AWS vs Azure Security Comparison: A Guide for Business
Choosing the Right AWS Managed Services Provider
- What Are AWS Managed Services?
- Benefits of AWS Managed Services
- What Is the Difference between AWS Fully-Managed vs Self-Managed Services?
- Popular AWS Managed Services
- How to Choose a Perfect AWS Managed Services Provider
- What Developers Do You Need to Support AWS MS?
- AWS Certified Developers Rates
- Mobilunity – Your Reliable AWS Managed Service Partner
Cloud services are important, and you likely know why. But here’s the catch: supervising a cloud environment is a complex task, and companies often need professional assistance.
As we see, AWS is a leading cloud service by Amazon designed for the management of operations for AWS infrastructure engineering. Amazon managed services aim to increase accessibility, affordability, and speed of cloud operations.
What Are AWS Managed Services?
Amazon offers a great option for speeding up the worldwide migration to AWS cloud computing. Using Microsoft makes every aspect of utilizing cloud infrastructure simpler, facilitating the deployment, cloud migration, development, and release of both existing and new solutions and applications.
Selecting a trustworthy Amazon MS provider ensures that your cloud environment is professionally maintained from configuration to continuous enhancement.
There is an extensive range of solutions, such as AWS Configuration Management, AWS Backup and Recovery, and AWS CloudTrail, along with resources like AWS Systems Manager for managing resources and AWS Trusted Advisor for optimization advice. These services facilitate the automation of crucial processes, enabling organizations to improve their AWS implementations without requiring extra hiring or internal expertise.
Here’s a clearer summary of the key features of AWS managed services (AMS):
- Logging, monitoring, and guardrails. AMS configures alerts, aggregates logs in CloudWatch and CloudTrail, and employs guardrails to prevent misconfigurations. Events that impact operations are flagged as incidents and supervised by AMS.
- Continuous management. AMS backs up resources using AWS Backup at scheduled intervals. In the event of an Availability Zone failure, AMS can restore environments leveraging EBS snapshots.
- Security and access management. AMS manages endpoint security, including antivirus protection, configures IAM roles and security groups, and integrates Amazon security tools such as GuardDuty and Macie. User access can be controlled through approved directory solutions.
- Patch management. AMS provides patching through monthly maintenance or tag-based schedules, addressing updates for supported operating systems and infrastructure tools.
- Change management. AMS monitors changes to the environment using both preventative and detective controls, logging all activities in CloudTrail.
- Self-service provisioning. Resources can be provisioned via Request for Change (RFC), AWS Service Catalog, or Developer Mode. It’s important to note that resources created in Developer Mode are not managed by AMS.
- Incident and problem management. AMS detects, notifies, and addresses incidents based on their priority. Trend analysis is conducted to help prevent recurring issues.
- Reporting. AMS provides monthly reports that include key metrics, performance data, costs, and operational insights.
- Service desk and designated support. AMS offers 24/7 Service Desk support. Each customer is assigned a Cloud Service Delivery Manager (CSDM) for operational reviews and a Cloud Architect (CA) for technical guidance.
- Firewall management. An optional managed firewall service is available for traffic filtering, along with AMS support for firewall infrastructure management.
These features deliver comprehensive support, proactive management, and flexibility to ensure operational efficiency and security for AWS-managed environments.
Benefits of AWS Managed Services
Businesses of all sizes and industries choose to work with AWS MSPs because of the major advantages.
| Benefit | Description |
| Reduction in expenses | Utilizing AWS MS can result in substantial cost savings in the long run by removing the requirement for operational and capital expenses linked to upkeep cloud network infrastructures. Businesses also reduce expenses by not hiring expert staff to oversee infrastructure, decreasing recruitment and staffing costs. |
| Recovery from disasters | A key advantage of AWS managed services is strong disaster recovery assistance. A disaster recovery plan is crucial for any organization prioritizing growth and sustainability. It protects information and allows restoration in unexpected situations such as cyberattacks or data breaches. Using solutions managed by AWS helps organizations to quickly recover operations following a sensitive data loss incident, reducing downtime and preventing significant financial losses. |
| Quickly resolving problems | AWS MS offers continuous cloud management and quick support, swiftly resolving issues to ensure seamless system operation. By providing round-the-clock expert support, all network problems can be quickly fixed to minimize disruptions and resolve issues promptly. |
| Updates that happen automatically | It is crucial to remain up to date with the ever-evolving AWS technology. Managed services take care of updates, guaranteeing that your network infrastructure stays current without the need for manual involvement. This enables your company to stay ahead of innovations without spending more time or resources. |
| Security of networks | Ultimately, AWS MS offers high-level security, safeguarding your network against unauthorized access and cyber threats. Amazon web services provides a strong security model called the “shared responsibility”, which splits accountability between Amazon and its customers. It takes care of securing the cloud infrastructure, including physical security, network infrastructure, and hypervisor security, while customers are accountable for securing their applications and data in the cloud. |
| Standards compliance | Amazon offers various tools and solutions that assist organizations in achieving compliance standards like GDPR, HIPAA, and SOC 2. One instance is AWS IAM, which helps users efficiently handle access permissions, while AWS CloudTrail records user actions for auditing and compliance purposes. Moreover, Amazon GuardDuty, AWS Security Hub, and Amazon Macie provide ongoing surveillance and identification of risks to safeguard delicate information. |
What Is the Difference between AWS Fully-Managed vs Self-Managed Services?
