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Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) vs. Microsoft Azure vs. Posit

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Amazon S3

    Score8.8 out of 10
    N/AAmazon S3 is a cloud-based object storage service from Amazon Web Services. It's key features are storage management and monitoring, access management and security, data querying, and data transfer.N/A

    Microsoft Azure

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AMicrosoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and infrastructure for building, deploying, and managing applications and services through a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters.

    $29

    per month

    Posit

    Score10 out of 10
    N/APosit, formerly RStudio, is a modular data science platform, combining open source and commercial products.N/A
    Pricing
    Amazon S3Microsoft AzurePosit
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    Developer
    $29
    per month
    Standard
    $100
    per month
    Professional Direct
    $1000
    per month
    Basic
    Free
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Amazon S3Microsoft AzurePosit
    Free Trial
    NoYesYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYesYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details—The free tier lets users have access to a variety of services free for 12 months with limited usage after making an Azure account.—
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Amazon S3Microsoft AzurePosit
    Considered Multiple Products
    Amazon AWS
    Chose Amazon S3
    Amazon S3 is more cost-effective then what Microsoft Azure offers.
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon S3
    When we were implementation the solution of our issue then we find Azure and Google Cloud Storage platforms but we were unable to find the proper documentation for the platform as compared to S3, So we moved to S3 and discarded the other options. Cost wise there are only some …
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon S3
    We initially looked at CloudBerry but they did not integrate into our NAS hardware out of the box like Amazon S3 did.
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon S3
    S3 provides an on-demand usage model for storage. You only pay for what you use. Nutanix is an on-premises solution and does not allow for usage-based pricing. Azure was less integrated with our current AWS workloads which helped drive our decision to use s3 with the Amazon …
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon S3
    Amazon S3 comes with all other services of AWS, all other services are very quick and secure with S3 storage, which is the best option for any application. Again, compared to other services like Azure or GCP, AWS provides more configuration and functions to host multi nature …
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon S3
    Some obvious ones are Google storage services like Drive, and their whole arsenal of services. Another could be the Office line where SharePoint and other programs can be used synchronously. I have seen other people use Windows Azure for storage needs similar to ours. We chose …
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon S3
    S3 is much cheaper than the alternatives. And it's very easy to set up the billing.
    Incentivized
    Chose Amazon S3
    Amazon has had years of development in building their cloud solution. A few other vendors are playing catch up but that's always the case when you have the key to success. The saying goes " if you built it, they will come". :)

    Incentivized
    Microsoft
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    Azure provides an environment that while at time is more pricey, the tight integration with our existing Microsoft-based infrastructure makes it difficult to beat.
    Incentivized
    Chose Microsoft Azure
    AWS is competitor and it's leading in cloud space with his wide sprawl of offerings and services. AWS is a ocean once you login you get everything on one console. AWS leads this space with all his offerings and capabilities. But Azure is not behind, it is competing and is …
    Incentivized
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    Chose Posit
    RStudio is code based, so in the beginning tools like Spotfire and Tableau have thier advantages since many things are already built in, but in terms of flexibility RStudio will win over the longer term.

