AWS Vs Azure Vs GCP – The Cloud Platform of Your Choice?

By Veritis

AWS Vs Azure Vs GCP The Cloud Platform of Your Choice?

Amazon, Microsoft and Google dominate the public cloud landscape providing the safest, flexible and reliable cloud services. Their respective cloud platforms, AWS, Azure and GCP offer clients a range of storage, computing and networking options.

Some of the features common among the three platforms include instant provisioning, self-service, autoscaling, identity management, security and compliance, among others.

At present, AWS can be considered to be much bigger than both Azure and GCP in terms of functionality and maturity.

However, the other two are also progressing at a faster rate to prove their market dominance.

AWS Vs Azure Vs GCP: Feature-wise Comparison

Comparison of AWS Vs Azure Vs GCP

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Details	AWS	Azure	GCP
Compute Services	1) AWS Beanstalk 2) Amazon EC2 3) Amazon EC2 Auto-Scaling 4) Amazon Elastic Container Registry 5) Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service 6) Amazon Lightsail 7) AWS Serverless Application Repository 8) VMware Cloud for AWS 9) AWS Batch 10) AWS Fargate 11) AWS Lambda 12) AWS Outposts 13) Elastic Load Balancing	1) Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) 2) Function-as-a-service (FaaS) 3) Service Fabric 4) Azure Batch 5) Cloud Services 6) Container Instances Batch 7) Azure Container Service (AKS) 8) Virtual Machines Compute Engine 9) Virtual Machine Scale Sets	1) App Engine 2) Docker Container Registry 3) Instant Groups 4) Compute Engine 5) Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) 6) Knative 7) Kubernetes 8) Functions
Storage Services	1) Simple Storage Service (S3) 2) Elastic Block Storage (EBS) 3) Elastic File System (EFS) 4) Storage Gateway 5) Snowball 6) Snowball Edge 7) Snowmobile	1) Blob Storage 2) Queue Storage 3) File Storage 4) Disk Storage 5) Data Lake Store	1) Cloud Storage 2) Persistent Disk 3) Transfer Appliance 4) Transfer Service
AI/ML	1) SageMaker 2) Comprehend 3) Lex 4) Polly 5) Rekognition 6) Machine Learning 7) Translate 8) Transcribe 9) DeepLens 10) Deep Learning AMIs 11) Apache MXNet on AWS 12) TensorFlow on AWS	1) Machine Learning 2) Azure Bot Service 3) Cognitive Services	1) Cloud Machine Learning Engine 2) Dialogflow Enterprise Edition 5) Cloud Natural Language 6) Cloud Speech API 7) Cloud Translation API 8) Cloud Video Intelligence 9) Cloud Job Discovery (Private Beta)
Database Services	1) Aurora 2) RDS 3) DynamoDB 4) ElastiCache 5) Redshift 6) Neptune 7) Database Migration Service	1) SQL Database 2) Database for MySQL 3) Database for PostgreSQL 4) Data Warehouse 5) Server Stretch Database 6) Cosmos DB 7) Table Storage 8) Redis Cache 9) Data Factory	1) Cloud SQL 2) Cloud Bigtable 3) Cloud Spanner 4) Cloud Datastore
Backup Services	Glacier	1) Archive Storage 2) Backup 3) Site Recovery	1) Nearline (frequently accessed data) 2) Coldline (infrequently accessed data)
Serverless computing	1) Lambda 2) Serverless Application Repository	Functions	Google Cloud Functions
Strengths	1) Dominant market position 2) Extensive, mature offerings 3) Support for large organizations 4) Global reach 5) Flexibility and a wider range of services	1) Second largest provider 2) Integration with Microsoft tools and software 3) Broad feature set 4) Hybrid cloud 5) Support for open source 6) Ideal for startups and developers	1) Designed for cloud-native businesses 2) Commitment to open source and portability 3) Flexible contracts 4) DevOps expertise 5) Complete container-based model 6) Most cost-efficient
Caching	Elastic Cache	Redis Cache	Cloud CDN
File Storage	EFS	Azure Files	ZFS and Avere
Networking	Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)	Azure Virtual Network (VNET)	Cloud Virtual Network
Security	AWS Security Hub	Azure Security Center	Cloud Security Command Center
Location	77 availability zones within 24 geographic regions	Presence in 60+ regions across the world	Presence in 24 regions and 73 zones. Available in 200+ countries and territories
Documentation	Best in class	High quality	High quality
DNS Services	Amazon Route 53	Azure Traffic Manager	Cloud DNS
Notifications	Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS)	Azure Notification Hub	None
Load Balancing	Elastic Load Balancing	Load Balancing for Azure	Cloud Load Balancing
Automation	AWS Opsworks	Azure Automation	Compute Engine Management
Compliance	AWS CloudHSM	Azure Trust Center	Google Cloud Platform Security
Pricing/ Discount Options	One-year free trial along with a discount of up to 75% for a 1-3 year commitment	Up to 75% discount for a commitment ranging from one to three years	GCP Credit of $300 for 12 months apart from a sustained use discount of up to 30%

