Available via license: CC BY
Content may be subject to copyright.
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web
Services from Users’ Perspectives
https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v14i10.9902
Rizik M. H. Al-Sayyed (*),Wadi’ A. Hijawi, Anwar M. Bashiti,
Ibrahim AlJarah, Nadim Obeid, Omar Y. Adwan
The University of Jordan, Amman, Jordan
r.alsayyed@ju.edu.jo
Abstract—Cloud computing is one of the paradigms that have undertaken to
deliver the utility computing concept. It views computing as a utility similar to
water and electricity. We aim in this paper to make an investigation of two highly
efficacious Cloud platforms: Microsoft Azure (Azure) and Amazon Web Ser-
vices (AWS) from users’ perspectives the point of view of users. We highlight
and compare in depth the features of Azure and AWS from users’ perspectives.
The features which we shall focus on include (1) Pricing, (2) Availability, (3)
Confidentiality, (4) Secrecy, (5) Tier Account and (6) Service Level Agreement
(SLA). The study shows that Azure is more appropriate when considering Pricing
and Availability (Error Rate) while AWS is more appropriate when considering
Tier account. Our user survey study and its statistical analysis agreed with the
arguments made for each of the six comparisons factors.
Keywords—Cloud Computing, Cloud Service Provider (CSP), Microsoft Az-
ure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Service Level Agreement, Tier Account
1 Introduction
Using computing as a utility is one of the main objectives that IT industry strives for
[2]. Cloud computing is one of the paradigms that have undertaken to deliver the utility
computing concept. Cloud computing can be defined as a service over the Internet
where the application, services, storage and files are hosted on servers that are available
in cloud infrastructure environment. It uses clusters of distributed computers with on-
demand resources to provide powerful and reliable services over the Internet [1]. The
rapid and worldwide adoption of cloud computing is due to the many benefits it offers
to both organizations and individual users. It increases data and resources availability
where users can reach their data whenever they need. It reduces cost since it benefits
from virtualization which is a technique that optimizes computer resources.
It is worth noting that both AWS and Azure offer comparable capabilities regarding
meeting the needs of their customers and they constantly strive for accommodating de-
mand for new cloud services.
The choice of AWS and Azure is motivated by the fact that AWS is a clear leader
Cloud vendor while Azure is the fastest growing cloud provider. It is important to con-
sider them from an operational perspective. Both providers seem to offer comparative
offering such as compute, storage, networking and other services such as databases, big
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
217
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
data and APIs. Each provider has a global infrastructure deployment. For instance, Am-
azon has a massive geographical presence via deployed data centers across the world
where in each data centers there are thousands of servers along with storage and net-
working appliances. Microsoft is making a extensive to catch up with Amazon. In terms
of servers, Amazon with the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), has the largest server con-
figuration. Its Virtual Machines (VMs) are divided into nine families where each family
serves a different purpose. The families include general-purpose computing, CPU-op-
timized, RAM- optimized, storage-optimized and GPU-optimized families. Microsoft
has less variety in VM families but has more flexibility with regards to machine size.
Furthermore, they have optimized machines with better CPU, more RAM and more
storage and network-optimized.
Furthermore, preferring one cloud over another is determined by the need of indi-
vidual customers and the tasks and operations they want to run. It is conceivable that
customers may use both providers for different functions and operations. How-
ever there are features that distinguish one provider from the other regarding their ap-
proaches, which can help the customers to determine what best serves their needs.
In this paper, we highlight and compare in depth the factors/features of Azure and
AWS from users’ perspectives. The factors which we shall focus on include
• Pricing
• Availability
• Confidentiality
• Secrecy
• Tier Account
• Service Level Agreement (SLA)
Table 1 summarizes these features.
Table 1. Azure vs. AWS Features
Factors
Sub-Factors
Pricing
Currencies, purchasing ways, the minimum billing cycle and pricing calculator.
Availability
Calculation uptime percentage and Error Rate.
Confidentiality
Confidentiality countermeasures.
Secrecy
Data in transit and data in rest.
Tier Account
Provided services, period of free tier and user’s data continuance.
SLA
SLA provided ratio of different services: Virtual Machine, Cloud Storage, DNS, CDN
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, we present some of the
existing cloud services. In section 3, we present AWS and Azure. Section 4 presents
the methodology model that will be the base for doing the comparison. In Section 5, we
make detailed comparisons concerning each feature and factor followed by a discus-
sion. Section 6 presents a user survey study and its statistical analysis. In Section 7, we
present a comparison with previous work on comparing aspects of Azure and AWS. In
Section 8, we present the conclusions and suggestions for future work.
218
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
2 Cloud Services
Cloud computing services are easy to use, maintain and upgrade. They are classified
into three basic types:
• Software as a Service (SaaS)
• Platform as a Service (PaaS)
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
2.1 Software as a service (SAAS)
With SaaS, a provider licenses an application to customers either as a service on
demand or at no charge. For example ‘CloudOn’ is an organization that provides Mi-
crosoft Office software via the cloud on mobile devices or through a desktop browser.
Email, CRM, Collaborative and ERP are examples of SaaS [3, 4].
2.2 Platform as a service (PAAS)
PaaS can be regarded as a computing platform that allows the construction of soft-
ware applications rapidly and without difficulty. It saves the user the need and com-
plexity of purchasing and maintains the software and infrastructure that supports it. The
user needs to know about the platform only. Examples of these types include Microsoft
Azure, AWS, Application Development, Web and Google AppEngine [3].
2.3 Infrastructure as a service (IAAS)
Many organizations do not have an ability to construct infrastructure for on-premise
data centers. Therefore, they resort to the cloud computing technology option and
choose a probable provider to supply them with the services they need. Such a provider
is known as Cloud Service Provider (CSP). The provider hosts hardware, software,
servers, storage and other infrastructure components for the users. It may also accom-
modate users' applications. Normally, a CSP provides services with good performance
at an affordable price.
Amazon, Hewlett Packard (HP) and CA Technologies are some examples of vendors
who offer this cloud service [3] [5]. Caching, Legacy, Networking and Security are
examples of these services. Table 2 summarizes the services mentioned earlier.
The most prominent providers are AWS, Azure, Oracle, CenturyLink, CloudSigma,
Dimension Data, Google Cloud, Hostway, and others [6].
Table 2. Cloud Computing Services
SaaS
PaaS
IaaS
CRM, Collaborative,
Email,
Communications,
Games, Desktop, ERP.
Application deployment Database,
Decision Support, WebServer,
Development tool, Streaming.
Virtual Machine, Servers, storage,
Load Balancer,
Network,
System Management, Technical.
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
219
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
2.4 Comparing AWS and azure
This paper makes a comparison between AWS and Azure platforms using six com-
parison factors that we believe to be the most important based on the customers’ point
of view. Table 2 summarizes these six factors and its sub-factors.
2.5 Amazon wed service (AWS)
AWS is a cloud service platform that offers SaaS, PaaS and IaaS with highly relia-
bility, scalability and low-cost infrastructure. AWS was officially launched in 2006 [7].
Within 12 geographic Regions world-wide, AWS operates in 33 Availability Zones.
Data center locations are in U.S., Europe, Brazil, Singapore, Japan, and Australia.
About 11 more Availability Zones and 5 regions are expected to come online during
next year [8]. Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) from Amazon, virtual private cloud (VPC),
Rout 53 (a highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web ser-
vice), Relational Database Service (RDS), Elastic load balancer (ELB), Simple Storage
Service (S3), Elastic Block Store (EBS), Glacier, Simple Queue Service (SQS)/ Auto
Scale, Security Group and Cloudfront are some of the services provided by AWS [9].
2.6 Microsoft azure
Azure is a popular cloud service platform and infrastructure; it offers SaaS, PaaS and
IaaS with highly reliability, scalability and low-cost infrastructure. Azure was first
launched in 2008. It is available in 140 countries, including China, and supports 10
languages, 24 currencies, and the data centers available in 28 regions [10]. Some of
services that Azure offering to customers are Virtual Machine, Virtual Network, Win-
dows Azure Name Resolution, Structure Query Language (SQL) Database, Traffic
Manager, Storage, Scheduler, EndPoint and Content Delivery Network (CDN) [11].
