Ask HN: Azure customers, why do you host with Azure over AWS or GCP?

[emeerson]

Additionally: - What OS do you run? - Do you have a meaningful server-less component of infrastructure? - Do you containerize your hosted services? - How big is your company (& does the company host exclusively one provider or give flexibility?)

Context: don't work for any of the Cloud Providers. mostly curious as an AWS cloud customer.

[shyn3]

With AWS you have to buy a new SQL Server license, with Azure you can carry it with you.

Replaced all the legacy services with Azure alternatives. For example, IIS Web Servers now run in containers. F5 has been replaced with CloudFlare/Front Door. File servers replaced with NetApp. SQL instance replaced with SQL MI. Jumpboxes replaced with Azure Bastion.

40,000+ employees. All the vendors are used. Multiple on premise data centers as well, looking to migrate.

[emeerson]

Super helpful - thank you! IIS / containerized .NET apps that may be optimized in Azure is compelling.

[verdverm]

I use GCP because it is the best. I believe a lot of people using Azure and GCloud because it ties in with their emails and office systems. It's the same user and auth systems.

AWS is on its way down, when was the last time they came out with something exciting? All I've seen recently are high profile exits and some attempts at products in the leading emerging markets in tech that have not seen good reviews.

[tcbasche]

> AWS is on its way down, when was the last time they came out with something exciting?

1. AWS is still vastly more popular and with way more market adoption than another other provider (by a massive margin)

2. Who cares about exciting? I want stability, with decent support, huge community and great tooling.

I think it's a case of YMMV. GCP works for some, likewise with Azure. AWS is just a good workhorse and a solid choice for just about any system.

Although I've always found it weird we have this 'us vs them' mentality with the cloud provider we end up choosing.

[shyn3]

Definitely agreed for Devops. I have been searching for a new role and most the vendors prefer AWS over GCP/Azure. I think it's a 3:1 ratio in terms of roles available for AWS versus GCP/Azure combined.

[verdverm]

I use that in my filtering process. Thing is, if you want to make the big money in DevOps, you need to know all the and when to chose them. It's not a winner takes all situation.

[emeerson]

Exciting is also a confusing property for me.

AWS has offered a superset of services beyond what I or colleagues have ever been able to apply.

[giantg2]

I agree. There's lots of interesting services or functionality in AWS. I find that my company limits what we use, either based on money or lack of forward thinking. Plus, most of the problems we solve are trivial. There's so much I'll never get a chance to use.

[verdverm]

By exciting, I mean pushing out research and open source, which eventually makes it into products. I have yet to see anything serious or popular comes out of Amazon. Compare this to Google and Microsoft and you can see a clear difference

[tcbasche]

> serious or popular

I'm still a little confused. What's not serious or popular coming out of Amazon? What's the different in Microsoft and GCP?

[verdverm]

Kubernetes, Golang, Cuelang, Tensorflow ML research in particular for Google

Visual Studio Code, WSL, .Net on Linux, Hololens 2, MRTK, a number of interesting ML tools and research.

Amazon... do you know of any examples?

Largely GOOG and MSFT are giving back through research and open source while AMZN is rarely seen doing this and with little fanfare