Cloud computing services are the future of IT. It is globally significant and famous for its services provided to enterprises. There are various cloud computing services globally, but Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud are the highest performing platforms. They all offer different features to suit the needs of enterprises.
It is essential to know what you need before making a decision on which cloud provider to use. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud offer different features that appeal to various business types.
Regardless of the platform, they provide immense benefits to organisations like skilful management of resources, extended storage capacity, access to data anytime and anywhere, enhanced security, and access to innovative technology, especially for smaller firms. In this blog post, we will compare Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud so you can decide which one is better suited for your company.
About the Big Three Cloud Providers
The most popular three cloud providers are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and the up and coming Google Cloud (GCP). They offer different features and are more compatible with specific business models and sizes. To serve your enterprise better, here is an overview and comparison of the big three cloud providers.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Service is a set of remote computing services developers and businesses use to make their applications. Amazon Web Services was launched in 2006 to provide an online marketplace for customers' hardware needs to gain access to web-scale computing capacity more quickly than building their own data centres.
The vast global framework of AWS is divided between regions, availability zones (AZ), and edge locations. The parts cover the geographic area, and the AZs are the data centres within the areas. Edge locations are caches that act similarly to Content Delivery Networks (CDN) for faster delivery and response times.
AWS supports all operating systems and ranks top of the IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) platform for availability, reliable performance, and the number of applications. In addition, it is the first cloud computing company to introduce a pay-as-you-go model, giving you more Reasons To Learn AWS In 2021.
AWS can handle multiple services with benefits like cost-effectiveness, flexibility, agility, and security. Some prominent companies that use AWS are Netflix, Airbnb, Finra, Novartis, Unilever, Time, and many more.
Microsoft Azure
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud computing platform that offers a gamut of services for you to use. Whether it be storing and organising your data or analysing how users are using the applications in their company, Azure benefits everyone. It helps developers improve agility by giving them access to cutting-edge tools they may not have had before.
It is fast to use for an enterprise-level platform that uses open sources rather than proprietary ones like AWS or GCP. The three service models offered by Azure are SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. These make it easier for businesses to be agile while also helping develop ecosystems by communicating pipeline information more effectively through their suite of offerings, such as IoT solutions which can help increase efficiency when managing equipment from remote locations.
Microsoft Azure is one of the most manageable enterprise clouds when it comes to configuring and operation. Some of its services include Big data and predictive analytics, game and app development, DevOps, IoT integration, scalable data warehousing, and many more. Some of the leading global companies that use Microsoft Azure are eBay, Samsung, Boeing, BMW, etc.
Google Cloud
Google Cloud (GCP) is a relatively new player in the cloud computing industry. It is a highly scalable, reliable, and secure cloud service that enables businesses to build robust applications. Google's infrastructure includes clusters of servers with built-in machine learning capabilities for managing big data workloads, storage systems for large datasets or backups.
The features that brought GCP to the top level are its BigQuery Analytics engine, ML tools, and innovative approach for more giant enterprises. First, it began to strengthen its base of products, but now they have initiated enterprise services.
GCP Services that promote ease of use include data management and storage, app development, SMB business analytics and AI, productivity, and workload management tools. Leading companies worldwide using GCP are HSBC, Dominos, Snapchat, Twitter, Airbus, Target, etc.
AWS vs Azure vs GCP
The top three companies that rule cloud computing services will be compared based on the following factors:
- Storage Capabilities
- Tool Comparison
- Compute Features
- Pricing Comparison
- Storage Capabilities of AWS, Azure and GCP
The Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platforms all provide different storage capabilities for their users. Amazon AWS gives users a range of abilities like SSS (Simple Storage Services), EBS (Elastic Block Storage), and EFS (Elastic File System). In addition, AWS offers a hybrid platform through its Storage Gateway, which provides a secondary archival storage option.
Microsoft Azure offers Blob storage for REST-based object storage with unstructured data. They also have solutions for ample scale data storage and high volume, critical workloads. In addition, Azure offers various database storage options made explicitly for enterprises that access Microsoft SQL servers.
Google Cloud platform offers primary storage and database support. In addition, they can provide both SQL and NoSQL database support and have a transfer appliance similar to AWS Snowball.
2. Tool Comparison of AWS, Azure and GCP
All three companies are committed to advancing AI and machine learning technology, although only AWS offers more than one serverless tool. AWS is the leading drive in AI and IoT (Internet of Things) to enterprises. It also provides Lambda serverless computing environments to deeply apps from a serverless repository.
Azure offers fewer AI services than AWS but provides Cognitive services along with the enhancement of AI. In addition, their IoT offerings like Edge are geared towards management and business analytics.
GCP's cloud-based enterprise features natural language translation and speech for transitioning global enterprise coordination to ML app development. It also offers a substantial open-source library, TensorFlow, that AWS has adopted.
3. Compute Features of AWS, Azure and GCP
Amazon has an extensive range of computing services. The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (E2C) is a service that integrates with most of the other services provided by AWS. With this integration, database administrators can optimise for cost and use machine learning to monitor your apps without padding the price tag. In addition, the ECS allows you to scale container orchestration according to what's needed at any given time.
Azure relies on the network of virtual machines to enable a range of computing solutions like testing and app deployment. They also offer Azure Kubernetes Services (AKS), a serverless container system. It has a solid infrastructure and offers enhanced CI/CD support, security features, and enterprise governance so that diverse teams can work together in an office setting on one platform. Azure also provides Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Function–as–service (FaaS) and Service Fabric for you or your team's specific needs.
GCP offers specialisation in Kubernetes containers and supports Dock containers. Their other compute functions allow you to manage resources and deploy apps and automatically scale according to traffic. You can also deploy from Google cloud, Firebase, or Assistant.
4. Pricing Comparison of AWS, Azure and GCP
The AWS platform has a detailed cost calculator, although there is limited transparency. It can be perplexing to navigate the pricing structure for individual customers without help from third-party management apps. They offer 750 hours of EC2 service per month as part of their free tier--more than enough time to build your business' website or get started with e-commerce.
Azure's pricing is equally complex, and it is better to have expert guidance. They are mainly situational that caters to the specific needs of each customer.
Google's pricing stands out as it is less opaque and user friendly. They focus on beating most cloud computing service providers’ list prices and giving discounts and other incentives. As a result, it is easy to navigate, budget-friendly and has promising growth potential.
To Sum Up
When selecting a cloud platform for your enterprise or organisation, it's almost as if you have an infinite amount of choices. Each service provider has its own set of benefits and features that make them stand out from the crowd, but there is no one best choice without considering all aspects such as budget constraints, available services, etc. Do some research on what type of services will suit your enterprise or organisation best, then decide based on this information.
Authors Profile
Jon Baleva is an IT professional with 20 years of experience in programming and networking. He has trained
professionals and students in IT Programming courses. He is also a writer who writes on tech-related topics for
various tech magazines in Philippine. He is now an IT Trainer with Edoxi Training Institute, Dubai.
