The Cloud World AWS vs Azure vs GCP

Each Cloud provider has its unique value proposition and unique selling points. All kind of business needs The Cloud because it is the gate to the Digital Transformation World.

The key reasons for the companies to adopt the cloud:

1. Pay for what you Use - Reducing the Capital expenditures and spending more on Operational expenditures (Finance Need)
2. Think Big - Digital transform their business into new models (Scalability) (Management Need)
3. Business Continuity & Improve Cybersecurity capabilities and tools. (Operation Need)
4. DATA – DATA – DATA… The most important reason to adopt Cloud (We expect after 5 years to have ready AI services which can support your business, at that time if you don’t have Historical Data for a minimum of 4-5 Years, you will lose the opportunity of using the AI technology and starting from scratch… (IT & Management Need)

The Public Cloud Story: 

There are lots of stories about the formation of the Public Cloud, but this much we know: 20 years ago, in July 2002, Amazon Co. started Amazon Web Services “AWS”, the cloud Infrastructure as a Service arm of Amazon.com, and AWS is leading the market in the last 20 years.

AWS, Microsoft & Google are the leaders in the Magic Quadrant of Gartner report until July 2021

Amazon Web Services (AWS):

The current market leader of the cloud computing platforms, AWS is the most mature cloud platform offering a wide range of services to practically everyone: individual developers, large enterprises, and even governments.

Microsoft Azure:

Microsoft Azure is the second-largest cloud platform. Debuting in 2010, Azure has evolved into a cloud platform with more than 200 products and services. Today, it is among the fastest-growing cloud platforms.

Microsoft technologies are the most used applications (Windows, Office, Servers) in the companies, which makes it easy to use.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

GCP is part of the overarching Google Cloud. Available to the general public beginning in 2010, the Google Cloud Platform currently offers over 100 services spanning computing, networking, big data, and more.

GCP's unique selling point is the API which gives the customer an easy way to integrate with legacy applications and pull data.

Simply,

If you are looking for the most stable and featured cloud, you should choose AWS.

If you are looking easy migration to cloud and easy use of cloud, you should choose Microsoft Azure.

If you are looking for collecting Data of your business and get insights, you should choose GCP.

Let’s deep dive into the comparison:-

Regions and availability

When choosing a cloud provider, the first thing to consider is its supported regions and availability. These directly impact the performance of your cloud, due to factors like latency and compliance requirements, especially when dealing with data.

As of June 2022, here’s where the Big 3 stand:

AWS has 26 geographic regions with 84 availability zones.

Microsoft Azure runs 60+ regions with a minimum of three availability zones in each region with more than 116 edge locations (Points of Presence).

Google Cloud Platform has 27 cloud regions with 82 zones and 146 edge locations.

Common services

AWS and Azure have the largest service catalogs by offering more than 200+ services, GCP currently offers around 100+ services. A general breakdown of services is:

1. AWS has the largest catalog of services.

2. Azure is a close second with an impressive set of AI, ML, and analytics services.

3. Google Cloud Platform comes in third place for the number of services offered.

AWS vs Azure vs GCP: pros & cons

1-     AWS

Pros:

• Most services available, from networking to robotics

• Most mature

• Considered the gold standard in cloud reliability and security

• More compute capacity vs Azure & GCP

 • All major software vendors make their programs available on AWS

Cons:

• Dev/Enterprise support must be purchased

• Can overwhelm newcomers with the sheer number of services and options

• Comparatively limited options for hybrid cloud

2-     Microsoft Azure

Pros:

• Easy integration and migrations for existing Microsoft services

• Many services available, including best-in-class AI, ML, and analytics services

• Relatively cheaper for most services vs AWS & GCP

• Great support for hybrid cloud strategies

Cons:

• Fewer service offerings vs AWS

• Particularly geared towards enterprise customers

3-     Google Cloud Platform - GCP

Pros

• Plays nicely with other Google services and products

• Excellent support for containerized workloads

• Global fiber network

Cons:

• Limited services vs AWS & Azure

• Limited support for enterprise use cases