3 Methodology
Our research focuses on customers’ point of view and the main functional require-
ments for them to go to cloud. We proposed a comparison model (see Fig. 1) with six
factors to compare between two cloud platforms leaders: Amazon Web Service (AWS)
and Microsoft Azure.
The six comparison factors: Pricing (currency, purchasing options, purchasing
styles, the minimum billing cycle and available calculators), Free Tier, SLA, Availabil-
ity, Confidentiality and Secrecy.
It is worth mentioning that neither we were able to find in literature a previous com-
parison between Azure and AWS that grouped the comparisons factors the same way
we did; nor we were able to see comparison with the same details we presented. Fig.1
shows how these factors are grouped to go through the comparison process between
Azure and AWS.
Notice that we added the word security to all security related factors (Availability,
Confidentiality, and Secrecy). This addition aims at making the comparison process
easier as will be described in section 4.
220
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
Fig. 1. Comparison Model.
4 Comparisions and Discussions
The comparison process will be covered as follows: we first list the factor of com-
parison; we introduce the case of this factor in Azure followed by its case in AWS, and
we conclude each factor by a discussion that clarifies our findings.
4.1 Pricing
We will present pricing for Azure followed by pricing in AWS and then we conclude
the subsection by a discussion to our findings.
Pricing in Azure: Azure services are available in 140 countries; it supports billing
in 24 currencies and allows any one of the following multiple purchasing ways: Pay-
As-You-Go Subscriptions, Prepaid Subscriptions, Microsoft Resellers, Enterprise
Agreements, Microsoft Azure Compute Option and Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Ben-
efit [25].
These different purchasing ways give flexibility for purchasing and billing and pro-
vide an appropriate purchasing option for any company or organization, Pay-As-You-
Go Subscriptions option represents the classic purchasing way for cloud computing
provider where the customer will pay for only the resources used. On other hand, Pre-
paid Subscriptions option gives the customer 5% discount by prepaying the Azure ser-
vices for 12 months [26].
Microsoft Resellers option is a convenient purchasing option for small and midsize
businesses purchase through Microsoft Open Licensing by contacting a Microsoft part-
ner or reseller and purchase an Online Service Activation (OSA) Key [27].
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
221
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
Enterprise Agreements option is a convenient purchasing option for the large organ-
izations where organizations have flexible billing way with very good discount [17].
We think that Microsoft Azure Compute Option is a smart option to solve the problem
of increased cost for organizations that already have on-premises Windows server li-
cense. It enables such organizations to purchase add-ons to these licenses and then run
any compute instance in Azure and save costs and get discount up to 60% [28].
Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Benefit option is a purchasing option for the origina-
tions that have existing Windows server license with Software Assurance to move to
the cloud and pay only for the base compute rate rather than pay for an Azure Windows
server virtual machine by using these existing licenses [29]. It is an option to deploy
hybrid cloud with cost-effective price.
The minimum billing cycle for Azure is the minute [25]; this means that customers
pay for resources usage per minute. We see that this option gives a cost reduction ad-
vantage for the research projects, deploying a test environment or any projects with
limited time.
Azure provides some options for free with any subscription such as building and
hosting up to 10 web and mobile applications, sending up to 1 million push notifi-
cations per month; and creating a private network with up to 50 virtual networks [30].
For each Azure service, there are many price tiers to meet customer’s need; Azure
provides a price calculator to estimates the cost [31]
Pricing in AWS: Price model for AWS provides flexibility for paying in local cur-
rency [32]. We see that such feature will remove the complexity for small or new startup
organizations.
AWS price model has five utility-style options: Pay as you go, Pay Less When You
Reserve, Pay even less per unit by using more, Pay even less as AWS grows, and Cus-
tom pricing [33]. In Pay as you go style, customers pay as they use resources without
being committed to any period of time short or long. Pay less when you reserve style is
designed for certain AWS services where customers can reserve some extra instances
and get a discount up to 60% [33]. By using Pay even less per unit style, customers save
more as they can grow bigger in storage, and pricing is tiered for data transfer and
compute services so the customers will use more storage for example and pay less for
each gigabyte. Also, customers will get 10% discount on compute when they reserve
more [33]. In Pay even less as AWS grows style; the focus will be to reduce business
costs such as hardware costs, reducing the consumption of power, and gain better effi-
ciency in operation. However, if none of the above pricing models works, the solution
will be in applying what is called Custom pricing style it is applied for customers with
unique requirements [33].
The minimum billing cycle for AWS is the hour [32]. AWS has a price details and
classes for each service and may depend on the region such as Amazon S3 service [34].
Amazon EC2 service has its purchasing options: On-Demand, Reserved, Spot In-
stances and Dedicated Hosts [35]. On-Demand option is similar to Pay as you go style.
Reserved option is similar to Pay less when you reserve style. Spot Instances option
allows the customers to purchase computing instances using hourly rates and it is usu-
ally lower than the On-Demand rate and includes specifying the maximum hourly price
that customer can pay. Dedicated Hosts is a physical EC2 server for the customer use
[35].
222
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
AWS provides two pricing calculators: AWS Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and
AWS Monthly Cost Calculator. The TCO calculator is used to compare the cost of
running customer’s applications in an on-premise to AWS [36, 37] and the AWS
Monthly Cost Calculator is used to estimate the monthly cost [38].
Pricing Discussion: In terms of currencies, we think AWS is preferred over Azure
since it allows customers to pay in their local currency even through Azure allows 24
different currencies; this gives more flexibility on pricing model. As for the purchasing
ways, both (Azure and AWS) have many options but Azure has Azure Compute and
Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use options which have effective purchasing options for the
customers who already have existing Windows server license when compared with
AWS. Also, Azure is preferred over AWS in terms of minimum billing cycle since the
minimum billing cycle used is minute rather than hour in AWS. On the other hand and
in terms of pricing calculator, AWS is preferred over Azure of pricing in providing
AWS TCO calculator, where it provides the customers with wide aspects for the benefit
to move to the cloud and helps them to have a feasibility study. Table 3 summarizes
these differences.
Table 3. Pricing Azure vs. AWS
Pricing Item
Infrastructure preferred
Currencies
AWS
Purchasing ways
Both, advantage to Azure
Minimum billing cycle
Azure
Pricing calculator
AWS
4.2 Security
Cloud computing can offer enterprises great services, but unfortunately, it is not
spread widely as expected. The main reason behind this obstacle is security. Organiza-
tions always are aware about their confidential information. Security demand in cloud
computing comes from the needs to secure the data which is located on shared hosts
that can be used and accessed by a lot of people, furthermore, the transmitted data
should be secured as it is susceptible to hacking by unauthorized persons whom might
sniff these confidential information.
Cloud security responsibility is an essential debate between organizations and pro-
viders, where each of them tries to relay on each other and put the responsibility on the
side to avoid any commitment penalty. Cloud providers should assure customers about
the security of the services that they provide and the data they host. Cloud providers
should guarantee to customers at least three main issues about the data they host: Con-
fidentiality, Secrecy, and Availability [14].
Availability: The term availability means the percentage of time the service is ac-
cessible. High availability (HA) is the case of availability when the service is accessible
at least 99.999% of the time; the approximate downtime of HA permits only five
minutes a year [20].
Availability in Azure: Microsoft Azure calculates uptime percentage for each service
by the calculation of maximum available minutes and downtime, for example, virtual
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
223
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
machines have 99.95% availability. The strategy of designing and deploying redun-
dancy is left for user responsibility [28].
For storage service, the term “Error Rate” is defined as the total number of set of all
storage transactions that are not completed (failed) divided by the total number of stor-
age transactions during one hour; as currently set [39].
