AKS vs. App Services

In general, I see two approaches

• Start with App Services for all applications, and only if the complexity and orchestration needs exceed the limits, then go for AKS. This would be my approach as I don’t see either/or, but I would leverage their individual strengths.
• Or if they already plan to introduce a sophisticated AKS infrastructure, then use leverage this (I have the feeling that some at Swiss Re try to go into this direction)

What do/would I consider

• General: have simple applications with just a few Web Apps I would go with App Services, but for a more complex microservice architecture, I would consider AKS.
• Is there a strategic decision already taken
• Is there a Multi-Cloud strategy and need to leverage knowledge (infrastructure) across clouds, then it could make sense to go with AKS as this is more provider agnostic
• If there is no Kubernetes knowledge available, App Services would be simpler to start with
• If you have an Application with just a front-end (maybe SPA) and API backend, then App Services would be preferable
• If it is a containerized application with a lot of containers that need orchestration, then AKS could help
• What Customers need to understand is that there are much more management activities they need to take care of when using AKS compared to App Service. AKS is closer to an IaaS platform from that point of view. So as long as their needs can be met with App Service, I think it’s a much less painful choice compared to AKS.