Azure vs AWS design

While there are many discussions about what each cloud does better in terms of pricing, reliability, service, API's, documentation and so on.. there are few discussion on what a developer loves and makes their job easier, so here is one

Navigating in the UI

AWS groups resources of the same type based on region, so you need to know which service you are looking for and in which region, this may sometimes be confusing as you have to know the region you are looking for.

Azure displays all the resource of a single type under the particular resource category irrespective of region/resource-group/subscription.

Resource details

In AWS, the resource details usually are displayed at the bottom and the buttons at the top allow working with them, some details are not provided straight forward in the UI and needs to be hunted by navigating to correct places (such as policy document, access details, connections etc).

Azure does this in a beautiful way using the "everything related to this service tab" at the left, while working with services in the Azure portal, the left tab displays lots of sections with details such as (access details, policy document, support etc) on each page. This makes it really easy to navigate around and never wonder, is there something hiding somewhere ?

AWS also provides a similar tab for many services such as EC2, but does not provide resource level isolated information.

Search

The Search in AWS management console does not provide results of your hosted resources, you cannot search for a resource by its name such as 'testsns' and get the result, the closest is the SNS service in AWS and you need to know the region as well 😖.

In Azure you can search for a resource you need by its name, just type 'testservicebus' and your hosted servicebus will show up in the list irrespective of regions or resource-groups 😁.

Functionalities

AWS UI is designed in an elegant way trying to give the users a very easy approach to work with services, it considers the usage scenarios and provides ways to connect and implement solutions easily, ex: connecting Services such as SQS and Lambda, modifying configurations. AWS Provides a neat wrapper considering the user scenarios making it easier to work with directly.

Azure provides a simpler design and keeps all related information bound to the resource, sometimes the implementations needs to be understood and executed if its not provided directly.

Access control

AWS allows to manage access control primarily using IAM, which is very well designed and provides centralized control over entire infrastructure, it sometimes becomes difficult working with individual resource level controls, but the general policies at resource type level are well structured and easy to use.

Azure provides fine grained resource level IAM and central IAM using AD, while resource level IAM in azure gives it a great edge, AWS IAM also does really well to manage groups and policies as a unit.

Which to choose ?

The decision is usually done at an enterprise level, considering factors such as cost, integrations, support, vision etc.
If you are someone looking to get started or learn more about the cloud consider the scenarios

First time working with cloud

AWS and Azure both need a basic level of understanding to get started, but the AWS UI might be easier to try out and learn.

Microsoft stack (C#, .NET etc)

Azure

Trial usage

Both Azure and AWS Provide trial accounts with no cost for trying out their services

Create a free account, you wont be charged unless you create something they says it will cost you.

Microsoft Azure Free Account: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/free/
AWS Free Account: https://aws.amazon.com/free