How to choose between Azure vs AWS for Financial Services?

Something we hear a lot from our financial services customers is “Should I use Azure or AWS to host my IT environment?” and the answer as with so many things in IT is “it depends”.  

It’s a nuanced question that relies on understanding your industry, current environment, what your future state looks like, as well as the offerings from each provider and where they excel. Afterall both Azure and AWS are mature, they have global availability, have all the main features you’ll ever need, and are backed and used by large corporations and governments throughout the world. 

Let’s explore and compare Azure and AWS across four categories that matter most to any organisation: Compliance and Security, Cost, Functionality, and Support. By evaluating these areas, you’ll be better equipped to determine what is the right cloud solution for your business needs. 

Compliance and Security

Compliance may not be the most exciting topic, but fortunately, both providers have it well covered. Azure and AWS offer extensive whitepapers and documentation specifically designed for financial institutions, outlining how they meet industry standards—making it easier for you to navigate this critical aspect. 

The table below outlines the common compliance requirements for financial services businesses within Australia: 

Cost

Here we’ll examine the default Pay-As-You-Go1 costs that most businesses encounter when signing up directly to a cloud provider. We’ll focus on common resources that nearly all businesses deploy in the cloud, providing a clear comparison of the cost differences between AWS and Azure .  

It’s important to note that when comparing prices, AWS always uses USD whereas Azure will convert to AUD. For the tables below I have converted USD to AUD2 for a fair comparison. All pricing is calculated using the Sydney region of the specified cloud provider. 

On-demand virtual machine costs

Latest generation virtual machines running Intel processors. 

In this category we have a clear winner with Azure coming out between $10/month and $20/month cheaper for the same size machine. 

Block storage pricing

Block storage pricing is what you pay for storage volumes attached to virtual machines. I have used the price per 1 TB here to make things a bit more realistic. 

In this category AWS comes out on top, offering better performance for lower costs.  

Database PaaS

SQL Server

Here we compare Amazon RDS vs Azure SQL Managed Instance. Microsoft obviously have the advantage in price here as they can offer considerable savings on the licensing front . 

PostgreSQL

Here we compare Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL vs Azure Database for PostgreSQL flexible server. We can’t easily compare storage here as in Azure you prepay for fixed IOPS, but AWS allows you to only pay for what you use. 

Summary on costs

When it comes to cost Microsoft Azure holds an advantage, primarily due to its greater control over licensing fees. However, when comparing costs between providers you should always either consult a cloud partner or if your business is large enough, the cloud provider directly. You’ll often be able to obtain better deals for either ongoing costs or rebates for your migration costs, potentially saving your organisation a significant amount of money. 

1. Prices are accurate as of 11th September 2024 
2. The exchange rate used is 1 USD = 1.47 AUD 
3. Months are calculated as 730 hours of usage

Reference 

AWS – https://calculator.aws/#/ 

Azure – https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/pricing/calculator/  

Functionality

Both AWS and Azure  provide a robust set of offerings that will cover nearly all workloads you can think of and they have similar levels of performance, reliability and scalability across most workloads. 

So how do we differentiate between them?

The strength of Azure is its seamless integration with a seamless integration with the Microsoft ecosystem – if you’re using M365 already all your security features, user accounts then licenses get pulled across to Azure without any extra effort. Are you using Microsoft Dynamics and Power BI? Azure is the place to be. Whilst you can still accomplish this with AWS it’s a bit more involved. 

On the other hand, AWS shines in its appeal to developers and startups. When building modern applications or developing your own, AWS offers robust, reliable resources that are highly valued by the developer community. It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s largest web and streaming companies host their infrastructure on AWS. There is a reason many of the largest web and streaming companies in the world host their infrastructure in AWS. 

Support

Finally, let’s consider support and the resources available to you within Australia. This encompasses your existing IT staff and their skill sets, available partners you could work with, as well as what the local talent pool looks like. 

The first and most important question you should be asking is ‘do my current IT team possess skills and experience in either AWS or Azure?’ Or do they need to do some further training? Both Microsoft and AWS have extensive training and certification programs, be sure to factor those costs . 

While both Amazon and Microsoft offer cloud support directly, for small to medium-sized businesses, it’s often more practical to partner with a local provider. A local partner can better understand your business needs and be more accountable. Both cloud providers have certified partner programs  covering a wide range of specialisations—such as infrastructure, data, and applications—so explore nearby partners for the specific skills you require: 

AWS: https://partners.amazonaws.com/search/partners/?loc=Australia  

Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-au/partners  

 If your current team lacks cloud expertise and you prefer not to engage a partner, hiring new talent is another option. While we don’t have any exact stats about the number of certified engineers out there, we can look at the market share for each provider, as a useful indicator as of 2022, AWS had 31.9% of the Australian IaaS market share vs 29.8% for Azure. Globally AWS is a bit further ahead, but Azure is quickly catching up. 

In Australia, this near-even split suggests that the talent pool for AWS and Azure engineers should be fairly balanced, giving you options no matter which platform you choose. 

 Reference 

Market share: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/australias-iaas-market-grows-massive-371-2022-milan-rajkovic/  

https://www.govtechreview.com.au/content/gov-cloud/news/aws-microsoft-have-56-of-cloud-services-market-finbold-767150963  

Conclusion

So which cloud should you choose? Well, “it depends” – are you a more traditional financial services organisation utilising lots of virtual machine-based services? Or cutting edge developing your own tools and innovating how you do business? 

My opinion is “why not both?”- use the right provider for the workload and embrace multi-cloud. Not only does it mean you aren’t making concessions to the cloud provider in the way you want to do things, but also allows you to choose the most cost effective and reliable offering. 

How Interactive can help?

As an Australian based multi-cloud provider, we hold multiple partner designations and certifications with AWS and Azure. With a diverse team of specialists, we’re ready to support financial services organisations, regardless of where they are on their IT journey.  Get in touch and see how our cloud experts can assist you. 

*References 

AWS 

AWS Compliance – https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/  

APRA – AWS User Guide to Financial Services Regulations & Guidelines in Australia 

Privacy Act – Using AWS in the context of Australian Privacy Considerations 

ISO 27001 – https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/iso-27001-faqs/  

PCI DSS – https://aws.amazon.com/compliance/pci-dss-level-1-faqs/  

Azure 

Azure Compliance – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/compliance/  

APRA – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/regulatory/offering-apra-australia  

APRA Checklist – https://www.microsoft.com/cms/api/am/binary/RE3ez0C  

Privacy Act – https://download.microsoft.com/download/F/4/D/F4D5AAF8-BF56-4DBF-9EB4-6D05642B43C7/Microsoft-Azure-Compliance.pdf  

ISO 27001 – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/regulatory/offering-iso-27001  

PCI DSS – https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/compliance/regulatory/offering-pci-dss