When comparing Microsoft Azure vs Akamai, the Slant community recommends Akamai for most people. In the question“What are the best content delivery networks (CDNs)?” Akamai is ranked 3rd while Microsoft Azure is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Akamai is:
Being one of the worlds largest CDNs, Akamai's large scale gives it a huge point of presence (PoP) to handle volumetric attacks.
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Pros
Pro Supports running Windows Server
Most, if not all, of the major cloud PaaS providers offer a Linux variant to host your applications. Windows Azure, being a Microsoft product obviously, supports Windows in addition to Linux.
Pro Linux Instances
The Azure platform has been supporting Linux VMs for a while now and has Linux distributions readily available in the catalogue.
Pro Free Tier
Microsoft Azure offers a Free Tier option that allows you to spawn a BST-1 instance that has 750 free hours.
Pro Large scale point of presence
Being one of the worlds largest CDNs, Akamai's large scale gives it a huge point of presence (PoP) to handle volumetric attacks.
Pro Deeply customizable rules
The Kona Site Defender rules are all customizable, with continuous updates from Akamai. This means you can see how they are protecting your site under the hood, and adjust them to your needs.
Pro Lots of dedicated bandwidth specifically for DDoS absorption
Through Prolexic's PLXedge, Akamai provides their customers with a total of 2.3 Tbps of dedicated DDoS absorption bandwidth.
Pro Rules for rate limiting
Akamai provides tools for rate controlling traffic segments based on their request rate behavior.
Pro Capped bursting fees
If a sudden attack sucks up a lot of bandwidth, the bandwidth costs are capped.
Pro Application layer protection
Akamai utilizes a proprietary web application firewall in order to provide scalable protection against application layer attacks.
Cons
Con Expensive
Even though in the context of Pay-as-you-go services, it's cost effective, but monthly pricing for these services are quite higher than competitors.
Con Expensive
Akami's services cost more than triple comparative packages from other security companies. At 13k a month for DDoS protection, there are many other choices out there that cost less for the same protection.
Con Slower security rule propagation
Because of Akamai's large CDN structure, it can take some time for security rules to propagate, making it harder to adjust security responses on the fly.