As we all know, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft’s Windows Azure are the most commonly used cloud platforms. Around 2 years back, Windows Azure was one step behind AWS. At present, there are significant improvements and progress from Windows Azure since they launched IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) capabilities equivalent to AWS this April.

Why Windows Azure?

• It is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables us to quickly build, deploy and manage applications.
• It helps us to build applications using any language, tool or framework. Also, We can integrate our public cloud applications with an existing IT environment.

Why Windows Azure appears to be better than Amazon Web Service?

Here are some of the featured services which states the reasons why Windows Azure is better than AWS:

1. Cloud Services:

— It provides in deploying and managing powerful applications and services quickly.

—  In the case of deploying an application, we have to simply upload an application and Windows Azure will handle the deployment details from provisioning and load balancing to health monitoring for continuous availability.

— We just need to focus on the application and we need not worry about the infrastructure part.

2. Mobile Services:

— It helps in creating applications for Windows, Android and iOS providing them a secure back-end support.

— It stores data in the cloud.

— Authentication of users can be done very easily where it eliminates the need to write, configure, and test custom authentication systems.

— It gives access in connecting to Notification Hubs to broadcast push notifications to millions of devices.

— It helps in enhancing our data operations through a simple server-side code where we can send push notifications, SMS or email.

— It allows us to configure our application to automatically scale up or down inorder to match the current demands

3. Data Services:

— It helps in developing, testing and hosting SQL server applications quickly.

— Back-up and restoring databases.

— It helps in creating multi-tier cloud applications.

4. Application Services:

— Helps in building end-to-end workflows.

— Helps in developing hybrid workflows.

— Provides cloud support for multiple devices and platforms.

— Helps in managing message delivery in the cloud.

— Easily adds caching capabilities.

5. Networking:

— It helps in extending our data-center.

— It helps in building distributed applications.

— It helps in debugging our applications remotely.

— It ensures high availability and runs responsive applications.

DOWNLOAD LINK

Here is a 30-day free trial of Windows Azure you can try. The trial version lets you learn how to create and run virtual machines, develop modern applications, build and deploy websites, store/backup/recover data, and encode and share videos.