I've been curious about Azure and its reliability after checking the server locations for some major cloud providers. I pinged Amazon, Google, and Microsoft servers, and found that while Amazon and Google have their services hosted on their own servers, Microsoft's Azure services come through Akamai. This got me wondering: if Microsoft relies on a third-party CDN like Akamai, what does that say about their trust in their own infrastructure? Shouldn't their services be hosted on their own servers for credibility? I'm interested in hearing thoughts on this!
3 Answers
Cost-effectiveness could be a major factor here. Many companies find that using a reputable CDN like Akamai can offer better performance and scalability without the overhead of maintaining their own servers.
From my experience in the healthcare industry, we're actually migrating away from Azure to AWS for several reasons. It seems like Azure's reliability has raised some eyebrows, especially for large-scale uses.
So you're definitely moving all your services to AWS? Sounds like a big transition!
It's not just about trust; using a CDN like Akamai can actually be more cost-effective for Microsoft. They might still have confidence in their technology but opt for Akamai to save on expenses or to have a wider distribution of content.
But if that's the case, why aren't other companies doing the same with different CDNs? Isn't it odd that a homegrown product might end up being pricier than going with an established third-party CDN?
That still leaves the question of why their own products can sometimes cost more than using external services. It seems counterintuitive for a cloud service.