have machine learning studios for machine learning model development. Unlike Amazon SageMaker, Azure’s studio does not require to delve deep into the complexities of data  engineering, python coding and open source libraries. 

Pricing Model

Both Azure and AWS offer pay as you go pricing model. AWS is chargeable on an hourly basis whereas Azure is chargeable on a per-minute basis. Azure offers more flexibility in short term subscriptions plans. While comparing the two, Azure is more expensive. This can be seen in the case of Azure instances which get costlier with increasing sizes. For a  256GB RAM and 64vPCU, Azure will charge almost double what AWS is charging. 

Compatibility with Hybrid Cloud Market

Azure excels in the hybrid cloud market in comparison with AWS which is still a work in progress. 

Licensing and License Mobility

Azure and AWS ensure that customers do not have to face difficulties related to licensing or license mobility. You only have to pay for services that you are availing of. In Microsoft Azure, you are eligible for license mobility if you have already paid for the service.

Although Azure is convenient in terms of set-up for Windows admin, AWS is highly configurable and feature-enriched. When it comes to comparing AWS vs. Azure, it is very clear that most of the services are similar in both cases.  On the other hand, Azure leads AWS in terms of features such as Azure Site Recovery, Azure Event Hubs, the Azure Visual Studio Online, and Azure Scheduler. 

In terms of flexibility, adaptability to the open-source community AWS seems to be leading. It also gets an additional point when it comes to revenue generation.


Thursday, August 25, 2022

The era of Cloud Computing

 

The era of Cloud Computing

 The nature and tendency of humans is inquisitive, previously most people were concerned about how to obtain computers in their offices, schools and homes. The main reason behind that was in order to get close to the world and communicate and exchange data via these devices. But today people are concerned about the Internet and its speed for effective and efficient communication, therefore Cloud Computing comes into demand. 


Cloud computing refers to the provision of computational resources on demand via a computer network based on internet protocol. Submission of  a task by users or clients such as word processing, to the service provider, such as Google, without actually possessing the required software or hardware. The consumer’s computer may contain very little software or data, serving as little more than a display terminal connected to the Internet.

Cloud Computing means accessing the data and services over the Internet, usually in a completely seamless way.

When you prepare documents over the internet it is a newer example of cloud computing like Google Documents where you can create a document, spreadsheet, presentation, or whatever you like using Web-based software. You do not require to maintain or type words into a program like Microsoft Word that is running on your computer.

 



The history of Cloud Computing started in the 1960s and in recent years the technology has served to shake-up both the enterprise IT and supplier landscape.

Before Cloud Computing, there was Client/Server computing which is basically a centralized storage in which all the software applications, all the data and all the controls are resided on the server side.

If a single user wants to access specific data or run a program, he/she needs to connect to the server and then gain appropriate access, and then he/she can do his/her business.

After all these efforts, distributed computing came into effect, where all the computers are networked together and share their resources with each other.




On the basis of above computing, there emerged cloud computing concepts that later were implemented.

  • Around 1961, John MacCharty suggested in a speech at MIT that computing can be sold like a utility, just like water or electricity.
  • In 1999, Salesforce.com started delivering applications to users using a simple website. The applications were adopted and used over the Internet, and this way the dream of computing sold as utility were true.
  • In 2002, Amazon started Amazon Web Services, which started providing services like storage, computation and even human intelligence. 
  • In 2009, cloud computing enterprise applications provided by Google Apps started.
  •  In 2009, Windows Azure launched by Microsoft, and companies like Oracle and HP have all joined hand with them.