It provides roughly thee same APIs, but the cultural context it sits in is different. The APIs are there for parity with AWS, not as the key value proposition.
It is true, many of the companies I have worked for the last few years is using Azure and only the UI. No one uses the API/SDK. They hire devops cloud consultants to click on the UI, not to use the API to tie everything together.
The equivalent of “AWS Consultants” who are just a bunch of old school netops people who passed one multiple choice certification. All they can do is duplicate an on prem infrastructure on AWS doing a lift and shift and costing their client more for the privilege.
That doesn’t mean the APIs aren’t first class citizens.
If you go watch Channel 9 (Official MS) training videos, outside of the let’s get setup videos, the devs and presenters are almost always using the APIs to interact with Azure either through Powershell or Visual Studio.
