Microsoft Azure Vs Google App Engine
As you all know by now, Windows Azure is Microsoft’s brand new platform as a service offering and I thought it would be an interesting exercise to compare it side by side with the Google’s popular PAAS product - Google App Engine.
Language Support:
Straight out of the gate Azure allows you to leverage the power of C# and VB, and there is no reason why the other .Net savvy languages can’t join the party too. Look forward to IronPython, F# and Iron Ruby being a consideration in the not too distant future. Meanwhile GAE only gives Python as an option and further language support is not on the roadmap. .Net services is being designed from the ground up as language agnostic with Java & Ruby SDKs being readily available http://jdotnetservices.com/ http://www.dotnetservicesruby.com/
Result: SUPER BODY SLAM BY AZURE!!
Application Types
Azure offers two different kinds of application model; Web Roles and Worker Roles. Both can be utilised in your Azure applications. Web roles are your typical request/response HTTP paradigm similar to GAE’s request based model. More interesting is the Worker role that adds processing and logic that does not need to be triggered via a web request. Think Windows Service and you are on the right track. This gives you the ability to run background tasks and opens up a whole raft of application possibilities that GAE just cant offer right now. Looking at the roadmap, it’s not going to arrive any time soon either. There’s no chance of chron-like capability or long running processes with GAE.
Result: CHOKE HOLD BY AZURE!
Scalability
Microsoft Azure is as yet unproven in this area but there are plenty of indicators around the web that GAE would not hold up against traffic of a serious or sustained nature. Concerns with CPU and storage limitations, caching, database immutability plus one way in and out ( via the Google API ). App Engine’s 1MB file limit would seriously hinder the kind of audio-heavy enterprise applications we write at Qire. Of course we will have to wait and see how Azure stacks up in this regard, so it’s pretty impossible to compare both technologies at this time.
Result: Break!
Storage
Azure offers a few different storage options including Table Storage that leverages the killer ADO.NET Data Services Framework to get the job done. Add to this the more familiar SQL Data Services platform and you have more than enough flexibility to achieve all you need. GAE follows the ‘one big table’ approach and there is nothing wrong with that but the range of storage options provided by Azure gives it more of an edge.
Result: Knockout!
It’s plain to me that the Microsoft offering is way more advanced than anything else out there, an opinion that is echoed on many GAE forums and messageboards too.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:32 pm
http://sujayghosh.wordpress.com/2008/10/31/microsoft-azure-cloud-computing-platform-from-microsoft/
Some say its Hailstorm Take 2. The tools does not have support for XP Pro , so one has develop in vista , which I have read from reviews - stay away:-)
As a unbiased comment, I would like to put across that Google works with the future in mind; so it would be hard getting past them as far the web is concerned.
November 3rd, 2008 at 6:38 pm
Hi Sujay,
I develop on Vista daily and have no problems at all. It’s not the best OS I have ever experienced but it’s hardly something that is to be avoided. Nobody can predict the future, but the options available at the moment point greatly in Microsoft’s favour.
To quote Ted Dziuba:
Who would you rather buy your cloud resources from?
1. A company whose main business is books
2. A company whose main business is text advertisements
3. A company whose main business is business software
November 3rd, 2008 at 11:16 pm
@admin: Funny how Mr Dziuba excludes the most obvious point. Point 4 being - or maybe you’d rather buy your cloud resources from a company that has lots of experience in the cloud? i.e. Google. Because that’s what this is about. The cloud.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:27 am
GAE is introducing support for a new language. It’s in their roadmap.
November 4th, 2008 at 8:46 am
@Diego, where do you think MS stores Hotmail,Live Services,Windows Update ( how big must that be?! ),MSDN servicing more page views than you can imagine? The moon? to think Google has more experience in the cloud than MS is just an ill thought out argument. Take your point on languages though, A few people have pointed out that Java is on the cards. Still can’t beat the Azure language support by a long stretch though. Thanks for the comments.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:25 am
@admin: ” to think Google has more experience in the cloud than MS is just an ill thought out argument.”
Well, I of course disagree. We could talk about page views handed out from Google seaches for one. I’m sure it’s a lot more than MSDN. But hey, we will just end up going in circles about it.
A lot of people are thinking Java is next with GAE. Personally, I’m hoping Ruby. *shrugs* We shall see.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
[...] Microsoft Azure vs Google App Engine (Jon Paul Davies) [...]
November 4th, 2008 at 6:20 pm
Diego -
Search pages are nothing. Just look at Hotmail. Google doesn’t have anything on the web even remotely approaching the scale of Hotmail. GMail is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
November 6th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
[...] Microsoft Azure Vs Google App Engine - Jon Paul Davies [...]
November 13th, 2008 at 8:36 am
[...] I’m excited to see people talking about our new platform, especially when there is plenty of good, some bad, and some good if not somewhat rambling. There will be no shortage of guessing as to [...]
November 28th, 2008 at 11:47 am
[...] Microsoft Azure Vs Google App Engine - Jon Paul Davies [...]
December 8th, 2008 at 11:26 pm
Total agree with Jon’s point. I found GAE way too limited and restrictive in their beta offering and they are now behind. I think the horse (or in this case the gorilla) has bolted.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:35 am
As an admitted novice, I looked at GAE, briefly. And the IDE is… where? I wanted to like it. I wanted to use it. Hell, I even wanted to try to learn Python.
Command line processing?
No IDE?
GAE == WTF() for me, at least.
Thanks for the post- it helped me give it up.
January 26th, 2009 at 11:01 am
If you are looking for a quick way to get up an running with GAE check out the tutorial at http://www.squidoo.com/Google-App-Engine