Availability in AWS: Similar to Microsoft Azure, AWS calculates uptime percentage
for each service, but here the availability calculation is calculated by subtracting the
percentage of unavailable minutes during the month from 100%, for example, EC2 ser-
vice has 99.95% availability. Additionally, deploying redundancy strategy is user re-
sponsibility as Azure [20].
For Amazon S3 service, the term “Error Rate” is defined as the total of internal server
errors divided by the total number of requests during five minutes [20].
Availability Discussion: Azure and AWS are very similar in availability factor, but
we think the “Error Rate” calculation in Azure is better than that in AWS; this is due to
the total number of storage transaction provided with one hour (in Azure) as compared
to the five minutes (in AWS). We think the longer the time interval in Azure gives the
more accurate ratios about number of errors.
Confidentiality: Confidentiality term means that the sensitive information must be
concealed (unavailable) for unauthorized access [14].
Confidentiality in Azure There are many countermeasures to ensure confidentiality
in Microsoft Azure. "Every request made against a storage service must be authenti-
cated, unless the request is for a blob or container resource that has been made available
for public or signed access.” [40].
In Binary Large Objects (blob) storage, the owner can access the storage resources,
set the Access Control List (ACL) for the container and permit anonymous read access
to the container along with its blobs binary data. Furthermore, there is an ability to set
container permissions programmatically using .NET [41].
Confidentiality in AWS: The customers can enable an extra layer of protection by
adding a second factor authentication (authentication code) after the traditional first
factor authentication (username and password). This feature is called AWS Multi-Fac-
tor Authentication (MFA) [42].
Also, AWS provides AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) service for se-
curely controlling access to AWS services and resources, it is a free service that enables
the customers to allow and deny their access to AWS resources [43].
For S3 service, the owner can set the permissions to others by writing an access
policy that may be a resource-based policy such as access control lists (ACL), user
policy or combination of the two [44].
Confidentiality Discussion: Each of the two cloud service providers has its own
countermeasures to ensure the confidentiality; Azure requires authenticated request to
access the storage service and uses ACL to identify the permissions for the container.
On the other hand, AWS has MFA feature and IAM service for controlling access to
AWS services and resources. In addition, AWS uses resource-based policy such as
ACL, user policy or combination of these to identify the permissions for S3 service.
Thus, we notice that Azure and AWS are very similar and hard to compare or favor one
over the other using this factor.
Secrecy: We present secrecy in Azure followed by secrecy in AWS; then we con-
clude the subsections by a discussion to our findings.
224
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
Secrecy in Azure: Data can be secured in transit using Client-Side Encryption,
HTTPs, or SMB 3.0. In rest, Azure Storage uses Storage Service Encryption features
to encrypt that data. All data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption [45].
Secrecy in AWS: Data can be secured in transit by using SSL or by using client-side
encryption. In rest, AWS has two options to protect the data: Server-Side Encryption
where Amazon S3 encrypt the objects and Client-Side Encryption where the encryption
and managing keys are customers’ responsibility [46]. “Amazon S3 server-side encryp-
tion uses one of the strongest block ciphers available, 256-bit Advanced Encryption
Standard (AES-256), to encrypt your data.” [47].
Secrecy Discussion: As mentioned above, Azure and AWS are very similar in the
data secrecy in transit and in rest by using similar countermeasures and Advanced En-
cryption Standard (AES-256) to ensure the data secrecy. Thus, we cannot favor Azure
or AWS with regard to secrecy; it is hard to tip any of them.
4.3 Tier account in azure and in AWS
Web Cloud tier account, which is the web cloud providers offer to the customer, is
considered an important factor that enables users to get hands on experience with cloud
services. In addition, it allows users to determine which cloud service provider they
need to work with and determine the services that fit their needs without any kind of
related commitment: financial or legal.
Cloud services providers can be differentiated by the tier period time and services
they offer to users during the trial time.
Tier account in azure: The monthly money charge for a tier account for a period of
1 month that Microsoft Azure offers is 200$. This account contains virtual machine
services provision up to 14, 40 SQL database and 8TB of storage for a month, with an
ability to build web, mobile, and API apps that use Redis Cache, Search, or Content
Delivery Network. It also exploits a big data with Machine Learning, Streaming Ana-
lytics, and Hadoop. Moreover, the free offered account allows users to create real-time
Internet of Things (IoT) applications with monitoring and anomaly-detection [48].
In Azure, the user of the free tier account cannot use the services he/she used to work
on if the granted free tier period expires [49]
Tier account in AWS: In contrast to Azure, AWS offers tier account for 12 month.
AWS does not automatically terminate the account when it is just expired at the end of
the 12-month AWS Free Tier term; users can still retrieve their data anytime they need
[50]. Table 4 and Table 5 summarize some of services that AWS and Azure provide to
user during the tier period [48, 51].
Tier account discussion: As we notice here, both infrastructures (Azure and AWS)
provide significant amount of services to help users determine the suitable infrastruc-
ture that fits their solution.
However, AWS has superiority over Azure by giving users 12-month free trial in-
stead of 1 month, which Azure provides. Another advantage for using AWS free tier is
that users do not lose their data automatically whenever they choose to unsubscribe; it
will be available for future re-opening.
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
225
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
Table 4. Some free services provided by AWS [41]
AWS services
Usage Limit
Amazon EC2
(1) 750 hours per month of Linux, RHEL, or SLES t2.micro instance usage,
(2)
750 hours per month of Windows t2.micro instance usage,
(3) Expires 12 months after sign-up.
Amazon S3
(1) 5 GB of Standard Storage, (2) 20,000 Get Requests,
(3) 2,000 Put Requests, (4) Expires 12 months after sign-up.
Amazon RDS
(1) 750 Hours of Amazon RDS Single-AZ db.t2.micro Instance usage,
(2)
20 GB of DB Storage: any combination of General Purpose (SSD) or Magnetic,
(3)
20 GB for Backups (with RDS Magnetic storage; I/Os on General Purpose [SSD]
are not separately billed), (4) 10,000,000 I/Os, (5) Expires 12 months after sign-up.
AWS IoT
(1) 250,000 Messages (published or delivered) per month,
(2) Expires 12 months after sign-up.
Amazon EC2
Container Registry
- 500 MB-month of Storage.
- Expires 12 months after sign-up.
Amazon Mobile
Analytics
(1) 100 Million free events per month,
(2) Does not expire at the end of your 12-month AWS Free Tier term.
Table 5. Some free Services provided by Azure [48]
Azure services
Usage Limit
App Service
Quickly build and host up to 10 web and mobile apps on any platform or device.
Virtual Network
Up to 50 free virtual networks.
Azure Active
Directory
Get support for up to 500,000 directory objects and single sign-
on for up to 10 apps per
user.
Visual Studio
Team Service
Free for up to 5 users.
Azure IoT Hub
Get up to 3,000 free messages per day allowing you to monitor and control up to 10 of
your Internet of Things (IoT) devices
Scheduler
Get up to 3,600 job executions per month.
4.4 Service level agreement (SLA)
SLA is a contract between the CSP and the Customer; it defines and guarantees the
minimum level of the service to be offered to the customer.
SLA is commonly divided into several parts: Service guarantee, Service guarantee
time period, Service guarantee granularity, Service guarantee exclusions, Service credit
and Service violation measurement and reporting [52].
SLA in Azure: We will present how Azure handles SLA based on four major fac-
tors: Virtual Machines, Storage, Traffic Manager, and Content Delivery Network
(CDN).
Virtual Machine in Azure: Virtual Machine (VM) SLA is a set of policies that are
applied to control the manipulation between user and Azure while using VM instances.
Azure guarantees external connectivity at least 99.95% of the time. Service credit is
paid to the customer whenever the service is decreased to less that 99.95 by 10% of the
total paid value and 25%, if the service is decreased to less than 99% [53].
Azure Storage: Azure Storage SLA is a set of policies that are applied to control read
and write storage manipulation between users and Azure.
