AWS Compete Battlecard

Co
mpete

This battlecard provides summary information and guidance on how to compete with VMware in the cloud space. Please see the AWS Compete portal for additional information

low-cost storage service that provides durable storage for data archiving and
backup.

Redshift: Fully managed large scale data warehouse service in the cloud.
Businesses can analyze large-size data sets using the same SQL-based tools
and business intelligence (BI) apps in use today.

Amazon EMR (Elastic MapReduce): A web service that enables businesses,

researchers, data analysts, and developers to process large amounts of data.
Amazon EMR uses Hadoop to distribute data and processing across a resizable
cluster of EC2 instances.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Service for deploying and scaling web apps and
services developed with popular programming languages such as Java, .NET,
PHP, Node.js, Python, and Ruby.

Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): A way for customers to define a

virtual network topology that closely resembles a traditional network that they
might operate in their own datacenter.

Amazon CloudFront: A content delivery web service to give developers and

businesses a way to distribute content to end users with low latency and high
data transfer speeds.

WorkSpaces: A desktop computing service that enables customers to

provision cloud-based desktops on multiple devices.

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS): RDS lets businesses set up,
operate, and scale a MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server, or PostgreSQL database in the
cloud.

geography

Explore entering the Analytics as a Service space more strongly

Anticipated changes and developments

Continue to offer new instance types and services and to reduce prices

Promote its own hybrid vision by connecting to on-premises

Globally expand services and datacenters

Re-orient its sales approach to prioritize accounts by verticals, segments, &

For internal Microsoft use only. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied.

AWS Compete Battlecard

Co
mpete

This battlecard provides summary information and guidance on how to compete with VMware in the cloud space. P

AWS strengths

AWS says

Microsoft says

1.Leading mind share and market share in cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS), with extremely high
inaccurately
penetration within startups and early adopters, making them the incumbent to own the public cloud
space.
2.Broadest platform of IaaS capabilities and APIs.

defined hybrid p

Microsoft offers one consisten

infrastructure, apps, and data
4.Pricing flexibility for customers.
datacenter, a hosting service
5.Large-scale capacity and efficient use leading to continuous price cuts; perception of lowest cost provider.
Microsoft public cloud.
6.Broad ecosystem of ISVs and service catalog options.

3.Rapid platform development with hundreds of new features each year.

7.Global platform reach with a single, consistent user interface.

8.Turnkey application deployment through AWS Marketplace.

AWS positioning and messaging

Cloud

Compute

AWS says
Amazon is less expensive
than Microsoft

Microsoft Azure

Windows Server 2012 R2 (including

AWS provides a variety of cloudbased computing services
Hyper-V), & System Center 2012 R2
including a wide selection of
compute instances, which can
Strategies in customer profile
scale up and down automatically
to meet the needs of your
Win
Surround
application, a managed load
balancing service, and fullyDeploy best-in-class
Surround the customer
managed desktops in the cloud.
storage, backup, &
environment and
disaster recovery
improve datacenter
solution in private and
service agility with
public cloud with one
System Center. Position
provider and contract.
System Center as a oneFor new cloud initiatives,
stop shop for all
focus on the hybrid
datacenter and cloud
Microsoft says
platform to easily extend
management needs.
existing tools,
Microsoft matches AWS infrastructure,
pricing for &
allskills
commodity
public
to
the cloud.

AWS offers low cost, highly

innovative flexible and scalable
cloud solutions including
databases, analytic tools,
networking and app services, and
management resources with no
upfront investment or long-term
commitment. An expanding
network of managed service
provider partners ensure
customers are optimizing
solutions.

Competitor claims

What to sell key Microsoft solution

components

Extend

Extend datacent
Azure services fo
Server, SharePoi
Tier 2 & 3 apps
workloads.

Extend the deve

and testing envi
to use on-deman
cloud resources.

cloud offerings.

Amazon is more innovative

than Microsoft.

Amazon is leading the way

to an all cloud future

Azure packs more compute

AWS in the
Key capacity
actions than
for success
instances we offer, so Azure
beats AWS on price-toWhat to do
performance.
Understand customers pains, challenges,
Reserved EC2 usage above contracted amount is
goals, & major initiatives.
charged at the On-Demand rate.
Build conversation around Microsofts modern
Azure releases new services faster than AWS (most
platform: Windows Server 2012 R2, System
AWS updates are enhancements).
Center 2012 R2, and Microsoft Azure.
Azure is 56% faster in write speed than AWS (source:
Identify and select winning sales tactics and
Nasuni, The State of Cloud Storage 2013 Industry
align them with solving key customer pains.
Report).
Approach customers around specific
Azure's average availability response time is 25%
scenarios where we have a significant
faster than S3 (source:
competitive advantage, such as Microsoft
Amazon labels private clouds
workloads.
as archaic; pitches

Wh

I
c
a

S
t
A
i
f
i

AWS Compete Battlecard

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mpete

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Position Microsoft as a more enterprisetrusted advisor than AWS.

