As a recap, Microsoft’s study conducted by GigaOm and published in December compared costs of SQL Server databases on Microsoft Azure against AWS competitor EC2. According to the study, Azure was “up to 3.4 times faster and up to 87 percent less expensive” than AWS in that scenario. In a rebuttal published last week, AWS general manager of enterprise and benchmarking Fred Wurden, argued against the study. Wurden claims the study is not valid because “Microsoft and GigaOm use configurations of AWS that generate weaker performance, they have not been transparent on how it was run, and the benchmarks are not reproducible.” When it comes to assessing affordability across Azure and AWS, Microsoft’s Windows has become a determining factor. Simply, most organizations use Windows so understanding how much it costs to run the platform in a cloud environment can gauge which provider is cheaper.