226
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
Azure storage guarantees at least 99.9% of the time while the customer reads data
from Storage. Also, when writing data, it guarantees at least 99.9% (same as read per-
centage) of the write requests. If the service is decreased to less than the percentage
mentioned above, the user will be able to take 10% of the Service credit. If the service
is decreased to less than 99.0%, the customer gains 25% of the service credit [54].
Traffic Manager: (Azure DNS) Azure Traffic Manager SLA is a set of policies that
are applied to control the treatment between user and Azure when using Azure DNS. It
guarantees at least 99.99% of the time. If the service decreased less than 99.99%, the
user will be able to take 10% of the Service credit, while the customer gains 25% of the
service credit if the service decreased less than 99% [55].
Azure CDN: Azure CDN SLA is a set of policies that are applied to control the ma-
nipulation processes between the user and Azure while using the CDN. It guarantees at
least 99.99% of the time. If the service is decreased to less than 99.99%, the user will
be able to take 10% of the Service credit, while the customer gains 25% of the service
credit if the service is decreased to less than 99.5% [56].
SLA in AWS: We will present how AWS handles SLA based on four major factors:
Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), Rout 53, and Cloudfront.
EC2: EC2 SLA is a set of policies that are applied to control the manipulation pro-
cesses between the user and Amazon while using EC2 instances. In this SLA, AWS
guarantees the uptime percentage with 99.95% per month. On the other hand, if the
service is decreased to the percentage range: 99.00% - 99. 95%, the user will be able to
take 10% of the Service credit. If the service, however, is decreased to less than 99.0%,
the customer is eligible to gain 30% of the service credit. In AWS EC2, unavailability
means that the instances that are used are not connected to the outside environment
[57].
S3 S3SLA is a set of policies that are applied to control the manipulation processes
between the user and Amazon while reading or writing on the AWS S3.
AWS guarantees at least 99.9% of the time while the customer is reading data from
S3. Also, for writing data requests, AWS guarantees at least 99.9% when the process
occurs on S3. If the service is decreased to the percentage range: 99.00% - 99.99%, the
user will be able to take 10% of the Service credit. If the service is decreased to less
than 99.0%, however, the customer will gain 25% of the service credit [58].
AWS Rout 53 (Amazon DNS): Amazon Rout 53 SLA is a set of policies that are
applied to control the manipulation processes between the user and Amazon while using
the private Amazon DNS. AWS guarantees 100% of the time availability. If the service
stopped for 5 to 30 minutes, AWS provided is charged a 1day service credit, if the
service is stopped between 31 minutes and 4 hours, the charging is increased to 7 days
service credit, if the stopping period is more than 4 hours, the charging is raised to 30
days service credit [59].
AWS Cloudfront: Amazon Cloudfront SLA is a set of policies that are applied to
control the manipulation processes between the user and Amazon while using the
Cloudfront service. For this SLA service, Amazon guarantees at least 99.99% of the
time. If the service is decreased to become in the range: 99.00% to less than 99.9%, the
customer will gain 10% service credit; otherwise (percentage is less than 99.00%), the
customer will get 25% service credit [60].
SLA Discussion: In the above SLA details about Azure and AWS, we can conclude
that both of AWS and Azure provide a 99.5% SLA for cloud services and virtual
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
227
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
machines. Both AWS S3 and Azure Storage offer a 99.9% SLA. Amazon Route 53
comes with a 100% SLA, compared to a 99.99% SLA for Azure Traffic Manager. Both
AWS's CloudFront and Azure CDN come with 99.9% SLA. So, it is hard to judge
which infrastructure is preferred. Table 6 summarizes the SLA presented features for
both Azure and AWS.
Table 6. SLA Azure vs. AWS
Azure
AWS
Virtual Machine:
Guarantees external connectivity at least 99.95%.
If service < 99.95%, user gets 10% service credit
If service < 99.0%, user gets 25% service credit
EC2:
Guarantees the uptime percentage with 99.95% a
month.
If service in 99.0-99.99% range, user gets 10% ser-
vice credit
If service < 99.0%, user gets 30% service credit
Storage:
Guarantees at least 99.9% during read/write opera-
tions.
If service < 99.9%, user gets 10% service credit
If service < 99.0%, user gets 25% service credit
S3:
Guarantees 99.9% of time during read/write opera-
tions.
If service in 99.0-99.99% range, user gets 10% ser-
vice credit
If service < 99.0%, user gets 25% service credit
Traffic manager (DNS):
Guarantees 99.99% of time
If service < 99.99%, user gets 10% service
credit
If service < 99.0%, user gets 25% service credit
Rout 53 (Amazon DNS):
Guarantees 100% of time availability
If Service off àGet credit
5 to 30 min. à1 day
31 min. to 4 hrs. à7 days
Above 4 hrs
à
30 days
CDN:
Guarantees 99.99 of time
If <
99.99, user gets 10% service credit
If < 99.0, user gets 25% service credit
CloudFront:
Guarantees 99.9% of time.
If service in 99.0-99.99% range, user gets 10% ser-
vice credit
If service < 99.0%, user gets 25% service credit
5 User Survey Study and Statistical Analysis
To validate our results, we conducted a survey (see Appendix A for the question-
naire). We collected answers from 52 participants after rejecting answers from 4 par-
ticipants who did not complete the questionnaire. In order to get useful feedback, we
carefully selected the participants to be working in the IT field and have different level
of qualifications (10 PhD holders, 20 Master holders, and 22 Bachelor holders), differ-
ent gender (35 male and 17 female), 11 different positions, 10 different majors and 18
classes of years of experience (ranges from 1 year to 30 years).
The questionnaire followed Likert style where 18 questions were distributed into 6
categories (see Fig.1 in section 3 above) and each question has 5 possible answers
(Strongly Agree, Agree, No Opinion, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree); only one an-
swer can be selected at a time. The weighted values for the answers are 5, 4, 3, 2, and
1; respectively. We employed SPSS Statistics 17.0 for Windows software [61] to ana-
lyze the results.
Before we conduct the study, we postulated the following three hypotheses:
• Azure is better than AWS
228
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
• AWS is better than Azure
• It is difficult to favor Azure over AWS or vice versa.
The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test is conducted to give indications about Par-
ticipants’ Satisfaction Level (PSL) of the various comparisons parameters being stud-
ied, namely: Price, Availability, Confidentiality, Secrecy, Tier Account, and SLA, with
regard to the above three hypotheses against any Participants’ Factor (PF) of the five
studied ones; namely: Gender, Qualification, Position, Major, and Years of Experience.
We set the significance level to 5%. If p < 0.05, it means that the PSL is affected by
the indicated PF; while when p ≥ 0.05, the indicated PF doesn’t have an effect on the
PSL.
Also, since the average weight for all answers is 3 (calculated as the summation of
all weights and divided by their count (5+4+3+2+1)/5), a value of 3 or above (when p
is less than 0.05) indicates a PSL at the factor and any value below 3 indicates that
participants are not satisfied with that factor. Again, a value of p ≥ 0.05 means that we
cannot draw any conclusion from the collected results when the weighted average is 3
or above.
As we grouped the questionnaire questions into six categories (see Table 7), we ap-
plied the mean as a decision factor; not the median. We believe that the mean is a more
realistic measure than the median when more than two questions are grouped together
to get an overall actual PSL value; however, when the number of questions are two or
less, there is no difference between mean or median.
In general, we noticed that the participants answered all questions with high level of
satisfaction; Table 8 summarizes the overall mean for all PSL.
Notice that the mean for all PSL are close to 4; (the value 4 indicates Agree accord-
ing to our scale). It can be seen, however, that Tier Account has the highest satisfaction
value and that SLA has the lowest value. The values reflect the initial user’s expectation
from the cloud provider where always SLA is expected minimum and that the trial pe-
riod is known ahead, however, these values can change (increase/decrease) over the
course of deployment.