5.

Price comparison: support offerings

Amazon

Azure

Enterprise

Pro-Direct

Highlight that Microsoft Azure is

covered under existing EAs in few
countries at a discounted price for
yearly commitment, while declaring
that negotiating an EA with AWS is
challenging.

Unlimited Phone/Chat/Email Support 24x7

Unlimited phone/e-mail
support 24x7

6. Highlight
Unlimited phone/e-mail
support 24x7

that Microsoft is a trusted

technology vendor with decades of
Dedicated Support
experience in delivering IT solutions.

Dedicated Support
Escalation Resource
(reactive only)

Managed Support
Escalation

Delivery Resource

Automated Proactive
Checks

Automated Proactive
Checks

7. Showcase Microsoft Azure cloud

Automated Proactive
Checks
solutions as more enterprise ready,

Architecture Assistance/
Support Service

Self Service Guidance

Proactive Services,
highlighting
Custom Advisory Services
capabilities,
Assigned Technical
SME

15 minute response from

> 1 hour response time

> 1 hour response time

$15,000+/month

$1000/month

$3k+/month

the product integration

strong SLAs, and bundled
support options.

Sales objection handling

How to sell
1.

2.

3.

4.

Position Microsoft as a provider of

end-to-end cloud offerings across the
cloud stack. Shape the discussion as
development and deployment
oriented, which AWS lacks, and focus
on the overall business value.
Highlight the integration between our
networking solutions & the flexibility
in working IaaS and platform as a
service (PaaS) environments.
Emphasize Microsofts commitment to
the cloud and its vision in providing a
continuum of solutions that enable
private clouds, public clouds, and a
hybrid clouds.
Outline Microsoft Azure flexibility over
AWS to move back and forth between
on-premises & off-premises cloud
offerings.

AWS offers hybrid

solutions too

AWS offers point solutions and tools in

policies across on-premises and public
private cloud or any on-premises IT as
hybrid IT support through the Cloud OS
and capabilities across on-premises, M
clouds.

AWS is the most flexible and

cheapest available solution

Microsoft customers get the best value

flexibility of a hybrid environment and
is unique in the sense that customers
on-premises to Azure using IaaS virtua
services to the application.

AWS offers developers a fast,

inexpensive way to set up
test environments in the
cloud with tools such as
Elastic Beanstalk and Cloud
Formation

EC2 runs on EBS, which is limited to on

have to buy S3 at an additional cost fo
Azure blob storage includes geo-replic
requires manual effort to replicate. Wi
familiar development tools such as Vis

AWS S3 offers a highlyscalable, reliable, durable,

and low-latency virtual
infrastructure at a low cost
for data storage & disaster
recovery

Microsoft Azures Local Redundancy St

than S3. Azure charges only for the inc
snapshotting a blob whereas S3 charg
With StorSimple, Microsoft offers the b
scalable, cost-effective storage solutio

AWS EC2 running Windows

Server is a secure and
dependable way for
customers to deploy
SharePoint quickly and cost
effectively

Microsoft workloads are not tested on

buggy and unreliable. Any error during
entire configuration.
With Microsoft Azure, customers get fi
(infrastructure and software) for a Sha

RDS is a scalable relational

cloud database that provides
cost-efficient and resizable
capacity

Microsoft customers can easily build m

SQL Server and Azure SQL Database in
is not available on AWS. Microsoft Azu
effective, since customers do not pay

AWS Compete Battlecard

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mpete

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Key feature comparison

Capability

Evidence to emphasize
Customer evidence

Hosting (lightweight
web apps)

Virtual Machines, Worker role, Web role External case studies:

w/elevated privileges, Web role
Jidari: Egyptian start-up
Web Sites
Jidari switches its web apps

Database

SQL Database (formerly SQL Azure)

Big Data

HDInsight

Blob storage

Microsoft Azure Blobs

Table storage

Microsoft Azure Tables

Storage Drives

Microsoft Azure Drives

App Deployment

Automatically handled

Storage Archive

Expected H1 FY15

Hybrid Storage

StorSimple

Messaging

Microsoft Azure Service Bus, Queues

Networking

Virtual Network, Connect, Traffic Manager,

Azure DNS

Caching Service

Azure Managed & In-Memory Cache

Content Delivery

Expected Q3 FY14 (See OneList)

