Amazon AWS vs. Azure vs. Google: A Quick Cloud Services Comparison

Cloud technologies came firmly into users’ daily lives and have become an integral part of business processes for many companies. Migration to the cloud is not just an innovation trend, it is also an opportunity to increase business flexibility and scalability, optimize business infrastructure, and achieve several other advantages.

If you are preparing to transfer your capacities to the cloud, you will probably be asking a question: which platform should you choose and why exactly is it worth working with? There are currently three major players in the cloud industry: Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

They offer similar services but have several differences that may tilt your choice in favor of a particular provider. In this article, we will compare their main features to help you understand which platform will be more comfortable and profitable to work with in the future.

A Few Words About Each Platform

Amazon Web Services. Created in 2006, the Amazon cloud platform has become a pioneer in this area and, due to that, it has already taken a considerable portion of market. Introducing continuous innovations and carrying out improvements over the years, AWS has introduced more than 70 services with a wide range of coverage worldwide.

AWS servers are available in 14 geographic regions. The company’s market share is growing steadily. The results of 2018 showed that Amazon cloud technologies covered 32% of the market.

By Statista

Microsoft Azure. Microsoft launched the system in 2010 and, since then, it has been developing at a very fast pace. Microsoft Azure is now a multi-faceted complex system supporting various services, programming languages, and frameworks. The cloud includes more than 60 services and data centers in 38 different geographical regions. Currently, Microsoft Azure has 16% of the market.

Google Cloud Platform. Introduced in 2011, Google Cloud Platform is the youngest of the three. It is based on the same infrastructure as other products released by the corporation, namely Google Search and YouTube.

Currently, the company provides more than 50 services and maintains 6 global data centers. Google Cloud Platform’s share in the cloud services market is 8%.

Amazon AWS vs. Microsoft Azure vs. Google Cloud Platform Comparison

We could compare cloud service providers by taking a very large number of different parameters into account. However, we have decided to focus on the ones most important for a business.

Computing services

At AWS, Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is the central computing service. It has become the main synonym for “on-demand scalable computing”. To be capable of making better plans and reducing costs when launching projects, the company has introduced new services such as AWS Elastic Beanstalk and Amazon EC2 Container Service.

AWS currently supports 7 different instance families and 38 instance types. It also offers regional support and zonal support.

Microsoft Azure computing systems are based on classic virtual machines and high-performance Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Client apps for Windows can be deployed using the Remote App service.

Azure Virtual Machine includes 4 different families and 33 types of instances to deploy in different regions. However, a specific zone of a region is not yet supported.

Google Cloud Platform uses the Compute Engine service to support its computing processes. Compute Engine provides most of the core cloud services — container deployment, scalability, and data processing.

Google Cloud supports 4 instance families, 18 different instance types, and provides regional placement and zone selection as well.

Analytics capabilities

AWS made a big leap in the data analysis area. A standalone service called Quick Sight is an easy-to-use business analytics tool with ready templates that are several times cheaper than traditional BI solutions.

The Microsoft Azure service has greatly improved analytics and machine-learning tools in recent years, creating a separate direction that includes the Data Lake Analytics processing subsystem and machine learning as part of the Cortana Intelligence Suite.

Google Cloud Platform has also launched a separate direction for big data analytics and has great future potential. Currently, the Cloud Vision API, Cloud Speech API, and Google Translate API software environments are integrated into multiple third-party services and apps.

Network

At Amazon Web Services, you can use Virtual Private Cloud to create a VPN with subnet settings, routing tables, private IP ranges, and network gateways. Besides, the service has the Route 53 service used to implement the DNS web service.

Microsoft Azure also offers extensive network configuration tools. A virtual network (VNET) allows setting up a VPN and a public IP, connecting a hybrid cloud, as well as activating a firewall and DNS.

Google Cloud Platform services are not so numerous. So far, the platform offers only a Cloud virtual network with Public IP subnets support, its own firewall, and the necessary DNS settings.

Pricing

The cloud services employ different approaches to pricing. AWS uses several payment models:

• On-demand. You only pay for the resources and services used.
• Reservation. You select the necessary amount of resources you want to order in advance for a period of 1 to 3 years and pay for them based on use rates. Such offers are often subject to good discounts (up to 75%).
• Partial reservation. The more resources you use, the less you pay for the services provided.

The Amazon Web Services round-off is based on hours of use.

Microsoft Azure uses a more flexible pricing system. You pay for the use of cloud resources with the minute-based round-off. You can use existing subscriptions with a certain amount of money for cloud computing, or pay for resources in the usual way based on monthly billing. Discounts are also provided based on the volume of services ordered.

Google Cloud Platform employs a billing system similar to Azure but with a resource-use round-off based on a 10-minute period.

Each platform offers a price calculator to help you evaluate your expenses. In terms of convenience, Microsoft Azure comes first. The service lets you evaluate your expenses by using the website calculator and while creating new projects directly in the control panel.

To summarize

Choosing between these three big cloud service providers may prove quite a daunting challenge. The industry is rapidly developing and, as the cost of services is gradual decreasing, the demand for transferring important business systems to the cloud is rising in many industries.

Amazon AWS and Microsoft Azure are now the most sought-after cloud platforms, although Google continues to gain pace. The companies offer their computing powers at almost equal levels. The list of services offered is also constantly expanding.

Nevertheless, AWS is still the clear leader, being ahead of everyone else by a significant margin. It is a versatile, customizable, and scalable solution that is the right choice for a company of any size.

If you are ready to migrate to the cloud, you can contact us. Lvivity will help you configure and support the infrastructure.