Table 7. PSL Categories Questions
PSL Category
Covered Questions
Pricing
1, 2, 3, 4
Security – Availability
5, 6
Security – Confidentiality
7, 8
Security – Secrecy
9, 10, 11
Tier Account
12, 13, 14
SLA
15, 16, 17, 18
Table 8. PSL Overall Means
PSL
Mean
Price
3.981
Availability
3.962
Confidentiality
4.077
Secrecy
3.859
Tier Account
4.160
SLA
3.721
Even though our questionnaire aimed at studying participants’ feedback regardless
of their genders, qualifications, positions, majors, and years of experience, and then
comparing it with our theoretical investigation covered in section 4 above, we noticed
that there some trends in our analysis. For example, by looking at Table 9 we notice
that the years of experience played a role in participants’ answers; this is based on the
significant level (p value) in the ANOVA test we conducted; we noticed that the years
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
229
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
of experience p value is 0.043. This value indicates that the years of experience PF
affects the pricing PSL.
In this study, there is no need to make any further analysis to see how the years of
experience affects the price. By looking at other PFs (gender, qualification, position,
and major), we see no effect of any of them on the pricing PSL as the p value for each
of them is above 0.05.
Also, by looking at Table 8, we see that the mean value of the pricing is 3.981; a
value close to 4 (Agree). This result agrees with the arguments we made in section 1.3
regarding pricing as we directed the first 4 questions of the questionnaire (Q1, Q2, Q3,
and Q4) to get feedback about currencies, purchasing ways, minimum billing cycle, and
pricing calculator, respectively. We concluded that participants agree on the arguments
we made; i.e. AWS is preferred in terms of currencies and pricing calculator, Azure is
preferred in terms of minimum billing cycle, and both are good at purchasing ways with
minor favor to Azure.
As for the effect of all PFs on availability, we see no effect; notice Table 10. None
of the p values is less than 0.05.
Table 9. All PF by Pricing
PF Measure
Sum of
Squares
df Mean Square F Sig.
Gender
Between Groups
1.184
10
.118
.473
.898
In Groups
10.258
41
.250
Total
11.442
51
Qualification
Between Groups
4.422
10
.442
.731
.691
In Groups
24.809
41
.605
Total
29.231
51
Position
Between Groups
34.978
10
3.498
.514
.870
In Groups
279.079
41
6.807
Total
314.058
51
Major
Between Groups
76.934
10
7.693
1.061
.413
In Groups
297.297
41
7.251
Total
374.231
51
Years
Between Groups
745.549
10
74.555
2.134
.043
In Groups
1432.201
41
34.932
Total
2177.750
51
.000
Table 10. All PF by Availability
PF Measure
Sum of
Squares
df
Mean
Square
F Sig.
Gender
Between Groups
.566
5
.113
.479
.790
In Groups
10.876
46
.236
Total
11.442
51
Qualification
Between Groups
3.616
5
.723
1.299
.281
In Groups
25.615
46
.557
Total
29.231
51
Position
Between Groups
18.483
5
3.697
.575
.719
In Groups
295.575
46
6.426
Total
314.058
51
230
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
Major
Between Groups
30.474
5
6.095
.816
.545
In Groups
343.757
46
7.473
Total
374.231
51
Years
Between Groups
217.922
5
43.584
1.023
.415
In Groups
1959.828
46
42.605
Total
2177.750
51
By looking at Table 8, we see that the mean value of the availability is 3.962; a value
close to 4 (Agree). This result agrees with the arguments we made in section 2.1.3
regarding availability as we directed Q5 and Q6 of the questionnaire to get feedback
about the percentage level of availability to become 100% and the interval about num-
ber of errors, respectively. We concluded that participants agree on the arguments we
made; i.e. Azure and AWS are similar with respect to availability but “Error Rate”
calculation is better in Azure.
As for the effect of all PFs on confidentiality, we see no effect; notice Table 11.
None of the p values is less than 0.05.
By looking at Table 8, we see that the mean value of the confidentiality is 4.077; a
value slightly above (Agree). This result agrees with the arguments we made in section
2.2.3 regarding confidentiality as we directed Q7 and Q8 of the questionnaire to get
feedback about enabling extra layer of protection and providing the ability to set re-
sources permission programmatically, respectively. We concluded that participants
agree on the arguments we made; i.e. Azure and AWS are similar and it is hard to
compare or favor any of them with respect to confidentiality.
Table 11. All PF by Confidentiality
PF Measure
Sum of
Squares
df
Mean
Square
F Sig.
Gender
Between Groups
.473
5
.095
.397
.849
In Groups
10.969
46
.238
Total
11.442
51
Qualification
Between Groups
.251
5
.050
.080
.995
In Groups
28.980
46
.630
Total
29.231
51
Position
Between Groups
44.385
5
8.877
1.514
.204
In Groups
269.673
46
5.862
Total
314.058
51
Major
Between Groups
9.706
5
1.941
.245
.940
In Groups
364.524
46
7.924
Total
374.231
51
Years
Between Groups
233.553
5
46.711
1.105
.371
In Groups
1944.197
46
42.265
Total
2177.750
51
When we look at Table 12 that is related to PF with respect to secrecy, we notice
that the gender played a role in participants’ answers; its p value is 0.011 (a values less
than 0.05). Also, position played a role in participants’ answers; its p value is 0.028 (a
values less than 0.05). These two values indicate that the gender and position PF values
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
231
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
affect the secrecy PSL. Again, there is no need to make any further analysis to see how
these PF values affect secrecy.
Exploring Table 8 again, we notice that the mean value of the secrecy is 3.589; a
value close to 4 (Agree). This result agrees with the arguments we made in section
2.3.3 regarding secrecy as we directed questions Q9, Q10, and Q11 of the questionnaire
to get feedback about the encrypting key size in terms of number of bits, the tradeoff
between data secrecy and efficiency, and details for data encryption methodology, re-
spectively. We drew our conclusion that we cannot favor Azure or AWS with regard to
secrecy as it is hard to tip any of them.
Table 12. All PF by Secrecy
PF Measure
Sum of
Squares
df
Mean
Square
F Sig.
Gender
Between Groups
3.731
7
.533
3.041
.011
In Groups
7.712
44
.175
Total
11.442
51
Qualification
Between Groups
1.810
7
.259
.415
.888
In Groups
27.420
44
.623
Total
29.231
51
Position
Between Groups
90.341
7
12.906
2.538
.028
In Groups
223.717
44
5.084
Total
314.058
51
Major
Between Groups
38.672
7
5.525
.724
.652
In Groups
335.558
44
7.626
Total
374.231
51
Years
Between Groups
275.399
7
39.343
.910
.508
In Groups
1902.351
44
43.235
Total
2177.750
51
By studying the effect of all PFs on Tier_Account, we see no effect; notice Table
13. All p values are less than 0.05.
As for the effect of all PFs on Tier_Account, we see no effect; notice Table 13.
None of the p values is less than 0.05.
With reference to Table 8, we see that the mean value of the Tier_Account is 4.160;
a value slightly higher than 4 (Agree). This result agrees with the arguments we made
in section 3.3 regarding Tier_Account as we directed Q12, Q13, and Q14 of the ques-
tionnaire to get feedback about large scale services in free tier account before subscrib-
ing, having the free tier period to be 12 months rather than just one month, and use the
services and own the data even after subscription period expires, respectively. We con-
cluded that participants agree on the arguments we made; i.e. both infrastructures (Az-
ure and AWS) provide significant amount of services to help users, however, AWS has
superiority over Azure for providing 12 months free trial period not just 1 month and
that user do not lose their when the trial period expires; data will be available for future
use.
Looking at the effect of all PFs on SLA, we see no effect; notice Table 14. None of
the p values is less than 0.05.
232
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
With reference to Table 8, we see that the mean value of the SLA is 3.721; a value
close to 4 (Agree). This result agrees with the arguments we made in section 4.3 re-
garding SLA as we directed Q15, Q16, Q17, and Q18 of the questionnaire to get feed-
back about taking into consideration the revenue percentage for the virtual machine if
the services decreases to less than the proposed one, applying penalty when cloud stor-
age is not as proposed, there is no difference between the AWS DNS that guarantees
100% service level and that for Azure that guarantees 99.99% service level, and that it
is very important to include CDN is SLA to 99.9% and applies penalty if this level is
not achieved, respectively. We concluded that participants agree on the arguments we
made; i.e. it is hard to judge which infrastructure is preferred. Table 6 summarizes the
SLA presented features for both Azure and AWS.