Useful Link: AWS vs Azure vs GCP: Cloud Cost Comparison

AWS Vs Azure Vs Google Cloud: Pricing

While choosing a public cloud service provider, the price aspect is considered to be the prime impetus that influences the decision making of IT firms.

The following comparison among AWS, Azure and GCP in terms of price and machine type will assist you in your decision making:

Machine Type	AWS	Azure	GCP
Smallest Instance	An instance with 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB RAM will cost you around USD69/month.	An instance with 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB RAM will cost you around USD70/month.	Instance with 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB RAM will cost you around USD52/month.
Largest Instance	Largest instance that includes 3.84 TB RAM and 128 vCPUs will cost you around USD 3.97/hour.	Largest instance that includes 3.89 TB RAM and 128 vCPUs will cost you around USD 6.79/hour.	Largest instance that includes 3.75 TB RAM and 160 vCPUs will cost you around USD 5.32/hour.

Apart from the aforementioned pricing models, there is another model that is worth mentioning!!

AWS and Azure are offering their cloud services with pay-per-minute billing options, whereas GCP is ahead of them by providing a pay-per-second billing option. Moreover, GCP is offering various discounts and flexible contracts to gain maximum demand influx.

Useful Link: AWS Vs Azure Vs GCP: Cloud Market Share Q1 2021

Prominent AWS, Azure, GCP Customers

AWS is the biggest cloud services provider and has amassed an impressive clientele. As per the exhaustive report compiled by Yahoo Finance, German firm SAP has been an AWS client since 2008. SAP is deemed to be the third-biggest software giant in the world. This was an AWS first as it was the first cloud technology to shoulder SAP’s workflows. Other clients are Novartis, the American pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer and the electronics colossus Sony.

Azure is not far behind in a lot of favor for its compatibility with its pre-existing Microsoft infrastructure. Beverage maker Coca-Cola, machinery manufacturer Bosch, and computers manufacturer Lenovo have harnessed the power of Azure.

Google Cloud is not backing down as it bagged Twitter, Deutsche Bank, and the global mailing platform UPS are using the tech to keep their operations running. Like AWS and Azure, Google Cloud has many more enviable clients.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

A pioneer of cloud computing, Amazon has been the first entrant into the cloud services market over a decade ago and leads in terms of both the number of products and customers, with AWS considered to be the benchmark of cloud service quality.

AWS offers a range of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings that can be classified into computing, database, content delivery and storage, and networking.

AWS enables a smooth and flexible data collection flow using serverless services such as Amazon Kinesis Streams, Amazon SQS Queues and AWS Lambda Functions. It provides organizations with the option to choose the web application platform, operating system, database and programming languages, among others as per their requirement.

Cloud infrastructure resource usage can be monitored using AWS management tools such as AWS CloudTrail and Amazon CloudWatch for tracking user activity and AWS Config for managing the resource inventory and changes.

AWS contributes to significant enhancement in the productivity and business growth of organizations. A few drawbacks of AWS include the complex infrastructure and default service limits which are set in accordance with average user needs.