Management

Management Portal, Power Shell, System

Center 2012

Monitoring

Diagnostics & Service, Management APIs,

SCOM Pack

Authentication &
Authorization

Windows Live, Accounts and Subscription,

Federation Future, Azure Active Directory

Development Tools

Toolkit for Eclipse and Visual Studio

Supported Libraries
and SDKs

.NET, PHP, Java, node.js, Python

Industry Specific

Azure Media Services, Mobile Services

Desktop
Virtualization

N/A

Compute

to the
Microsoft Azure cloud system, giving
its social networks users a faster
response than was previously the case
with AWS.
Getit Infomedia: Getit Infomedia
chose to migrate 25 workloads from
on-premises deployments to Microsoft
Azure because AWS could not offer the
same range of components across
IaaS, PaaS and software as a service
(SaaS).
Sangkuriang International: In need
of a cloud solution that could work
with a wide mix of technologies,
Sangkuriang chose Microsoft Azure
over AWS because the company
considered it an easier cloud platform
for achieving its goals.
Wellero: In choosing Microsoft Azure
over AWS, Wellero was able to bring
its new offering to market twice as
fast, save upwards of US$275,000 in
its first year of business, and boost its
scalability and corporate agility.
Callaway Golf: Callaway Golf chose
Microsoft Azure over AWS and Google,
reducing IT costs by US$324,000
annually and giving Callaway
unprecedented flexibility and
scalability to respond to the needs of
its global business.

AWS Compete Battlecard

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mpete

This battlecard provides summary information and guidance on how to compete with VMware in the cloud space. P

Azure Sales Scenarios

Azure Roadmap

AWS
weakness

Description

What it means to customers

Lack of
private
cloud
support &
on-premises
IT assets

Other than limited 3rd party integration, AWS

lacks private cloud support or on-premises IT
assets. AWS recently announced partnership
with a startup called Eucalyptus to provide a
private cloud environment compatible with
AWS APIs. In reality, AWS is just providing the
Eucalyptus license to their API and some
technical support.

AWS and Eucalyptus are not working jo

to innovate the private cloud offering o
build new technology that offers
compatibility of broader AWS services w
Eucalyptus. Eucalyptus does not run on
Windows or support Hyper-V.

Customer
lock-in

AWS locks customers into a proprietary AMI

format, making it difficult to move virtual
machines on-premises.

Amazon doesnt have any of their own

development tools, instead relying on 3
party offerings. If customers choose to
to AWS, they are in effect locking
themselves into a proprietary ecosyste

Enterprise

The majority of AWS customers are startups

Architectural visibility and language

AWS Compete Battlecard

Co
mpete

This battlecard provides summary information and guidance on how to compete with VMware in the cloud space. P

novices

and developers. AWS is just starting to focus

on the enterprise and most of their
experience is at the business unit level.

frustrates traditional enterprise IT buye

Transformation to the Cloud can be risk
AWS is still learning how to sell to
enterprises. Their enterprise sales team
are not available in every state in the U

Poor
support for
Microsoft
workloads

Because AWS uses a proprietary format,

Microsoft workloads are not fully supported.

A proprietary format means that Micros

workloads are not tested on AWS and
receive best-effort support. Customers
wont get 1st rate support on issues on
AWS.

No Oracle
support

Oracle doesnt support AWS virtualization

engine and assumes no
reliability/responsibility for data stored in S3.

What happens to customers who have

existing licenses to run Oracle software
With AWS, they would require additiona
licenses from other vendors. Customer
wont get 1st rate support on issues on
Oracle on AWS

No PaaS
solution

Amazon lacks a comparable PaaS solution to

complement its IaaS solution; RDS for SQL
Server lacks features such as data-sync,
multi-AZ deployment for SQL Server, and read
replica.

AWS is primarily an IaaS service that

depends on partners to fulfill PaaS
scenarios. This limits the flexibility of
customers and necessitates them to
continue to do the same as before (man
the infrastructure).

No unified
AWS lacks unified enterprise management
manageme between on-premises and the AWS cloud.
nt solution Partner offerings are limited.

Amazon is relying on a variety of 3rd-pa

partners to provide a singular view of o
premises and cloud deployments. AWS
its own console, but it doesnt include
integration with other services and
specifically with private cloud
implementations.

Rigid
pricing

AWS billing is not as flexible as it is by the

hour.

The effective rate you pay is dependen

your utilization. When making a
reservation, you need to specify exact
instance type, instance size, and
datacenter location. Your usage has to
match these exact dimensions to get th
reserved instance pricing. Once reserve
the rate is locked for 1-3 years, despite
price drops on on-demand instances.

Lack of
SLAs

AWS has carefully worded guarantees and a

lack of available SLAs for some services.

AWS EC2 provides SLAs for multiple

instances only.