Table 13. All PF by Tier Account
PF
Measure
Sum of Squares
df
Mean Square
F
Sig.
Gender
Between Groups
9.236
44
.210
In Groups
11.442
51
Total
2.495
7
.356
.587
.763
Qualification
Between Groups
26.736
44
.608
In Groups
29.231
51
Total
54.746
7
7.821
1.327
.261
Position
Between Groups
259.312
44
5.893
In Groups
314.058
51
Total
85.526
7
12.218
1.862
.099
Major
Between Groups
288.705
44
6.561
In Groups
374.231
51
Total
199.938
7
28.563
.635
.724
Years
Between Groups
1977.812
44
44.950
In Groups
2177.750
51
Total
9.236
44
.210
Table 14. All PF by SLA
PF
Measure
Sum of Squares
df
Mean Square
F
Sig.
Gender
Between Groups
2.703
10
.270
1.268
.280
In Groups
8.739
41
.213
Total
11.442
51
Qualification
Between Groups
4.501
10
.450
.746
.677
In Groups
24.729
41
.603
Total
29.231
51
Position
Between Groups
60.917
10
6.092
.987
.470
In Groups
253.141
41
6.174
Total
314.058
51
Major
Between Groups
71.338
10
7.134
.966
.487
In Groups
302.892
41
7.388
Total
374.231
51
Years
Between Groups
477.750
10
47.775
1.152
.350
In Groups
1700.000
41
41.463
Total
2177.750
51
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
233
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
6 Comparison with Previous Approaches
The rise of the cloud phenomenon drew the interests of researchers in cloud compu-
ting, its services and its providers. Many researchers employed cloud service providers
as case studies, implemented their methodologies and discussed their offered services
and features.
Bermudez et al. [12] discussed some of the AWS infrastructure services issues and
features, they used passive measurements to explore the EC2, S3 and CloudFront AWS
services to uncover its infrastructure and to find out the polices of its traffic allocation.
Narula et al. [13] discussed the Amazon Web Service (AWS) services and infrastructure
from security point of view, they emphasized that cloud computing security must be a
core operation.
Some researchers compared among various cloud service providers and go deeply in
details for different comparison points. For instance, Tajadod et al. [14] compared be-
tween Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Service (AWS) from data security point of
view, they focused on both of providers’ architecture and components to provide an
effective data security. Also, Singh [15] compared between the two cloud service pro-
viders in terms of security in public cloud point, he discussed the security countermeas-
ures for these providers and compared between them against various threats.
Rashidi et al. [16] compared between Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Service
(AWS) in MapReduce programming model implementations, Azure MapReduce and
Amazon elastic MapReduce (EMR), they used eight main factors for the comparison
(Programming Model, Handling of Data, Scheduling, Handling of Failures, Environ-
ment, Intermediate Transfer of Data, Dynamic Scalability, and Control Model).
Islam and Rehman [17] compared among five major IaaS providers (GoGrid, Joyent,
Rackspace, VMWare and Amazon EC2) and five PaaS providers (Google App Engine,
Microsoft Windows Azure, Citrix, Salesforce.com and LunaCloud) available in market
using seven main factors (Virtualization mechanism, Pricing model , Access interface
, Security , Availability and reliability, Scalability and Support) and found that Mi-
crosoft Azure and Amazon Web Service (AWS) are the best for the ordinary users.
Rajeev et al. [18] compared between Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Service
(AWS) in storage services, relational database and Compute services, they set three use
cases (ASP Application on cloud with DB on premise, ASP Application on cloud with
DB on cloud and Java based MVC Application with MySql DB are in Cloud) and rec-
ommended a cloud service provider for each case.
Gandhi and Kumbharana [19] compared between Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web
Service (AWS) briefly in pricing, administration and major specifications, they list the
advantages points for each provider (EC2 is cheaper at least to start with, EC2 is famil-
iar which the biggest strength, Azure may be cheaper than EC2 on the long run, Scala-
bility with Windows Azure is considered seamless, Azure is completely integrated with
Visual Studio and Azure does more for you than EC2 does for the same price).
Nabi et al. [20] set indicated that availability in cloud computing is the base for com-
paring cloud providers’ perspectives. Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine and Rack-
space were compared in terms of availability and in the context of Service Level Agree-
ment (SLA).
Gui et al. [21] proposed a cloud service classification model for categorizing and
filtering cloud services, the proposed model came with 6 classification factors and 32
234
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
sub classification factors. This proposed model was used by Ghaffar and Vu [22] to
compare among three cloud service providers: Azure, AWS and CloudSigma to evalu-
ate these providers for satellite image processing service.
Bari et al. [23] compared among AWS, Azure and RackSpace based on cost and
performance; they found that AWS has a hand over the other two platforms based on
the price of small and medium scale computing models where Azure proved to be better
in case of large scale computing models. In addition, AWS is better than Azure and
RackSpace when the number of datacenters and services level grow up.
Dordevic et al. [24] compared between Microsoft Azure and AWS in terms of per-
formance and service; they used similar virtual environments for both platforms. They
found that although Azure has powerful user interface for virtual resources management
but it does not have the ability to make adjustment for a specific virtual machine. On
the other hand, AWS has more powerful options for Linux virtual machines manage-
ment and more ability to tune the system. The tests results showed that Azure and AWS
are very similar but with slight advantage to Azure when there are CPU and disk inten-
sive operations, but when memory is considered, AWS performs better than Azure.
7 Conclusion and Future Work
Cloud computing is now being used in many fields; including mobile teaching re-
source push [62], to becoming a development environment in teaching [63], and as a
new multiple criteria for decision making [64]. Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Ser-
vice (AWS) are two important leaders in providing cloud-computing services. The
close similarity between the services functions for these infrastructures and the deeply
services’ details leads to complex comparison process and hard preference decision.
The study revealed that both platforms have some similarities and differences that
make it difficult to favor one over the other based on some factors. The study showed
that Azure is more appropriate than AWS in terms of pricing as the minimum billing
cycle used is minutes rather than hours as used in AWS. In addition, the way the pur-
chasing option is computed in Azure is very suitable for organizations that already have
on-premises Windows server license to save costs and get discount up to 60%. Simi-
larly, Azure Hybrid purchasing options are suitable for the customers that have existing
Windows server license with Software Assurance to move to cloud and pay only for
the base computing rate and deploy hybrid cloud with cost-effective price. We also
believe that the “Error Rate” calculation in Azure is better than that in AWS at the
availability factor. This is due to the fact that the time interval in Azure (one hour)
during which transactions are stored is longer than which is used in AWS (5 minutes).
Furthermore, the longer the time interval will give more accurate ratio about number of
(potential) errors. However, with regard to the free tier factor, it seems that AWS is
better that Azure. AWS provides 12-month free trial period whereas Azure provides
one month. Furthermore, AWS preserves the users’ data even if the uses do not plan to
subscribe with its subscription. Both platforms are similar regarding SLA and the secu-
rity factors.
As for the future, we plan to explore the actual effects of years of experience on
pricing, and gender and position on secrecy.
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
235
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
8 References
[1] Grossman, R. L. (2009). The case for cloud computing. IT professional,11(2), 23-27.
[2] Armbrust, M., Fox, A., Griffith, R., Joseph, A. D., Katz, R., Konwinski, A. & Zaharia, M.
(2010). A view of cloud computing. Communications of the ACM, 53(4), 50-58.
https://doi.org/10.1145/1721654.1721672
[3] Moyo, Tumpe, and Jagdev Bhogal. "Investigating Security Issues in Cloud Computing."
