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Unlocking the multicloud advantage: AWS to Azure service comparisons

Dileep-G

Microsoft

Mar 05, 2025

Boost your growth and access more customers by replicating your AWS app to Azure and selling through Azure Marketplace. This guide will compare commonly used AWS and Azure components, highlighting differences, to help you replicate your app quickly and easily. Future posts will dive deeper into each component area.

This post is part of a series on replicating apps from AWS to Azure. View all posts in this series.

As an Independent Software Vendor (ISV), expanding your Marketplace offer's reach beyond AWS Marketplace by replicating to Azure Marketplace offers exciting opportunities to grow your customer base. With millions of customers across a global network of businesses and industries, Azure presents a thriving platform to enhance your app’s visibility and functionality.

To ensure a seamless app replication, start by reviewing the marketplace listing requirements. Understanding the key differences between AWS and Azure will help you transition and optimize performance on Azure while benefiting from its unique advantages. This guide will outline these differences, highlight similar services, and offer steps for a seamless replication or migration.

You can also join ISV Success to get access to over $126K USD in cloud credits, AI services, developer tools, and 1:1 technical consults to help you replicate your app and publish to Azure Marketplace.

The benefits of replicating or migrating to Azure Marketplace

Migrating to Azure Marketplace unlocks a wealth of opportunities for ISVs. The Azure ecosystem offers several advantages, including:

Global reach: Azure’s vast global network of data centers ensures high availability and low-latency access to your application for customers worldwide.

Cost efficiency: Azure’s flexible pricing models and cost management tools allow ISVs to optimize their cloud spending.

Scalability: With Azure’s powerful compute and storage options, you can scale your application effortlessly to accommodate growing demand.

Security and compliance: Azure’s comprehensive security tools and certifications help you meet industry-specific compliance standards, ensuring that your application is secure and trusted.
Meet where your customers are: Deploy into customer subscriptions, making your solution more integrated to customer workload.

AWS vs. Azure

AWS and Azure are the top cloud platforms with diverse services for developers and businesses. Below, we will highlight key areas where AWS and Azure differ—and how to leverage Azure services—when moving your Marketplace offer from AWS to Azure Marketplace.

Azure Marketplace capabilities

In Azure, ISVs can leverage metered billing to charge customers based on actual usage, similar to AWS's pay-as-you-go model. This flexible pricing model is ideal for SaaS solutions. Partner Center offers tools for setting pricing models, tracking usage, and adjusting billing. It also provides anomaly detection to help partners identify unexpected usage and ensure transparent billing.

When creating SaaS offers in the Azure Marketplace, ISVs can define plans with various pricing strategies, such as usage-based or flat-rate billing. These plans, or SKUs, can be customized through free trials, BYOL (Bring Your Own License), or vCPU-based pricing for virtual machines. Both Azure and AWS allow flexible, metered billing based on usage. Azure also provides the ability to set customer discounts or negotiated pricing. Using Partner Center, you can configure and manage these offerings, providing flexibility for customers and partners to scale as needed. Like AWS Control Tower, Azure Lighthouse enables service providers to manage multiple customer Azure environments securely and at scale, offering enhanced visibility, control, and automation.

For usage-based monthly billing, you can choose from predefined or custom pricing options (using metered billing APIs). Predefined options like per core, per node, or per pod let Microsoft bill customers based on hourly usage, billing them monthly. Learn more about usage-based pricing here: Setting Plan Pricing.

Mapping AWS services to Azure services

Your Marketplace offer may use multiple AWS services, and you can build the same offer using Azure services. However, this requires careful mapping to ensure your application functions seamlessly in the Azure environment. Here’s a quick overview of how popular AWS services map to Azure::

Networking: AWS VPC → Azure Virtual Networks (VNets)
Compute Services: AWS EC2 → Azure Virtual Machines (VMs), Azure App Services (for web apps)
Storage: Amazon S3 → Azure Blob Storage, Azure Data Lake Storage (for big data)
Identity Management: AWS IAM → Entra ID
Containers: EKS and Elastic Beanstalk → AKS and Azure App Services
Serverless: AWS Lambda → Azure Functions
Databases: Amazon RDS → Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB (for NoSQL)

Azure for AWS professionals provides you with a more comprehensive mapping of different services. Let's take a deeper look into each of these areas.

Cloud architecture and networking

One of the primary differences between AWS and Azure lies in their cloud architecture and networking models. AWS uses Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs) to create isolated networks, while Azure employs Virtual Networks (VNets). Both services perform similar functions, but they have different terminologies and setups. For instance, in Azure, you'll be working with VNet Peering, Network Security Groups (NSGs), and Azure VPNs for secure networking. The goal is to map your AWS VPC setup to Azure VNets with ease. AWS needs a Nat Gateway for egress access whereas Azure does not need a Nat Gateway for default egress. AWS Subnets are pinned to Availability Zones (AZs) whereas Azure Subnets span across the AZs.

Compute services: EC2 vs. Virtual Machines (VMs)

AWS EC2 instances are one of the most widely used compute services, allowing you to run applications on virtual servers. In Azure, the equivalent service is Azure Virtual Machines (VMs). While both offer scalable compute resources, the key differences are in the range of VM sizes, configurations, and the management interface. When migrating from AWS EC2 to Azure VMs, it's important to assess the appropriate Azure VM sizes and configurations that match the performance of your EC2 instances.

Additionally, Azure VMs support Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, which provide more automation for resource management. For those who have utilized EC2's Auto Scaling feature, Azure provides similar functionality through Azure Scale Sets.

