In this blog, we are going to discuss AWS vs Azure from a point of view of certification holders. We will cover all the necessary aspects that will give you clarity regarding AWS vs Azure certifications. Let’s first take a look at the topics that are covered in this blog:
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AWS vs Azure: An Overview
AWS CEO, Andy Jassy said, ‘Cloud is the new normal.’ Well, clearly, it is a necessity for IT organizations of the day. According to a report published on Forbes, around 80 percent of the enterprises are running on AWS or are experimenting with them. Azure is at the second position with 67 percent of usage, and Google Cloud comes third with 40 percent. According to IDC, certified IT professionals in India are promoted 50 percent faster than non-certified ones.
With this cloud surge, job opportunities have also been increasing rapidly for professionals who have been working on cloud services or even who want to explore cloud-related AWS projects in organizations. You can get these opportunities by getting certified by the respective providers.
Importance of Certifications
Over the years, the boom of cloud has turned into a blessing for developers as they constantly search for better job opportunities and more projects. Meanwhile, with more professionals entering the field, companies started seeking certified ones. As per the Global Knowledge 2019 report, 93 percent of employers accept that certified professionals add more value to their organizations. Certifications validate your experience and knowledge in your area of expertise.
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Now that you know the importance of certifications in getting better opportunities, you may be thinking about which one to go for among the top two industry leaders, i.e., AWS and Azure.
To get an answer to this question, in this AWS vs Azure blog, we will first discuss AWS certifications, their benefits, and the most sought-after AWS certifications available, and then will move on with the details of Azure certifications.
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Difference between AWS and Azure
Before we discuss the details of AWS and Azure certifications and other intricacies of the two technologies, let us take a look, in brief, at the difference between AWS and Azure. Below is a table highlighting the basic differences between the two technologies:
| Parameters | AWS | Azure |
| Type of Cloud | Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) | Virtual Network |
| Connection Type | Direct Connect | ExpressRoute |
| Storage Services | S3, Buckets, AWS EBS, SDB, Domains, AWS CloudFront, AWS Import or Export, etc. | Blob Storage, Containers, Azure Drive, Table Storage, Tables, etc. |
| Database services | MySQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Oracle | MS SQL and SQL Sync |
| Deployment Services | Amazon Web Services, Amazon Machine Instance (AMI,) Traditional Deployment Models, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, etc. | Cspkg (fancy zip file)Upload via Portal or API via Blog StorageCourse-grained updates “click to scale.”More magic |
AWS Certifications
In 2013, AWS launched its global certification program. The first certification offered was AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate Level. AWS has come a long way ever since, and now in total, it offers 12 certifications in 4 different categories: Foundational, Associate, Professional, and Specialty.
Now, let’s discuss some of the benefits you can get by attaining an AWS certification:
Benefits of AWS Certifications
- Salary hike: The average annual salary of an AWS Solutions Architect Associate in India, according to PayScale, is around ₹12 lacs per annum. And with experience, it can go above ₹25 LPA. In the United States, these professionals get increments of more than US$12K per annum if they are certified by Citrix and Linux, as per a report published on Forbes. If they have some years of experience in Cloud Computing, then these numbers can go even higher.
- Validation: AWS certifications are one of the most trusted certificates among employers around the world. Thus, the certified AWS professionals can get better opportunities in these organizations as AWS certifications validate their experience and knowledge in the subject matter.
- Badge: Once you are AWS certified, you are given a badge, which you can utilize to attend the AWS summit events, but not just that, it can also influence employers on platforms like LinkedIn.
Top AWS Certifications
As we have discussed, there are a total of 12 AWS certifications you can go for. All of these certifications have equal merit, depending on the subject matter. Though it is often recommended to attain multiple certifications since already numerous organizations have set up AWS, and they need professionals who can oversee multiple AWS operations.
However, when we talk about the AWS Certification salary, the following two certifications are the highest-paying ones.
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate and AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner are in the list of top 15 highest-paying certifications prepared by Forbes.