Complex, Intelligent and Software Intensive Systems (CISIS), 2014 Eighth International
Conference on. IEEE, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1109/cisis.2014.21
[4] Khaldi, Alexandre, et al. "A secure cloud computing architecture design."Mobile Cloud
Computing, Services, and Engineering (MobileCloud), 2014 2nd IEEE International Con-
ference on. IEEE, 2014. https://doi.org/10.1109/mobilecloud.2014.44
[5] Dawoud, Wesam, Ibrahim Takouna, and Christoph Meinel. "Infrastructure as a service se-
curity: Challenges and solutions." Informatics and Systems (INFOS), 2010 The 7th Interna-
tional Conference on. IEEE, 2010.
[6] "Top 10 Cloud Vendor Benchmark 2016: PDF Download." Top 10 Cloud Vendor Bench-
mark 2016: PDF Download. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.
[7] "About AWS." Amazon Web Services, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.
[8] "Global Infrastructure." Amazon Web Services, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.
[9] "Amazon Web Services (AWS) - Cloud Computing Services." Amazon Web Services,
Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2016. <https://aws.amazon.com/?nc2=h_lg>.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2589-9_10
[10] "Azure Cloud Services by Location or Region | Microsoft Azure." Azure Cloud Services by
Location or Region | Microsoft Azure. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2016.
https://doi.org/10.1201/b17313-23
[11] "Microsoft Azure: Cloud Computing Platform & Services." Microsoft Azure: Cloud Com-
puting Platform & Services. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Apr. 2016.
<https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/>. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119114215.ch5
[12] Bermudez, Ignacio, et al. "Exploring the cloud from passive measurements: The Amazon
AWS case." INFOCOM, 2013 Proceedings IEEE. IEEE, 2013.
https://doi.org/10.1109/infcom.2013.6566769
[13] S. Narula, A. Jain and M. Prachi, "CLOUD COMPUTING SECURITY: AMAZON WEB
SERVICE", in 2015 Fifth International Conference on Advanced Computing & Communi-
cation Technologies, Haryana, 2015, pp. 501 - 505. https://doi.org/10.1109/acct.2015.20
[14] Tajadod, G., Batten, L., & Govinda, K. (2012, December). Microsoft and Amazon: A com-
parison of approaches to cloud security. In Cloud Computing Technology and Science
(CloudCom), 2012 IEEE 4th International Conference on (pp. 539-544). IEEE.
https://doi.org/10.1109/cloudcom.2012.6427581
[15] T. Singh, "Security in public cloud offerings: Issues and A comparative study of Amazon
Web Services and Microsoft Azure", in National Conference on RTICCN-2015 at CGC-
COE, Mohali(Punjab), 2015.
[16] B. Rashidi, E. Asyabi and T. Jafari, "A Comparison of Amazon Elastic Mapreduce and Az-
ure Mapreduce", Elixir International Journal, 2012.
[17] N. Islam and A. Rehman, "A comparative study of major service providers for cloud com-
puting", in The 1st International Conference on Information and Communication Technol-
ogy Trends, At Karachi, Pakistan, 2013.
[18] B. Rajeev, B. Vinod and K. Arun, "A Comparative Study of Amazon Web Service and Win-
dows Azure", International Journal of Advanced Computer Research, vol. 3, no. 11, 2013.
[19] V. Gandhi and C. Kumbharana, "Comparative study of Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure
cloud architecture", International Journal of Advanced Networking Applications (IJANA),
no. 0975-0290, 2014.
236
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
[20] Nabi, M., Toeroe, M., & Khendek, F. (2016). Availability in the cloud: State of the art.
Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 60, 54-67.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnca.2015.11.014
[21] Gui, Z., Yang, C., Xia, J., Huang, Q., Liu, K., Li, Z. & Jin, B. (2014). A service brokering
and recommendation mechanism for better selecting cloud services. PloS one, 9(8),
e105297. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0105297
[22] Ghaffar, M. A. A., & Vu, T. T. (2015, August). Cloud computing providers for satellite
image processing service: A comparative study. In Space Science and Communication
(IconSpace), 2015 International Conference on (pp. 61-64). IEEE.
https://doi.org/10.1109/iconspace.2015.7283781
[23] Bari, Irfan, et al. "Cost and Performance Based Comparative Study of Top Cloud Service
Providers." International Journal of Computer Science and Information Security 13.12
(2015): 172.
[24] B. Dordevic, S. Jovanovic and V. Timcenko, "Cloud Computing in Amazon and Microsoft
Azure platforms: performance and service comparison", in Telecommunications Forum Tel-
for (TELFOR), 2014 22nd, Serbia, Belgrade, 2014, pp. 931 - 934.
https://doi.org/10.1109/telfor.2014.7034558
[25] Pricing Overview - How Azure pricing works | Microsoft Azure. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15,
2016, from https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-0665-2_1
[26] 12-Month Prepay Offer | Microsoft Azure. (n.d.). Retrieved April 15, 2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/offers/ms-azr-0026p/.
[27] Azure in Open Licensing | Microsoft Azure. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/offers/ms-azr-0111p/. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-
4842-1476-3_2
[28] Microsoft Azure Compute Option. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/microsoft-azure-compute-option/.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-1476-3_2
[29] Microsoft Azure Hybrid Use Benefit. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/hybrid-use-benefit/.
[30] Pricing Offers | Microsoft Azure. (n.d.). Retrieved April 16, 2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/pricing-offers/.
[31] Pricing Calculator | Microsoft Azure. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator/.
[32] AWS Cloud Pricing Principles – Amazon Web Services (AWS). (n.d.). Retrieved April 17,
2016, from https://aws.amazon.com/pricing/. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2589-
9_10
[33] How AWS Pricing Works [PDF]. (2015, June). Amazon Web Services.
https://d0.awsstatic.com/whitepapers/aws_pricing_overview.pdf
[34] Cloud Storage Pricing – Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) – AWS. (n.d.). Retrieved
April 18, 2016, from https://aws.amazon.com/s3/pricing/.
https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119560395.ch3
[35] Purchasing Options. (n.d.). Retrieved April 17, 2016, from
https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/purchasing-options/.
[36] AWS Total Cost of Ownership Calculator. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2016, from
https://aws.amazon.com/tco-calculator/.
[37] TCO Calculator. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2016, from https://awstcocalculator.com/.
[38] Amazon Web Services Simple Monthly Calculator. (n.d.). Retrieved April 18, 2016, from
https://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/index.html.
[39] SLA for Storage. (n.d.). Retrieved April 20, 2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/legal/sla/storage/v1_0/.
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
237
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
[40] Authentication for the Azure Storage Services. (n.d.). Retrieved April 27, 2016, from
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/dd179428.aspx.
[41] Manage access to containers and blobs. (n.d.). Retrieved April 28, 2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-manage-access-to-
resources/.
[42] Multi-Factor Authentication. (n.d.). Retrieved April 29, 2016, from
https://aws.amazon.com/iam/details/mfa/.
[43] AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) in the Cloud. (n.d.). Retrieved April 29, 2016,
from https://aws.amazon.com/iam/.
[44] Managing Access Permissions to Your Amazon S3 Resources. (n.d.). Retrieved April 29,
2016, from http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/s3-access-control.html.
[45] Azure Storage Service Encryption for Data at Rest (Preview). (n.d.). Retrieved April 20,
2016, from
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/storage-service-encryption
[46] Protecting Data Using Encryption. (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2016, from
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/UsingEncryption.html.
[47] Protecting Data Using Server-Side Encryption with Amazon S3-Managed Encryption Keys
(SSE-S3). (n.d.). Retrieved April 19, 2016, from
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/UsingServerSideEncryption.html
[48] "Create Your Free Azure Account Today | Microsoft Azure." Create Your Free Azure Ac-
count Today | Microsoft Azure. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Apr. 2016.
<https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/>. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-1476-3_2
[49] "Azure Free Trial Offer - FAQ | Microsoft Azure." Azure Free Trial Offer - FAQ | Microsoft
Azure. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 June 2016.
<https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial-faq/>.) (Accessed July 1, 2016).