    The cost of RStudio and RStudio Connect is very reasonable [for a] small …
    Incentivized
    Chose Posit
    Pros:
    - Free
    - Huge repository of models and library, constantly updated
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    40 Answers
    92%
    Would buy again
    34 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    44 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    39 Answers
    94%
    Delivers good value for the price
    31 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    44 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    40 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    35 Answers
    95%
    Happy with the feature set
    42 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    36 Answers
    89%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    24 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    28 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    38 Answers
    94%
    Implementation went as expected
    34 Answers
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    38 Answers
    Features
    Amazon S3Microsoft AzurePosit
    Data Center Backup
    Comparison of Data Center Backup features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure and Posit
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    8.6
    11 Ratings
    0% above category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Posit
    -
    Ratings
    Universal recovery8.410 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Instant recovery8.310 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Recovery verification8.47 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Business application protection8.57 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multiple backup destinations8.210 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Incremental backup identification9.14 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Backup to the cloud8.511 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Deduplication and file compression9.05 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Snapshots8.67 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Flexible deployment9.011 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management dashboard7.610 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform support8.510 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Retention options9.17 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Encryption9.58 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Enterprise Backup
    Comparison of Enterprise Backup features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure and Posit
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    8.5
    11 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Posit
    -
    Ratings
    Continuous data protection9.510 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Replication8.410 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operational reporting and analytics7.811 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Malware protection8.94 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Multi-location capabilities8.511 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Ransomware Recovery8.01 Ratings00 Ratings00 Ratings
    Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
    Comparison of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure and Posit
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    8.4
    27 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Posit
    -
    Ratings
    Service-level Agreement (SLA) uptime00 Ratings8.126 Ratings00 Ratings
    Dynamic scaling00 Ratings8.725 Ratings00 Ratings
    Elastic load balancing00 Ratings8.624 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-configured templates00 Ratings8.225 Ratings00 Ratings
    Monitoring tools00 Ratings8.326 Ratings00 Ratings
    Pre-defined machine images00 Ratings8.424 Ratings00 Ratings
    Operating system support00 Ratings8.926 Ratings00 Ratings
    Security controls00 Ratings8.626 Ratings00 Ratings
    Automation00 Ratings8.224 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform Connectivity
    Comparison of Platform Connectivity features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure and Posit
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Posit
    9.3
    27 Ratings
    11% above category average
    Connect to Multiple Data Sources00 Ratings00 Ratings8.026 Ratings
    Extend Existing Data Sources00 Ratings00 Ratings10.027 Ratings
    Automatic Data Format Detection00 Ratings00 Ratings10.026 Ratings
    Data Exploration
    Comparison of Data Exploration features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure and Posit
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Posit
    9.0
    27 Ratings
    7% above category average
    Visualization00 Ratings00 Ratings8.027 Ratings
    Interactive Data Analysis00 Ratings00 Ratings10.024 Ratings
    Data Preparation
    Comparison of Data Preparation features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure and Posit
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Posit
    10.0
    26 Ratings
    20% above category average
    Interactive Data Cleaning and Enrichment00 Ratings00 Ratings10.024 Ratings
    Data Transformations00 Ratings00 Ratings10.026 Ratings
    Platform Data Modeling
    Comparison of Platform Data Modeling features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure and Posit
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Posit
    10.0
    22 Ratings
    17% above category average
    Multiple Model Development Languages and Tools00 Ratings00 Ratings10.022 Ratings
    Single platform for multiple model development00 Ratings00 Ratings10.022 Ratings
    Self-Service Model Delivery00 Ratings00 Ratings10.019 Ratings
    Model Deployment
    Comparison of Model Deployment features of Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Microsoft Azure and Posit
    Feature
    Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
    -
    Ratings
    Microsoft Azure
    -
    Ratings
    Posit
    9.9
    18 Ratings
    14% above category average
    Flexible Model Publishing Options00 Ratings00 Ratings10.018 Ratings
    Security, Governance, and Cost Controls00 Ratings00 Ratings9.915 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Amazon S3Microsoft AzurePosit
    Small Businesses
    Acronis Cyber Protect
    Score8.7 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Object Storage
    Score9 out of 10
    RapidMiner
    Score8.9 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Carbonite by OpenText
    Score7.1 out of 10
    IBM Cloud Bare Metal Servers
    Score8.7 out of 10
    Anaconda
    Score8.8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Druva Security Cloud
    Score9.4 out of 10
    SAP on IBM Cloud
    Score9 out of 10
    IBM Watson Studio
    Score10 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Amazon S3Microsoft AzurePosit
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.7
    (77 ratings)
    8.7
    (96 ratings)
    10.0
    (123 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    10.0
    (17 ratings)
    9.7
    (17 ratings)
    Usability
    8.6
    (15 ratings)
    8.3
    (36 ratings)
    8.0
