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I think this article is comparing apple and pears to some extend. My company is solely cloud based and are using Azure, AWS and GCP, although 98% of our bespoke

I think this article is comparing apple and pears to some extend. My company is solely cloud based and are using Azure, AWS and GCP, although 98% of our bespoke infrastructure runs on AWS. We could migrate this infrastructure to GCP, as Google has been catching up with AWS on cloud infrastructure, however, I would dread to migrate it all to Azure. We mostly use Azure for Azure AD (and Office 365), and AWS to build out APIs. Basically we are using Microsoft for out of the box services and AWS for anything else.

cglong 7y ago
As an engineer working on Azure, why would you be opposed to migrating everything to Azure specifically?
- zdragnar 7y ago
  Not OP, but in a similar boat. Basically, having everything in one cloud provider's hardware is a risk to uptime guarantees is the biggest reason. There are other, less good reasons too, but that is the one that can't be changed by adding features to Azure (or any other).
  - addicted 7y ago
    Is Azure unique in that if you shift to Azure you cannot also use other cloud providers but if you are on GCP or Azure you can use the other?
    - webpaymentsguy 7y ago
      AWS has better open source managed solutions than Azure and GCP right now, but Azure also has things like a billing console that can integrate with AWS - which is a great feature albeit not being so powerful yet.
- LilBytes 7y ago
  Not OP but, your global outages freak me out. I moved companies close to a year ago and with that platforms that I develop on (from Azure to AWS). Your global outages of which I can't engineer around at all don't give me faith in your platform. Whereas AWS, sure, service outages occur but they're often region specific which I can build around.
- iakov 7y ago
  Not OP, but want to chime in. My experience with Azure support has been dreadful, to say the least. Insanely long response times, being bounced from agent to agent, people just misreading the ticket. I really don't want to deal with Azure at this point because I don't trust the support. Most of our company infra is on AWS, and while they aren't without fault, I can say that every time we needed to talk to a human being from their side, it was quick and on-point.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    To chime in with another single data point, my experience with Azure support has actually been pretty good. Tickets take anywhere between 2h and 72h to get a response, which I'll grant is not ideal, but the ticket handlers I've dealt with have all been knowledgeable and helpful. I work for enterprise-level companies though, so I don't know if support varies for smaller ones depending on spend.
    - willjr10 7y ago
      I agree. I work for a company who is a top 100 globally customer of Azure. In case where we have needed support, depending on how severe we define the issue, we are contacted within minutes. Well within the defined contact times stated as when creating support tickets. In several other cases, Microsoft has brought in people from around the world to help workout various issues. However, I don't know if the response times and help offered would be the the same if we were a different scale organization.
      - codebolt 7y ago
        I'm just a private individual hosting his blog on Azure, and I've had a stellar experience. I made a post about some gripes I had setting up my website, and a person from the developer outreach program reached out to me and put me in touch with the engineering team directly. Turns out my main complaint (lack of support for managed SSL cert for root domains) was already in the pipeline. They even sent a bunch of MS/Azure gear to my doorstep as a thanks for my feedback.
    - 7y ago
- oxfordmale 7y ago
  Azure is still catching up in many areas. For example low-priority VMs is a recent addition to Azure, whereas AWS has had these instances since 2009. I also find the Azure interface really clunky compared to AWS and I am definitely not a fan of the AWS console either.
  - webpaymentsguy 7y ago
    Azure and GCP had either comparable or worse UIs for a lot of services compared to AWS, but region specific UIs were a notable unintuitive design compared to others.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bluedevilzn 7y ago
How different are the APIs between Azure/AWS/GCP? How easy or difficult would it be to make that switch?
- salex89 7y ago
  Very different, at least between Azure and AWS. The Azure one is very "manual", you must do a bunch of operations separately which are abstracted as a one-click-thing in the portal. Also, when working through the API, you get a sense of how unreliable some processes are. Of course you should have circuit breakers, failovers, rollbacks and stuff. But with Azure API, they are a MUST. We also work with the GCP API and it's somewhat closer to Azure, AFAIK (haven't worked with it directly).

cglong 7y ago

As an engineer working on Azure, why would you be opposed to migrating everything to Azure specifically?

zdragnar 7y ago
Not OP, but in a similar boat. Basically, having everything in one cloud provider's hardware is a risk to uptime guarantees is the biggest reason. There are other, less good reasons too, but that is the one that can't be changed by adding features to Azure (or any other).
- addicted 7y ago
  Is Azure unique in that if you shift to Azure you cannot also use other cloud providers but if you are on GCP or Azure you can use the other?
  - webpaymentsguy 7y ago
    AWS has better open source managed solutions than Azure and GCP right now, but Azure also has things like a billing console that can integrate with AWS - which is a great feature albeit not being so powerful yet.
LilBytes 7y ago
Not OP but, your global outages freak me out. I moved companies close to a year ago and with that platforms that I develop on (from Azure to AWS). Your global outages of which I can't engineer around at all don't give me faith in your platform. Whereas AWS, sure, service outages occur but they're often region specific which I can build around.
iakov 7y ago
Not OP, but want to chime in. My experience with Azure support has been dreadful, to say the least. Insanely long response times, being bounced from agent to agent, people just misreading the ticket. I really don't want to deal with Azure at this point because I don't trust the support. Most of our company infra is on AWS, and while they aren't without fault, I can say that every time we needed to talk to a human being from their side, it was quick and on-point.
- GordonS 7y ago
  To chime in with another single data point, my experience with Azure support has actually been pretty good. Tickets take anywhere between 2h and 72h to get a response, which I'll grant is not ideal, but the ticket handlers I've dealt with have all been knowledgeable and helpful. I work for enterprise-level companies though, so I don't know if support varies for smaller ones depending on spend.
  - willjr10 7y ago
    I agree. I work for a company who is a top 100 globally customer of Azure. In case where we have needed support, depending on how severe we define the issue, we are contacted within minutes. Well within the defined contact times stated as when creating support tickets. In several other cases, Microsoft has brought in people from around the world to help workout various issues. However, I don't know if the response times and help offered would be the the same if we were a different scale organization.
    - codebolt 7y ago
      I'm just a private individual hosting his blog on Azure, and I've had a stellar experience. I made a post about some gripes I had setting up my website, and a person from the developer outreach program reached out to me and put me in touch with the engineering team directly. Turns out my main complaint (lack of support for managed SSL cert for root domains) was already in the pipeline. They even sent a bunch of MS/Azure gear to my doorstep as a thanks for my feedback.
  - 7y ago
oxfordmale 7y ago
Azure is still catching up in many areas. For example low-priority VMs is a recent addition to Azure, whereas AWS has had these instances since 2009. I also find the Azure interface really clunky compared to AWS and I am definitely not a fan of the AWS console either.
- webpaymentsguy 7y ago
  Azure and GCP had either comparable or worse UIs for a lot of services compared to AWS, but region specific UIs were a notable unintuitive design compared to others.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

bluedevilzn 7y ago

How different are the APIs between Azure/AWS/GCP? How easy or difficult would it be to make that switch?

salex89 7y ago
Very different, at least between Azure and AWS. The Azure one is very "manual", you must do a bunch of operations separately which are abstracted as a one-click-thing in the portal. Also, when working through the API, you get a sense of how unreliable some processes are. Of course you should have circuit breakers, failovers, rollbacks and stuff. But with Azure API, they are a MUST. We also work with the GCP API and it's somewhat closer to Azure, AFAIK (haven't worked with it directly).