Amazon data centers are the largest among the three cloud providers and are located in 84 regions across the world.

Useful Link: Best Practices for AWS Cloud Migration and Benefits

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure platform has been designed for building, deploying and managing various services and applications through the huge network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Azure’s offerings include compute, networking, data management databases and performance.

Azure Site Recovery enables organizations of all sizes to orchestrate site-to-site replication and data recovery to VMs hosted on Azure itself. Azure offers Zone Redundant Storage (ZRS) or data storage redundancy across multiple data center regions.

Azure ExpressRoute facilitates connectivity of the data center to Azure through a private link without using the Internet, thereby providing higher security, greater reliability and lower latency.

Azure also has extensive networking capabilities including support for multiple site-to-site connections to virtual networks, along with the ability to connect virtual networks across different regions to each other.

Azure has the lowest on-demand and discounted instance pricing. Specialist developers can write, test and deploy algorithms using the Azure Machine Learning Studio.

Useful Link: Steps to a Successful Microsoft Azure Cloud Migration

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

With an intuitive interface, lower costs, preemptible instances and flexible compute options, GCP is an attractive alternative to both AWS and Azure. Google uses full-scale encryption of all data and communication channels including the traffic between data centers.

Some of the areas where Google Cloud strongly competes with AWS include instance and payment configurability, privacy and traffic security, cost-efficiency, and Machine Learning.

While all the three cloud providers offer discounts up to 75 percent for a commitment of one to three years, Google additionally offers a sustained use discount of up to 30 percent on each instance type running for more than 25 percent each month.

AWS’ 1-year-free trial has matched by GCP’s credit of USD 300 for 12 months along with a free tier that isn’t time-limited. GCP’s credits model is more suited for organizations newly venturing into cloud services.

Google offers several off-the-shelf APIs pertaining to computer vision, natural language processing and translation. Machine learning engineers can build models based on Google’s Cloud Machine Learning Engine’s open-source TensorFlow deep learning library.

Useful Link: Migrate to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) – Best Practices, Tools and Benefits

A Three-way Battle

The differences between the three major cloud services can be seen by evaluating them using different parameters such as compute, storage, databases, locations and documentation.

Three Way Battle - AWS, Azure and Google Cloud

Compute: AWS offers the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) that handles all compute services by managing virtual machines that have preconfigured settings and can also be configured by the users as required. On the other hand, Azure offers Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine scale sets while GCP provides the Google Compute Engine (GCE) which performs the same functions.
Storage: Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) is the best option for storage with extensive documentation, tried and tested technology with proper community support. Microsoft Azure Storage and Google Cloud Storage also offer reliable storage services.
Multi-Cloud Support: AWS, Azure and Google Cloud have upped their respective games when it comes to multi-cloud infrastructure. AWS was one of the first cloud players to enter multi-cloud game with Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) which allows its AWS users to manage their containers and K8s applications on Azure and Google Cloud. Azure went the extra mile by bringing out Arc which allows its users to run the Microsoft cloud’s services on both AWS and Google Cloud. This is an edge Azure possess over AWS as the latter has limited itself to containers and K8s. Despite its late entry, Google has also forayed into this arena with Anthos which allows Kubernetes clusters and other such loads to be run on AWS and Azure.
Databases: Multiple tools and service options pertaining to databases are offered by all the major service providers. Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS) supports major databases such as Oracle and PostgreSQL and manages everything from updating to patching. Azure SQL database offers SQL database handling features for Azure, while it is Cloud SQL for GCP.
Location: AWS, Azure and GCP offer great coverage across the world and ensure peak application performance by having the least possible route to the intended customer base. While Amazon has 77 availability zones, Azure has a presence in 60+ regions and Google in 33 countries, with newer regions being added regularly.
Documentation: All three vendors offer high-quality documentation though AWS is slightly ahead of Azure and GCP.

How to choose a cloud service provider (Based on Reason and Availability)

Amazon Web Services has had a head start in the cloud race as it was the first to kickstart the race. AWS has a wide range of services, and its reach is a significant motivational factor for choosing the Amazon cloud. Be it with the containers or with their innovative tools, AWS has been the favorite for many users who choose to develop and deploy products rapidly.