    (4 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.8
    (2 ratings)
    9.4
    (3 ratings)
    Support Rating
    9.8
    (21 ratings)
    9.0
    (27 ratings)
    8.9
    (9 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.0
    (2 ratings)
    9.3
    (4 ratings)
    Configurability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.2
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Amazon S3Microsoft AzurePosit
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Amazon AWS
    Amazon S3 is a great service to safely backup your data where redundancy is guaranteed and the cost is fair. We use Amazon S3 for data that we backup and hope we never need to access but in the case of a catastrophic or even small slip of the finger with the delete command we know our data and our client's data is safely backed up by Amazon S3. Transferring data into Amazon S3 is free but transferring data out has an associated, albeit low, cost per GB. This needs to be kept in mind if you plan on transferring out a lot of data frequently. There may be other cost effective options although Amazon S3 prices are really low per GB. Transferring 150TB would cost approximately $50 per month.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Azure is particularly well suited for enterprise environments with existing Microsoft investments, those that require robust compliance features, and organizations that need hybrid cloud capabilities that bridge on-premises and cloud infrastructure. In my opinion, Azure is less appropriate for cost-sensitive startups or small businesses without dedicated cloud expertise and scenarios requiring edge computing use cases with limited connectivity. Azure offers comprehensive solutions for most business needs but can feel like there is a higher learning curve than other cloud-based providers, depending on the product and use case.
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    In my humble opinion, if you are working on something related to Statistics, RStudio is your go-to tool. But if you are looking for something in Machine Learning, look out for Python. The beauty is that there are packages now by which you can write Python/SQL in R. Cross-platform functionality like such makes RStudio way ahead of its competition. A couple of chinks in RStudio armor are very small and can be considered as nagging just for the sake of argument. Other than completely based on programming language, I couldn't find significant drawbacks to using RStudio. It is one of the best free software available in the market at present.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Amazon AWS
    • Fantastic developer API, including AWS command line and library utilities.
    • Strong integration with the AWS ecosystem, especially with regards to access permissions.
    • It's astoundingly stable- you can trust it'll stay online and available for anywhere in the world.
    • Its static website hosting feature is a hidden gem-- it provides perhaps the cheapest, most stable, most high-performing static web hosting available in PaaS.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Microsoft Azure is highly scalable and flexible. You can quickly scale up or down additional resources and computing power.
    • You have no longer upfront investments for hardware. You only pay for the use of your computing power, storage space, or services.
    • The uptime that can be achieved and guaranteed is very important for our company. This includes the rapid maintenance for security updates that are mostly carried out by Microsoft.
    • The wide range of capabilities of services that are possible in Microsoft Azure. You can practically put or create anything in Microsoft Azure.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    • The support is incredibly professional and helpful, and they often go out of their way to help me when something doesn't work.
    • The one-click publishing from RStudio Connect is absolutely amazing, and I really like the way that it deploys your exact package versions, because otherwise, you can get in a terrible mess.
    • Python doesn't feel quite as native as R at the moment but I have definitely deployed stuff in R and Python that works beautifully which is really nice indeed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Amazon AWS
    • Web console can be very confusing and challenging to use, especially for new users
    • Bucket policies are very flexible, but the composability of the security rules can be very confusing to get right, often leading to security rules in use on buckets other than what you believe they are
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • The cost of resources is difficult to determine, technical documentation is frequently out of date, and documentation and mapping capabilities are lacking.
    • The documentation needs to be improved, and some advanced configuration options require research and experimentation.
    • Microsoft's licensing scheme is too complex for the average user, and Azure SQL syntax is too different from traditional SQL.
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    • Python integration is newer and still can be rough, especially with when using virtual environments.
    • RStudio Connect pricing feels very department focused, not quite an enterprise perspective.
    • Some of the RStudio packages don't follow conventional development guidelines (API breaking changes with minor version numbers) which can make supporting larger projects over longer timeframes difficult.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Amazon AWS
    Due to princing, availability and scalability.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    Moving to Azure was and still is an organizational strategy and not simply changing vendors. Our product roadmap revolved around Azure as we are in the business of humanitarian relief and Azure and Microsoft play an important part in quickly and efficiently serving all of the world. Migration and investment in Azure should be considered as an overall strategy of an organization and communicated companywide.
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    There is no viable alternative right now. The toolset is good and the functionality is increasing with every release. It is backed by regular releases and ongoing development by the RStudio team. There is good engagement with RStudio directly when support is required. Also there's a strong and growing community of developers who provide additional support and sample code.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Amazon AWS
    It is tricky to get it all set up correctly with policies and getting the IAM settings right. There is also a lot of lifecycle config you can do in terms of moving data to cold/glacier storage. It is also not to be confused with being a OneDrive or SharePoint replacement, they each have their own place in our environment, and S3 is used more by the IT team and accessed by our PHP applications. It is not necessarily used by an average everyday user for storing their pictures or documents, etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    As Microsoft Azure is [doing a] really good with PaaS. The need of a market is to have [a] combo of PaaS and IaaS. While AWS is making [an] exceptionally well blend of both of them, Azure needs to work more on DevOps and Automation stuff. Apart from that, I would recommend Azure as a great platform for cloud services as scale.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    For someone who learns how to use the software and picks up on the "language" of R, it's very easy to use. For beginners, it can be hard and might require a course, as well as the appropriate statistical training to understand what packages to use and when