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-1476-3_2
[50] "AWS Free Tier Terms." Amazon Web Services, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 June 2016.
<https://aws.amazon.com/free/terms/>. (Accessed July 1, 2016).
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2589-9_2
[51] "Free Cloud Services – AWS Free Tier." Amazon Web Services, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 15
Apr. 2016. <https://aws.amazon.com/free/>. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2589-9_2
[52] Baset, Salman A. "Cloud SLAs: present and future." ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Re-
view 46.2 (2012): 57-66. https://doi.org/10.1145/2331576.2331586
[53] "SLA for Virtual Machines." SLA for Virtual Machines. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
[54] "SLA for Storage." SLA for Storage. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
[55] "SLA for Traffic Manager." SLA for Traffic Manager. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.
[56] "SLA for CDN." SLA for CDN. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.
[57] "Amazon EC2 SLA." Amazon Web Services, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
[58] "Service Level Agreement - Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3)." Amazon Web Services,
Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
[59] "Amazon Route 53 SLA." Amazon Web Services, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.
[60] "CloudFront SLA." Amazon Web Services, Inc. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Apr. 2016.
[61] SPSS Statistics. 2008. SPSS Statistics software for windows, release 17.0 SPSS Statistics,
Chicago, IL. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781446249390.n1
[62] Wan, Q., Yang, X., & Chen, G. (2018). New Scheduling Algorithm for Mobile Teaching
Cloud Resource Push. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET),
13(07), 17-29. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v13i07.8803
[63] Huang, R. (2018). Development of a Cloud-based Network Teaching Platform. International
Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learning (iJET), 13(04), 176-186.
https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v13i04.8258
238
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
[64] Sun, H. (2015). A New Multiple Criteria Decision Making Method and its Application in
Cloud Computing for Education. International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Learn-
ing (iJET), 10(8), 21-24. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v10i8.5212
9 Authors
Rizik M. H. Al-Sayyed is currently a full Professor with the University of Jordan,
King Abdullah II School for Information Technology, Information Technology Depart-
ment. Prof. Rizik holds the B.Sc. (The University of Jordan 1984), M.Sc. (Western
Michigan University 1995), and Ph.D. (Leeds Beckett University 2007, formerly
known as Leeds Metropolitan University) all in Computer Science. His areas of interest
include: Cloud Computing, Wireless Networks, Database Design and Programming,
and Network Simulation (e-mail: r.alsayyed@ju.edu.jo).
Wadi’ A. Hijawi holds a M.Sc. in Web Intelligence from The University of Jordan,
King Abdullah II School for Information Technology, Information Technology Depart-
ment. (email: cswadea2002@gmail.com).
Anwar M. Bashiti holds a M.Sc. in Web Intelligence from The University of Jordan,
King Abdullah II School for Information Technology, Information Technology Depart-
ment. (email: bashete1@gmail.com).
Ibrahim AlJarah is currently an Associate Professor with the University of Jordan,
King Abdullah II School for Information Technology, Information Technology Depart-
ment. Dr. Ibrahim holds the B.Sc. (Yarmouk University 2003), M.Sc. (The University
of Jordan 2007), and Ph.D. (North Dakota State University 2014, USA) all in Computer
Science. His areas of interest include: Big Data Analysis, Nature-inspired algorithms,
and Evolutionary Computing. (e-mail: i.aljarah@ju.edu.jo).
Nadim Obeid is currently a Full Professor with the University of Jordan, King Ab-
dullah II School for Information Technology, Computer Information Systems Depart-
ment. Prof. Nadim holds a B.Sc in Mathematics (Lebanese University, 1979) and a
B.Sc. in Business Administration (Lebanese University, 1980). He also holds A Post-
graduate Diploma (Essex University, 1982), M.Sc. in Computer Studies (Essex Uni-
versity, 1983) and a Ph.D in Computer Science (Essex University, 1987). He served as
the Deputy Dean of KASIT during 2008-2009, as a Dean during 2010-2012, and cur-
rently the chair of computer information systems. His current areas of interest include:
Knowledge Representation, Multi-Agent Systems, Dialogue and Argumentation Sys-
tems, Formalization of Access Control Policies. (e-mail: nadim@ju.edu.jo).
Omar Y. Adwan is currently an Associate Professor with the University of Jordan,
King Abdullah II School for Information Technology, Computer Information Systems
Department. Dr. Omar holds a B.Sc in Computer Science (Eastern Michigan Univer-
sity, 1987) and a M.Sc. in Computer Science (The George Washington University,
1998), and a Ph.D in Computer Science (The George Washington University, 2008).
He served as a chairman to CIS Dept. of KASIT during 2012-2016. His current areas
of interest include: Software Engineering, System Engineering Tools, and Databases.
(e-mail: adwanoy@ju.edu.jo).
Article submitted 2018-11-23. Resubmitted 2018-12-28. Final acceptance 2019-02-15. Final version pub-
lished as submitted by the authors.
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
239
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
Appendix A
Questionnaire – Cloud Computing
This questionnaire aims at comparing two will known cloud infrastructures: Azure
and AWS.
Please fill the following information marked with *:
Your Name (optional):
___________________________________________________________________
* Your Position in IT:
_____________________________________________________________________
* Your years of experience: ______________Your Gender : ( ) Male ( ) Female
* Your place of work:
_____________________________________________________________________
* Your Qualification(s): ( ) PhD ( ) Master ( ) Bachelor ( ) Diploma
Major: _______________
Please help us in ticking the appropriate box for each of the following questions
with a (√)
1. I think paying for cloud in my local currency is better than paying by just selecting
from a pre-defined list of 24 currencies where it might not include my currency.
( )Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( )No opinion ( )Disagree ( )Strongly disagree
2. I think making use of existing operating system licenses to apply cloud computing
for my organization is better than applying cloud computing without any existing
licenses.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
3. I think paying per minute is better than paying per an hour as a minimum billing
cycle.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
4. I think enabling customers to estimate (calculate) the Total Cost of Ownership
(TCO) is a good option that cloud providers should provide; not just a calculator
to estimate each service’s cost.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
5. It is always important to raise the percentage level of availability close to 100%.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
6. I think the longer the time interval gives the more accurate ratios about number of
errors.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
7. I think enabling an extra layer of protection by adding a second factor authentica-
tion (authentication code) after the traditional first factor authentication (username
and password) is an advantage for a cloud computing provider.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
8. I think providing the ability to set the permissions for resources programmatically
is an advantage for a cloud computing provider.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
240
http://www.i-jet.org
Application Note—An Investigation of Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services from Users’ Perspec…
9. I believe using large key size (number of bits that are used as a key) for encrypting
the data will ensure more data secrecy but on the other hand, it will increase the
stored and retrieved operations overhead.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
10. I believe that cloud computing providers should make tradeoff between high data
secrecy and more efficiency (such as low response time) by using 128 or 192 key
size (number of bits that are used as a key) for encryption the data instead of 256.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
11. I think that cloud computing providers should provide more details for data en-
cryption methodology such as encryption mode and key generation randomness.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
12. It is important to include large scale services in free tier account to use them before
subscribing to the service.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagre ( ) Strongly disagree
13. Offering 12 month free tier period is better than offering a 1 month free tier period.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
14. It is important to be able to use the services and own data (not losing my data) even
after subscription period is expired.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
15. I take in consideration the given revenue percentage for virtual machine if the ser-
vice decreases to less than the proposed one in Service Level Agreement (SLA).
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
16. Cloud storage should be regarded to what proposed in SLA; otherwise penalty must
be applied.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
17. I think there is no difference between the Domain Name System (DNS) service
provided by AWS that guarantees 100% and the DNS service provided by Azure
that guarantees 99.99%
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
18. It is very important to include Content Delivery Network (CDN) in SLA to 99.9%
and applies penalty if this percentage decreases.
( ) Strongly agree ( ) Agree ( ) No opinion ( ) Disagree ( ) Strongly disagree
Extra comments (if any):
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
iJET ‒ Vol. 14, No. 10, 2019
241