Storage: S3 vs. Blob Storage

For object storage, AWS uses Amazon S3, while Azure uses Azure Blob Storage. Both services serve the same purpose — storing large amounts of unstructured data — but the underlying configurations, security features, and cost structures differ. While migrating from S3 to Blob Storage, it’s important to review your storage needs and adjust your application accordingly.

Azure Blob Storage offers Cool and Archive tiers, which can be a great way to optimize storage costs for infrequently accessed data, and Azure's data redundancy options ensure high availability and durability. The Azure Storage Explorer tool also makes it easier for ISVs to manage their data after migration.

Identity and Access Management (IAM) & billing: IAM vs. Entra ID

IAM services on AWS and Azure differ in how they manage roles and permissions. AWS uses IAM for users, roles, and policies, while Azure uses Entra ID for IAM across cloud services. AWS organizes accounts through AWS Organizations, with IAM used for role-based access control (RBAC) and policies for service access. Azure’s structure involves Subscriptions and Management Groups, with Entra ID managing identity and access. Azure uses RBAC to assign roles at various levels (Subscription, Resource Group, Resource) and Azure Policies for governance and compliance.

Azure Entra ID integrates with Microsoft services, like Office 365, SharePoint, and Teams, supporting identity federation, multi-factor authentication, and RBAC for granular permissions. It enhances governance and security across platforms. Azure handles billing management via subscriptions providing access to resources and can be reassigned to new owners. It offers three classic subscription administrator roles for resource access and management for billing and resource access.

Container management: Elastic Beanstalk vs. Azure App Services and EKS vs. AKS

For containerized applications, AWS offers Elastic Beanstalk for easy application deployment and management. Azure’s equivalent services include Azure App Services for simple web application hosting and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) for container orchestration.

While Azure App Services is more suitable for traditional web applications, AKS provides a robust and scalable solution for microservices and containerized applications, similar to AWS’s Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). ISVs who are accustomed to Elastic Beanstalk for deploying containerized applications will find Azure App Services or AKS a seamless alternative, with Azure offering rich integrations with DevOps pipelines, CI/CD workflows, and container registries.

Serverless: AWS Lambda vs. Azure Functions

Both AWS and Azure support serverless computing, which allows developers to run code without managing servers. AWS offers Lambda, while Azure offers Azure Functions. Both services allow you to trigger code in response to events, such as file uploads or API calls. The key difference is that Azure Functions integrates deeply with other Azure services, such as Azure Logic Apps and Azure Event Grid.

If your application leverages AWS Lambda, you will find that Azure Functions can serve as an excellent equivalent. Azure also provides Durable Functions, which extend Azure Functions for stateful workflows. Migrating from AWS Lambda to Azure Functions typically requires mapping your event-driven functions and configuring their triggers in the Azure ecosystem.

Databases: RDS vs. Azure SQL and Cosmos DB

When it comes to databases, AWS offers Amazon RDS for relational databases, and Amazon DynamoDB for NoSQL. Azure provides several alternatives, including Azure SQL Database for relational storage and Azure Cosmos DB for NoSQL storage. Both platforms support database scalability, automated backups, and high availability.

If you are using Amazon RDS with services like MySQL or PostgreSQL, you can migrate to Azure Database for MySQL or Azure Database for PostgreSQL. Similarly, if you are using AWS DynamoDB, Azure’s Cosmos DB offers a global, scalable NoSQL database with low-latency access.

Messaging: AWS SQS vs. Azure Service Bus

Messaging services are crucial when your application handles high-throughput, asynchronous communication between different components. AWS offers Simple Queue Service (SQS) for messaging and SNS for pub/sub notifications while Azure offers Azure Service Bus and Azure Event Grid.

Azure Service Bus provides similar functionality to SQS but offers additional capabilities like advanced message routing, dead-lettering, and sessions for handling ordered messages. If your application relies on a queuing mechanism for inter-service communication, you’ll want to map AWS SQS to Azure Service Bus. For event-driven architectures, Azure Event Grid can connect different services and trigger actions across Azure services.

Security: Protecting your application on Azure

When migrating from AWS to Azure, security is paramount. Both platforms offer strong frameworks to protect data, apps, and infrastructure. Azure provides a suite of integrated security services to maintain high security while enabling cloud scalability. AWS offers AWS Shield and WAF for DDoS and web application firewalls, while Azure offers Azure DDoS Protection and Azure Firewall for similar threat prevention. Azure Security Center monitors your security posture, and Azure Sentinel provides cloud-native SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) for threat detection and response. Microsoft Defender for Identity and Azure Entra ID Identity Protection integrate with Entra ID, ensuring your app security is tightly linked to user identity and governance.

Compliance: Meeting regulatory standards on Azure

Ensuring compliance with industry standards and regulations is crucial for many ISVs. Azure provides a robust compliance framework that aligns with global standards to meet the most stringent requirements. Whether your application deals with sensitive data or operates in highly regulated industries, Azure’s comprehensive compliance offerings can help you achieve the necessary certifications.

Azure complies with key standards such as:

GDPR

HIPAA

SOC 1, 2, and 3

ISO 27001 and other ISO standards

FedRAMP

Azure provides tools like Azure Policy for governance and Azure Blueprints for complex regulatory requirements. It offers a similar set of compliance certifications to AWS, with a stronger integration into Microsoft enterprise tools, easing compliance for businesses in regulated sectors. For apps handling sensitive data, use Azure Security and Compliance Blueprint to ensure regulatory adherence. Azure’s Compliance Manager helps track and manage compliance, simplifying the process of meeting industry standards.

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