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Azure Certifications
Although the Azure market share is less compared to the AWS market share, its growth has been phenomenal in the past few years. According to a Forbes report, Azure has been catching up fast with AWS when it comes to the number of enterprises utilizing it. The majority of Fortune 500 companies are currently utilizing Azure services. Azure’s exceptional hybrid cloud features and its easy-to-use and install on-premises features have been attracting more and more IT organizations across the world toward it.
Thus, Microsoft has been constantly adding more Azure role-based certifications. Currently, it offers 14 Azure certifications. Focusing on Azure’s role-based certifications will validate your subject matter expertise and can offer you great career opportunities.
Various Azure certifications are mentioned in the image below:
Along with the growth of Azure, Azure certifications are also becoming beneficial with time. Now, we will move further and discuss the benefits of Azure certifications:
Also, check out Intellipaat’s blog on Azure Career Opportunities.
Benefits of Azure Certifications
- Salary hike: In India, an experienced Azure Certified Solutions Architect earns around ₹20 LPA as per PayScale. In the United States, on the other hand, a Microsoft Certified Azure Fundamentals IT professional earns US$126K per annum on average as per a survey conducted by Global Knowledge.
- Validation: Proven expertise will give you access to more and more opportunities in organizations that are running on Azure and its features. Even companies that are going to implement Azure features will need experts who can help them. In this scenario, certified professionals will be prioritized when it comes to hiring as they are expected to have both expertise and deep knowledge.
- .NET platform: The .NET platform is a cross-platform, open-source framework from Microsoft that includes tools, libraries, and programming languages for development. So, when you get trained for cracking an Azure certification, you will also be able to learn how to integrate .NET with a company’s infrastructure.
Top Azure Certifications
Just like AWS, Azure also has two of its certifications listed among the top 15 highest-paying certificates. These are:
As you can see, one is of the fundamental level and the other is of the associate level, i.e., there are different stages of certification as per requirements. However, it does not conclude that one of these two certificates will surely open gates for more opportunities. Most employers trust professionals with a wide range of knowledge and expertise.
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ComparisonD between AWS and Azure Certifications
In this section, we will be distinguishing between AWS certifications and Azure certifications based on several factors.
- Salary: As we have already discussed the salaries of AWS vs Azure certified professionals, we can see that there is a higher chance for AWS certified professionals to get paid more as compared to Azure certified professionals.
- Scope: While AWS is dominating the cloud market, Azure’s growth has been constantly increasing. So, the opportunities that AWS vs Azure certifications can offer you will not differ much. Organizational requirements will also play a substantial role in this criteria.
AWS vs Azure: Which is better for your career in 2023?
Now, we come to the most crucial question that you might often ask yourself, AWS or Azure which certification should I go for?
First, let us tell you this, there is no exact answer to this question. The answer varies from person to person according to various factors such as your dream job, organizational requirements, desired income, and more.
If your dream job requires an AWS skill set, then you should focus on AWS certifications. If the organization you are working in is utilizing Azure and you want to stay there to add more value to the organization, then you should opt for Azure certifications.
If you want to earn higher wages in the IT industry, then it is preferred that you go for cross-certifications. But, what are they? In the next section, we will discuss cross-certifications and how they open up potential paths for better career growth.
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Azure vs AWS: Reliability
Azure and AWS are both highly reliable cloud computing platforms that offer robust and scalable infrastructure to their users. Azure provides a 99.9% uptime guarantee for its virtual machines and also offers a service level agreement (SLA) for its storage services, which guarantees 99.9% availability for storage accounts that have more than one replication copy.
Additionally, Azure provides a range of backup and disaster recovery options, including Azure Site Recovery, which enables users to replicate and recover their applications and data in the event of an outage or disaster. AWS also provides a 99.9% uptime guarantee for its EC2 instances and a range of other services, such as S3, DynamoDB, and RDS.
AWS’s global infrastructure is designed to provide high availability and fault tolerance, with multiple availability zones in each region and automatic failover capabilities. Additionally, AWS offers a range of backup and disaster recovery options, including Amazon Glacier and AWS Backup.
