While Microsoft Azure has enjoyed consistent growth in recent years, it still trails behind Amazon Web Services (AWS), the market leader. With Google tight in third place, the cloud service sector is becoming hugely important. To continue to pry users away from AWS, Microsoft is today published a cloud service map.
To continue to pry users away from AWS, Microsoft is today published a cloud service map.
The map shows why users should decide to use Azure over Amazon Web Services. Microsoft has used the map to detail the cloud categories across both services. Basically, the company is showing which features and capabilities are available on each service.
Microsoft’s Azure cloud service map is available as a PDF download and is categorized in the following 13 sections:
- Marketplace – Cloud marketplace services bring together native and partner service offerings to a single place, making it easier for customers and partners to understand what they can do.
- Compute– Compute commonly refers to the collection of cloud computing resources that your application can run on.
- Storage– Storage services offer durable, highly-available, and massively-scalable cloud storage for your application, whether it runs in the cloud or not.
- Networking & Content Delivery– Allows you to easily provision private networks, connect your cloud application to your on-premises datacenters, and more.
- Database – Database services refers to options for storing data, whether it’s a managed relational SQL database that’s globally distributed or multi-model NoSQL databases designed for any scale.
- Analytics and big data– Make the most informed decision possible by analyzing all of the data you need in real time.
- Intelligence – Intelligence services enable natural and contextual interaction within your applications, using machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities that include text, speech, vision, and search.
- Internet of Things (IoT)– Internet of Things (IoT) services connect your devices, assets, and sensors to collect and analyze untapped data.
- Management & monitoring – Management and monitoring services provide visibility into the health, performance, and utilization of your applications, workloads, and infrastructure.
- Mobile services – Mobile services enable you to reach and engage your customers everywhere, on every device. DevOps services make it easier to bring a higher quality app to market faster, and a number of engagement services make it easier to deliver performant experiences that feel tailored to each user.
- Security, identity, and access – A range of capabilities that protect your services and data in the cloud, while also enabling you to extend your existing user accounts and identities, or provisioning entirely new ones.
- Developer tools – Developer tools empower you to quickly build, debug, deploy, diagnose, and manage multi-platform, scalable apps and services.
- Enterprise integration– Enterprise integration makes it easier to build and manage B2B workflows that integrate with third-party software-as-a-service apps, on-premises apps, and custom apps.
Azure vs. the Competition
As I have written before, the cloud service market is currently dominated by three companies. At the moment, it is a clear race between Amazon (Amazon Web Services), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud).
However, the market is interesting because each company is comfortable in its current position. Amazon is the clear market leader and that will not change anytime soon. Microsoft is comfortably in second position, again with the situation unlikely to change.
Amazon is the clear market leader and that will not change anytime soon. Microsoft is comfortably in second position, again with the situation unlikely to change.
Then there is Google, down in third place by some distance, but way ahead of anything bringing up the rear.
For Microsoft, Azure has been a driving force behind the company’s resurgence in recent years. Growth is solid and Redmond is setting its sights on reeling in Amazon. However, Google is too far behind Amazon and must instead target what is in front of it.