Fully-managed services
AWS takes care of a cloud infrastructure completely, managing servers, storage, OS, databases, and important resources to let businesses concentrate on core business operations rather than handling background duties. Amazon offers flexibility and management of deployment with its shared responsibility model, different security roles dependent on subscription and regulation.
In certain situations, AWS managed services allow specific configurations. For instance, you have the option to set Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) specifications while initiating a database instance on AWS RDS (Relational Database Services). Even though some may think fully-managed solutions limit control, users still have a substantial amount of control over their resources, such as modifying database settings.
- Target audience. Fully-managed services are perfect for companies of any size, especially small to medium business environments with restricted IT funds and big enterprises wanting to streamline their operations. Organizations gain advantages from efficient infrastructure management, data backups, security compliance, and faster time to market.
- Price. AWS provides a pricing model where you pay only for the fully-managed services you use. Pricing is determined by assigned resources and number of active users, and can be estimated using the AWS pricing calculator.
Self-managed services
Using AWS self-managed solutions, customers are in charge of all aspects of their infrastructure, including provisioning, configuration, security, and scaling. This choice is ideal for companies with in-house IT departments or external support, as it includes the management of EC2 instances, Kubernetes clusters, databases, and application deployment.
The responsibility of clients includes ensuring infrastructure security, maintaining the operating system, considering resources, and planning for disaster recovery. This method allows for great flexibility in setting up infrastructure to meet individual requirements, but it necessitates strong monitoring and rapid reactions to errors or threats.
- Target audience. Self-managed services are designed for medium companies and enterprises that have specialized IT departments and desire complete control and personalization of their cloud configuration. These organizations are able to closely match their infrastructure to specific needs.
- Price. AWS services that you manage yourself have a pricing model that is adaptable and determined by the resources and configurations you choose. The pricing calculator assists in predicting expenses for a wide range of solutions, including machine learning, container orchestration, storage, and application provisioning.
Deciding between AWS fully-managed and self-managed services
Fully-managed services allow your team to concentrate on innovation, while developers take care of everyday cloud tasks. However, self-managed services offer a high level of control, which is perfect for teams who have the technical skills to oversee all parts of the infrastructure.
| Criteria | Fully-managed services | Self-managed services |
| Configuration & management | Amazon manages infrastructure, applications, and databases. | Customers manage all infrastructure, applications, and databases. |
| Support | 24/7 support for queries and issues. | Customer support is limited by AWS provided resources. |
| Flexibility | Limited flexibility; AWS controls most infrastructure aspects. | High flexibility with full customer control over infrastructure. |
| Cost | Higher cost for fully managed solutions with support. | More budget-friendly; requires a skilled in-house IT team. |
| Security | Shared responsibility model reduces client’s security management burden. | Customers are fully responsible for security, backups, and disaster recovery. |
| Scalability | Automatic scaling adjusts to customer demand. | Customers manually scale resources as needed. |
Fully-managed services are the top pick for SMBs lacking an internal IT team. This choice enables you to concentrate on essential business tasks without the challenges of overseeing cloud infrastructure. Even though fully-managed services are convenient, they can come at a higher cost and offer less control over infrastructure.
Self-managed ones provide complete autonomy over virtual machines, applications, and operating systems for large-scale businesses with specialized IT departments. Despite the increased effort and technical skill needed, this choice allows for independence and flexibility in supervising tasks such as backups, monitoring, and patching.
Popular AWS Managed Services
The price of AWS also depends on the type of MS you choose.
Amazon provides a set of pre-made solutions to help you focus on the code and business logic while infrastructure is taken care of. Here are the most popular MS to choose from.
AWS ECS/Fargate
It allows using containers without much effort from your side. There is IAM integration, and all the EC2 instances for containers are taken care of. This system allows using hundreds of containers for your app through the Docker image.
AWS ECS is easy to use and set up, but it is vendor-locked. It means that this system cannot be moved to other cloud providers, so you’ll have to stick with Amazon.
AWS EKS
This one is more flexible in this regard – it allows running an app on different clouds. So it is hybrid-friendly. And there is a standard container solution. You’ll need to define worker nodes, like pods and services, which is a downside to some. It requires more configuration work from your side.