Overall, both Azure and AWS are highly reliable cloud computing platforms that offer robust infrastructure and backup options to ensure high availability and uptime for their users. However, the specific reliability and uptime requirements may vary depending on the specific needs and use cases of each organization or user.
Cross-certifications
Most large-scale organizations of the day utilize cloud services from multiple vendors. Let’s take the example of the popular telecom giant, Nokia. Nokia has recently announced a collaboration with all the three major cloud service providers, i.e, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, as it is going to develop 5G solutions and other new services for its customer base. However, it is not only Nokia that is thinking of this way. There are also other organizations that rely on multiple cloud service vendors for different purposes.
Therefore, professionals often go for cross-certification in combinations such as AWS and Azure or AWS and Google Cloud, or sometimes even combining all three cloud providers. Employers, in turn, also seek professionals who are cross-certified to ease their development processes. According to Global Knowledge, 64 percent of cloud professionals are cross-certified across various platforms. Even though AWS is leading the cloud market, there are still many enterprises that are yet to shift to the cloud, so other cloud providers can also rise in the market at any time. In this light, cross-certification gets the professionals access to more opportunities. It sort of gives them the freedom to work on new projects regardless of the cloud services that they use.
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AWS vs Azure: Market Share
The cloud market has three major players—namely Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Apart from these, there are other cloud players in the market that are established names but their presence is not as strong, especially in the global market, as the three major players.
Out of the three leading cloud service providers, AWS is the most widely adopted cloud provider with a market share of 33 percent. It is closely followed by Azure with a market share of 19 percent and Google Cloud with a market share of seven percent. Apart from these global players, Alibaba has a market share that is a little less than the market share of Google.
In its recent reports, Amazon announced a profit of US$13.5 billion in revenue for Q1 2021. The profit figure has certainly increased compared to revenue of US$10.2 billion for Q1 2020. What further adds a feather to Amazon’s cap is its revenue that grew by 32 percent. Furthermore, Microsoft shared that its Intelligent Cloud category’s revenue increased by 23 percent to US$15.1 billion.
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AWS Vs Azure: Job Opportunities
In the recent past, Microsoft Azure Cloud Platform has made inroads against competitors, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), in terms of job availability and interest. Indeed.com published a report covering the four-year time period between October 2015 and October 2019, the percentage change in job seeker searches increased for all three—AWS by 157.77 percent, Microsoft Azure by 130.41 percent, and Google Cloud by 908.75 percent.
However, recent reports tell a different story; while the job searches for AWS have dropped, job seekers’ interest for Azure has risen by 15.39 percent. The share of job postings AWS and Azure have increased by 232.06 percent and 302.47 percent respectively.
AWS vs. Azure: Pricing
To help you get a clear understanding of AWS and Azure pricing, we have curated a list of popular sizes of AWS instances and Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) and compared their prices for OS such as Windows.
| Type | VCPU | MEM | AZURE | AWS |
| General purpose | 2 | 8 GB | $0.6260 | $0.6680 |
| 4 | 16 GB | $0.8520 | $0.8560 |
| 8 | 32 GB | $1.7040 | $1.7120 |
| Computer optimized | 2 | 4 GB | $0.5780 | $0.6490 |
| 4 | 8GB | $0.7980 | $0.8180 |
| 8 | 16 GB | $1.5960 | $1.6360 |
| Memory optimized | 2 | 16 GB | $0.6880 | $0.6850 |
| 4 | 32 GB | $0.9760 | $0.8900 |
| 8 | 64 GB | $1.9520 | $1.7800 |
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Conclusion
Cloud is going to be more prevalent in the future than it has ever been. Cloud professionals will have ample opportunities in the IT world very soon. In this light, certifications will validate their credentials and knowledge, and thus they will be approved as subject matter experts. AWS vs Azure certifications may go back and forth in upcoming years. So, you may have to choose a certification that fulfills your and your organization’s requirements. If you are just starting out with Cloud Computing, then Intellipaat’s Cloud Computing Courses are just for you.