Oen question I am frequently asked is to compare various cloud offerings in the market. Although I am just starting to play with Azure, I have been using Amazon EC2 for some time now. There doesn't seem to be much overlap between the approach of the three key vendors.
Here is my current understanding (which may change as I dive deeper into Azure). There is also a good chance that Microsoft has unveiled only a small subset of the long term product roadmap, and may release new features in future to compete directly with Amazon EC2 or google apps.
Amaozn EC2:
Not too different from existing hosters like "Network Solutions" and "Go Daddy", except privides the unlimited elasticity of the resources coupled with "pay as you go" model.
Simply speaking:
a. You can rent as many servers as you want (scale up and down)
b. You can pretty much install anything on those servers (Windows, LAMP, etc)
c. You pay only for the resources that you use (instead of a fixed monthly fee)
d. You take care of installing load balancer and such based on how you want to manage session state acorss various servers.
Microsoft Azure:
It's more of a platform (or a set of APIs). As long as your code follows the standards defined by the underlying API, Azure takes care of the rest. That rest includes things like:
a. Setting up of servers
b. Load balancing
c. Scale up (and) down based on your user load and subscription level.
Essentially, you are not renting just a bunch of hardware and dealing with headache of installing software on it, but building your solution based on some specification and leaving the hardware-software headcahe to Microsoft. Thus, being able to focus more on your business logic as opposed to dealing with software versioning and compatibilities issues.
Google Apps:
I do not have much experience with Google Apps, but it seems more of a SaaS (Software as a service) play. You essentially subscribe to softwares like Gmail, Google Docs,etc; and you get certain premium services like backups, restore, custom domain names, dedicated account managers,etc based on your subscription level.
This is similar to SaaS offerings by other vendors like SalesForce.com. Even Microsoft offering live Live Services will fall into this category.
Conclusion:
If I were to put the three vendors into boxes, this is what the boxes would be labeled (based on their respective offerings):
Amazon : Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Microsoft : Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Google : Software as a Service (SaaS)
It would be interesting to see the traction/direction that each of these get over next few months/years to come. I, for multiple reasons (including my Microsoft background), am liking Azure more than the rest, and cannot wait for it to evolve into something magnificient.
Cheers!!
Here is my current understanding (which may change as I dive deeper into Azure). There is also a good chance that Microsoft has unveiled only a small subset of the long term product roadmap, and may release new features in future to compete directly with Amazon EC2 or google apps.
Amaozn EC2:
Not too different from existing hosters like "Network Solutions" and "Go Daddy", except privides the unlimited elasticity of the resources coupled with "pay as you go" model.
Simply speaking:
a. You can rent as many servers as you want (scale up and down)
b. You can pretty much install anything on those servers (Windows, LAMP, etc)
c. You pay only for the resources that you use (instead of a fixed monthly fee)
d. You take care of installing load balancer and such based on how you want to manage session state acorss various servers.
Microsoft Azure:
It's more of a platform (or a set of APIs). As long as your code follows the standards defined by the underlying API, Azure takes care of the rest. That rest includes things like:
a. Setting up of servers
b. Load balancing
c. Scale up (and) down based on your user load and subscription level.
Essentially, you are not renting just a bunch of hardware and dealing with headache of installing software on it, but building your solution based on some specification and leaving the hardware-software headcahe to Microsoft. Thus, being able to focus more on your business logic as opposed to dealing with software versioning and compatibilities issues.
Google Apps:
I do not have much experience with Google Apps, but it seems more of a SaaS (Software as a service) play. You essentially subscribe to softwares like Gmail, Google Docs,etc; and you get certain premium services like backups, restore, custom domain names, dedicated account managers,etc based on your subscription level.
This is similar to SaaS offerings by other vendors like SalesForce.com. Even Microsoft offering live Live Services will fall into this category.
Conclusion:
If I were to put the three vendors into boxes, this is what the boxes would be labeled (based on their respective offerings):
Amazon : Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
Microsoft : Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Google : Software as a Service (SaaS)
It would be interesting to see the traction/direction that each of these get over next few months/years to come. I, for multiple reasons (including my Microsoft background), am liking Azure more than the rest, and cannot wait for it to evolve into something magnificient.
Cheers!!