FaaS Solutions
FaaS solutions are suitable for apps that consist of small parts (functions) that can work isolated. And they do not need to run all the time. In such a case, you can safely choose AWS Lambda. And the fact that functions do not run all the time allows saving money.
The AWS database is set up with a couple of code lines. And there is an auto-scaling feature. It is used for small web API apps or automated jobs. It is also locked by the vendor.
Amazon EC2
AWS EC2 is known for its security and scalability. The main goal is to make cloud computing simpler for developers. It has a comfortable web service interface and requires minimal friction.
It also gives complete resource control.
Amazon EC2 tends to be one of the best choices regarding the number of features to choose from, like choosing a processor, networking, storage, OS, etc. And it can be scaled up in minutes. Another major advantage is 99.99% availability for every Amazon EC2 region.
AWS Kubernetes
AWS managed Kubernetes is also flexible, easy, and scalable. And it can be run in cloud or on-premise. Kubernetes’ environment is secure and easy to migrate. It offers 99.95% SLA uptime and excellent availability.
And the latest security patches are automatically installed. Another major advantage is that it supports hybrid deployment. You can run the Kubernetes environment on your data center if it is needed. And it is an open-source project.
How to Choose a Perfect AWS Managed Services Provider
AWS integration with tools can be a simple and fast process when done right by developers. But if you just start the process, there are lots of factors and questions to answer.
This is the moment where AWS MSPs come into place. They help companies to find the solution that will fit their business needs and requirements. These developers tend to have been certified by Amazon experts, so that they can give excellent advice as well as take care of the whole process.
After all, the shift to the cloud is much more complicated than just relocation software. It requires a new approach to infrastructure and sometimes even its complete change. It is essential to partner with experts who know all the details and make this move to the cloud simple and effective.
How to choose the AWS MSP right for you?
Here are factors to consider:
- Choose certified and experienced experts. Always check the Amazon-specific certifications that prove the level of knowledge and skill.
- Look through a portfolio of previous projects. Nothing speaks louder than actions. Check the previous projects a provider has worked on.
- Ask about security measures and procedures. Providers have to implement the most advanced protection measures to keep clients’ data safe.
- Consider automation and migration of services. A potential partner needs to be able to consult on what support needs to be moved and what processes can be automated for increased efficiency.
- Sign a Service Level Agreement. SLA is signed to make sure that any errors and possible downtime are minimized. It helps to decrease possible revenue losses.
What Developers Do You Need to Support AWS MS?
There are several types of professionals that are a part of an AWS MS team. All of them have their responsibilities that ensure the productive shift. The one thing that they have in common – all of them have to be AWS certified.
| Role | Responsibility | Core benefits | Focus area |
| DevOps engineer | Combine development and operations to drive faster, continuous development and release cycles. | Increased development speed, enhanced reliability, scalability, and security. | Best practices, tools, and automation. |
| AWS solution consultants | Oversee infrastructure and features, recommending, designing, and implementing automated infrastructure to meet business needs. | Deep AWS expertise; tailored infrastructure solutions to meet specific client requirements. | Managed systems and client requirements. |
| Cloud-native backend developers | Focus on backend development for user-facing applications with optimized UI/UX, utilizing cloud-native tools and services. | Enhanced user satisfaction and interface usability on a cloud platform. | User experience and cloud platform features. |
AWS Certified Developers Rates
The pricing is influenced by the number of employees, their experience, and location.
Overall, developers are divided into three categories according to their experience. Juniors usually have zero to 2 years of experience in this field, while middle ones have been working for 2-5 years. Senior developers are more knowledgeable as they have 6+ years of experience and have worked with various environments, tools, and stacks. This classification influences their rates, of course.
Moreover, the developers’ location can greatly influence expenses, as rates differ from one region to another. For instance, developers located in Eastern Europe generally provide more affordable rates while ensuring high-quality work compared to their peers in Western Europe or North America, where rates are usually much higher.
Mobilunity – Your Reliable AWS Managed Service Partner
Mobilunity has more than 14 years of experience in hiring skilled engineers. We have helped businesses by providing dedicated development teams for more than 10+ active clients in cloud and DevOps from different countries.
We have successfully hired Azure and AWS developers for fintech projects to streamline user payments from Amazon and other platforms. For example, we have a Database of 100+ qualified cloud and DevOps candidates in various roles and responsibilities:
- DevOps Engineers (AWS & Azure)
- Site Reliability Engineers (SRE)
- Tech Leads in DevOps (AWS & Azure)
If you are interested in enhancing your business operations and software development with the use of AWS, Mobilunity will find the best dedicated developers for you. And once the hiring is done, we continue supporting the team by taking all the legal and administrative responsibilities from your shoulders. Contact us today and find your trustworthy team of AWS developers within 6 weeks.
