Azure vs AWS vs Google Cloud

Azure vs AWS vs Google Cloud: Which Cloud Platform is Best for Enterprises?

Cloud computing has quickly become a key driving force for businesses as applications are moved out of on-premise data centers to increase agility, cut costs, and innovate. Today, it’s no longer a question of whether or not to opt for cloud computing, but rather which cloud computing platform to go for. Despite more and more cloud platforms flooding the cloud computing industry, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform proudly stand out as the most sought after.

So, which one amongst them should businesses adopt? Which one provides the most value for businesses? In this post, we’ll elaborate on the major features of these cloud platforms to help you make an informed choice.

Analyzing Factors That Make AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Ideal for Businesses

Core Strengths

Choosing one cloud platform over the others comes down to the wants and needs of an individual customer and their workload. Most often, businesses opt to use multiple providers within various parts of their operations, or for different purposes – this approach is referred to as multi-cloud. Even so, there are a number of factors that differentiate these cloud platforms.

For instance, the main strength of AWS is the breadth and depth of its services. It has more than 175 services encompassing computing, database, storage, analytics, mobile developer tools, networking, enterprise applications, IoT, management tools, among others. Without a doubt, AWS wins on developer functionality given its breadth of services.

Azure, on the other hand, is a popular choice with C-level executives who have a long-standing relationship with Microsoft products. This is because they know that they can get most of their enterprise computing needs all in one place, from enterprise and productivity software to flexible computing resources.

The Google Cloud platform stands out for its extensive expertise in open source technologies, more so containers, thanks to its significant role in the development of Kubernetes.

Hybrid Options

While many businesses have adopted remote working over the past two years or so, some of them still want to maintain some applications on-premise. Cloud providers have come up with a range of solutions to cater to such customers.

When it comes to hybrid deployments, Microsoft has long been the go-to provider due to its well-established Azure stack. It offers customers the software and hardware needed to install Azure public cloud solutions from the local data center with a code, management portal, and APIs for easy interoperability. Whereas AWS and Google Cloud platforms have made strides in providing customers with hybrid options, Azure remains superior in this aspect.

Services and Features

At their core, Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud platforms offer more or less similar features around storage, networking, and flexible computing. The three platforms share all the elements of a public cloud: security, compliance, self-service, instant provisioning, identity management features, and autoscaling.

The three vendors also have cutting-edge technologies in areas such as serverless computing and IoT. These features enable customers to tap into either platform to create a high-performance computing environment or even build a mobile app depending on their needs.

Storage, Computing, Databases, and Networking

For storage, Microsoft offerings include Azure Bob Block Storage, Azure Storage Service, and Table, Queue, & file storage. It also offers Azure backup, import/export, and site recovery. AWS storage includes Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Simple Storage (S3), an Import/Export large volume data transfer service, and Elastic File System (EFS).

For computing, AWS’ main provision is EC2, which can be tailored to multiple options. It also provides EC2 container service, Elastic Beanstalk for app deployment, and ECS for Kubernetes. Azure’s computing provisions revolve around Virtual Machines (VMs), with other tools such as cloud services and resource managers that help deploy applications to the cloud and its Azure autoscaling service. Meanwhile, the Google Cloud platform has a scalable compute engine that delivers virtual machines to Google’s data centers. They come with persistent disk storage, are quick to reboot, and are highly customizable depending on a customer’s needs.

All three cloud platforms typically offer great networking capabilities with connectivity to on-premise systems and automated server loadings. Even so, as mentioned earlier, Azure offers better hybrid services.

Pricing

Pricing is one of the crucial factors those considering moving to the cloud look into before choosing a vendor, and this is for a good reason. Prices tend to diminish as the big providers compete for customers. All the vendors offer introductory tiers enabling customers to try their services before they make a purchase, and typically offer credits to attract startups onto their platforms.

Verdict

Whereas in broad terms, AWS continues to lead the way when it comes to offering a wide range of functionality, one thing that’s clear is its continued loss of market gap over the years. Its expansive list of features and services, as well as enterprise-friendly features, make it ideal for large organizations.

Even so, it appears that Microsoft Azure has started to shorten the gap between the two, and will continue to do so given Microsoft’s plan to further strengthen its on-premise software. Additionally, Azure seems to be leading the way in terms of innovation and reliability. But most importantly, it has seamless integration across all Microsoft products. For organizations that have already heavily invested in Microsoft’s technologies and developer skills, Azure will continue to be the go-to choice.

As for the Google Cloud Platform, its recent progress, more so with its Kubernetes and machine learning expertise, it may slowly but gradually start to compete at higher levels with Azure and AWS.

CEU Technologies Offers Azure and AWS Services for Organizations in the Chicagoland Area

CEU utilizes Azure and AWS to give each partner a multi-cloud experience. Microsoft Azure is our primary cloud provider, and most of the VMs, directory services, and cloud apps are designed and built on Azure. We chose Azure as our primary cloud partner because it utilizes known products and scripting languages that IT professionals have been using for years via PowerShell. CEU partners with AWS as a backup repository of all partner data from Azure and on-premises. We can spin up AWS instances from backups or data recovery onto any new instance in the data recovery scenario. Contact us today and let us help you migrate to the cloud.