Azure is another preferred productivity partner as its parent company Microsoft is prevalent. Azure’s compatibility with Microsoft products such as Windows and Office suite are excellent reasons for choosing the cloud. Additionally, Microsoft is expending efforts to lay an undersea cable to ensure high-speed connectivity for its clients.

Finally, GCP is preferred by companies in their nascent stages, as Google is known to offer discounts on its pricing models. Additionally, Google is spearheading some open-source projects, such as Karpenter, which would push productivity to new heights. These productivity tools and affordable pricing models sweeten the deal for users who are in their emerging phases.

AWS Vs Azure Vs Google Cloud: Key Takeaways!

After going through the most significant pros and cons of these three cloud providers, it is obvious that each of them are unique in their own way and provides various options to the customers.

But when we take a close look at them, we can see AWS securing maximum footprint in this cloud battle of Azure vs AWS vs GCP. Even though AWS is ahead of the curve, it is still uncertain to say for how long AWS will be enjoying the dominance.

Azure and GCP are striving relentlessly to secure a maximum share in the global cloud market.

Azure is leveraging the fact that ‘it is easy to integrate MS tools with Azure cloud’. So, Azure can easily embrace organizations to use MS tools.

On the other hand, GCP with the best pricing models can aid the customers with cost concerns.

AWS, Azure and GCP: Market Shares and Growth Rate

Since the inception of Cloud computing, AWS has been dominating others in the global cloud market. AWS is enjoying dominance by securing around 32 percent of the global market share. While Microsoft Azure is ensuing AWS with 19 percent of the global market share. And, GCP is in third place with a global market share of 10 percent.

Cloud Market Share at a Glance:

AWS – 32%
Microsoft Azure – 19%
GCP – 7%

AWS, Azure and GCP Market Shares and Growth Rate

Useful Link: Which Cloud has Better Private Connectivity: AWS or Azure or GCP?

The Selection Dilemma

Selection Dilemma - AWS or Azure or GCP Cloud Platform

The war for cloud supremacy is between the Big Three. While a number of other players like IBM and Oracle have ventured into cloud services, they are still a long way off from cornering a significant share of the market.

Each of the three cloud platforms AWS, Azure and GCP are unique in their own way and offer a plethora of options for organizations to select from based on their specific requirements.

Whether AWS will retain its eminence or whether the others will catch up in the near future remains to be seen.

Conclusion

Still unsure about which cloud suits you best? We are here to solve your dilemma. Veritis, a leading cloud solutions provider, has developed, deployed and maintained countless cloud applications. From Fortune 500 companies to emerging enterprises, we have tendered customized solutions which stood the test of time.

Reach out to us, harness our cloud expertise, and walk away with a suit which was tailored just for you.

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AWS Vs Azure Vs GCP – FAQs

What is the future of cloud computing?

Cloud computing usage shall only increase as the world has become more inclined towards IT services due to the pandemic.

What is the AWS Cloud Platform?

Amazon Web Services is the cloud offering of Amazon, and it has the largest cloud market footprint.

What is the Azure Cloud Platform?

Azure cloud services is the second-largest cloud in terms of market share. It is the cloud technology developed by Microsoft.

What is the Google Cloud Platform?

Google Cloud Platform or Google Cloud is Google’s cloud technology. In terms of the market size, it is on the third rung while AWS occupies the first spot, and Azure is on the second rung.

Which cloud is the cheapest?

Cloud pricing is very varied, and it entails a very detailed analysis of it. We have compiled it here: Cloud Cost Comparison

Which one is better, AWS, Azure, or GCP in cloud computing?

Cloud technology is quite vast and flexible. However, AWS, Azure, and GCP offer many tools that boost productivity.

However, not everyone can comprehend cloud technology’s potential, and this is where Veritis helps aspiring cloud users by understanding the clients' unique needs. Veritis suggests the cloud offering that is apt for you by acknowledging the unique requirements.

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