Microsoft Azure — Cloud for .NET and Java Shops

We deployed AWS for one project (see the August article). But we have clients who are Microsoft shops — Active Directory, Office 365, .NET. For them Azure is the natural choice. And we were surprised by how well Azure supports Java and Linux too.

Why Azure Alongside AWS¶

Enterprise integration: Azure AD integrates with the corporate Active Directory. SSO for both cloud and on-premise. For enterprise clients this is a killer feature. Hybrid cloud: Azure Stack for private cloud with the same API. PaaS offering: Azure App Service — deploy a WAR/JAR without managing a server.

Azure App Service¶

PaaS for web applications. Deploy from git, automatic scaling, SSL, custom domains. Supports Java, .NET, Node.js, Python, PHP. For simple applications you do not need VMs or containers — App Service handles the infrastructure.

# Deploy a Java application to Azure
az webapp create --name myapp --resource-group mygroup \
    --plan myplan --runtime "JAVA|8-jre8"
az webapp deployment source config-zip \
    --name myapp --resource-group mygroup \
    --src target/myapp.zip

Azure SQL and Cosmos DB¶

Azure SQL Database — managed SQL Server. Geo-replication, automatic backups, threat detection. Cosmos DB — globally distributed NoSQL database with a multi-model API (SQL, MongoDB, Cassandra). Interesting for global applications.

Azure vs. AWS: Our Comparison¶

• IaaS: AWS EC2 is more mature with more instance types. Azure VM is comparable.
• PaaS: Azure App Service is better than AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
• Enterprise: Azure AD, hybrid cloud — Azure clearly leads.
• Ecosystem: AWS has more services and a larger community. Azure is catching up.
• Pricing: Comparable. Azure offers Enterprise Agreement discounts.

Multi-Cloud Strategy¶

Not AWS or Azure — AWS and Azure. Different clients, different needs. Terraform for abstraction, knowledge of both platforms as a competitive advantage.