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    It has proven to be unreliable in our production environment and services become unavailable without proper notification to system administrators
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    RStudio is very available and cheap to use. It needs to be updated every once in a while, but the updates tend to be quick and they do not hinder my ability to make progress. I have not experienced any RStudio outages, and I have used the application quite a bit for a variety of statistical analyses
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Amazon AWS
    AWS has always been quick to resolve any support ticket raised. S3 is no exception. We have only ever used it once to get a clarification regarding the costs involved when data is transferred between S3 and other AWS services or the public internet. We got a response from AWS support team within a day.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We were running Windows Server and Active Directory, so [Microsoft] Azure was a seamless transition. We ran into a few, if any support issues, however, the availability of Microsoft Azure's support team was more than willing and able to guide us through the process. They even proposed solutions to issues we had not even thought of!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    Since R is trendy among statisticians, you can find lots of help from the data science/ stats communities. If you need help with anything related to RStudio or R, google it or search on StackOverflow, you might easily find the solution that you are looking for.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Implementation Rating
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    As I have mentioned before the issue with my Oracle Mismatch Version issues that have put a delay on moving one of my platforms will justify my 7 rating.
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    We did it at the individual level: anyone willing to code in R can use it. No real deployment involved.
    Read full review
    Alternatives Considered
    Amazon AWS
    Overall, we found that Amazon S3 provided a lot of backend features Google Cloud Storage (GCS) simply couldn't compare to. GCS was way more expensive and really did not live up to it. In terms of setup, Google Cloud Storage may have Amazon S3 beat, however, as it is more of a pseudo advanced version of Google Drive, that was not a hard feat for it to achieve. Overall, evaluating GCS, in comparison to S3, was an utter disappointment.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    As I continue to evaluate the "big three" cloud providers for our clients, I make the following distinctions, though this gap continues to close. AWS is more granular, and inherently powerful in the configuration options compared to [Microsoft] Azure. It is a "developer" platform for cloud. However, Azure PowerShell is helping close this gap. Google Cloud is the leading containerization platform, largely thanks to it building kubernetes from the ground up. Azure containerization is getting better at having the same storage/deployment options.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    RStudio was provided as the most customizable. It was also strictly the most feature-rich as far as enabling our organization to script, run, and make use of R open-source packages in our data analysis workstreams. It also provided some support for python, which was useful when we had R heavy code with some python threaded in. Overall we picked Rstudio for the features it provided for our data analysis needs and the ability to interface with our existing resources.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Amazon AWS
    No answers on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    RStudio is very scalable as a product. The issue I have is that it doesn't necessarily fit in nicely with the mainly Microsoft environment that everybody else is using. Having RStudio for us means dedicated servers and recruiting staff who know how to manage the environment. This isn't a fault of the product at all, it's just part of the data science landscape that we all have to put up with. Having said that RStudio is absolutely great for running on low spec servers and there are loads of options to handle concurrency, memory use, etc.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Return on Investment
    Amazon AWS
    • It practically eliminated some real heavy storage servers from our premises and reduced maintenance cost.
    • The excellent durability and reliability make sure the return of money you invested in.
    • If the objects which are not active or stale, one needs to remove them. Those objects keep adding cost to each billing cycle. If you are handling a really big infrastructure, sometimes this creates quite a huge bill for preserving un-necessary objects/documents.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • For about 2 years we didn't have to do anything with our production VMs, the system ran without a hitch, which meant our engineers could focus on features rather than infrastructure.
    • DNS management was very easy in Azure, which made it easy to upgrade our cluster with zero downtime.
    • Azure Web UI was easy to work with and navigate, which meant our senior engineers and DevOps team could work with Azure without formal training.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Posit (formerly RStudio)
    • Using it for data science in a very big and old company, the most positive impact, from my point of view, has been the ability of spreading data culture across the group. Shortening the path from data to value.
    • Still it's hard to quantify economic benefits, we are struggling and it's a great point of attention, since splitting out the contribution of the single aspects of a project (and getting the RStudio pie) is complicated.
    • What is sure is that, in the long run, RStudio is boosting productivity and making the process in which is embedded more efficient (cost reduction).
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots

    Posit Screenshots

    Screenshot of Posit runs on most desktops or on a server and accessed over the webScreenshot of Posit supports authoring HTML, PDF, Word Documents, and slide showsScreenshot of Posit supports interactive graphics with Shiny and ggvisScreenshot of Shiny combines the computational power of R with the interactivity of the modern webScreenshot of Remote Interactive Sessions: Start R and Python processes from Posit Workbench within various systems such as Kubernetes and SLURM with Launcher.Screenshot of Jupyter: Author and edit Python code with Jupyter using the same Posit Workbench infrastructure.