AWS vs Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform

Adoption of Cloud technology

Cloud computing revolution has transformed almost every sphere and vertical in the last few years. With the changing times, more and more businesses are adopting cloud-based services for daily operations. No doubt, it has made life easier for consumers of the various spectrums.

Cloud technology has proved to be very crucial during the recent pandemic situation. In 2020, the world faced a very volatile situation and businesses had to look for new ways to be stable, keep themselves afloat.

With the evolution and stabilization of cloud technology, businesses now enjoy complete flexibility and freedom. The adoption of cloud computing has become a key driving force for businesses today, as applications are moved out from on-premise data centers in a bid to innovate, cut costs and increase agility.

It allows employees of the business to perform crucial functions from anywhere they want. No more restrictions to work from a particular location and work-from-home has become the norm.

3 key players dominate the cloud technology space now with more entrants successfully rolling out their products.

Cloud computing – AWS vs Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform

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.

Fundamentally, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform offer largely similar features on computing, storage and networking. They all share the common elements of a public cloud: self-service and instant provisioning, autoscaling, plus security, compliance and identity management features.

Features and services

While the basic features and services remain equal, all three being global players have their advantages when compared to one another.

All three vendors have launched services and tools targeted at cutting edge technology areas like the Internet of Things (IoT) and serverless computing, while customers can tap either cloud to variously build a mobile app or even create a high-performance computing environment depending on their needs.

Compute, storage, databases and networking

For compute, AWS’ main offering is its EC2 instances, which can be tailored with many options.

Meanwhile, Azure’s compute offering is centered around its Virtual Machines (VMs), with other tools such as Cloud Services and Resource Manager to help deploy applications on the cloud, and its Azure Autoscaling service.

Google’s scalable Compute Engine delivers VMs in Google’s data centers. They are quick to boot, come with persistent disk storage, promise consistent performance and are highly customizable depending on the needs of the customer.

All three provide other services such as database, backup, networking with load-balancing and security, etc along with tools to manage the resources. That includes various levels of support options.

Pros and cons of Cloud Computing

AWS had a head start on the competition, building its suite of services since 2006. But Microsoft and Google are catching up as well.

AWS concentrates mostly on computing and storage solutions.

Microsoft apart from computing and storage offers a productivity suite such as M365.

Google does the similar way with GCP and Google Workspace to compete with the M365 suite of products.

While AWS has been continuing to have a bigger share in the market, Microsoft is working towards closing the gap with its wide range of products. There are organizations already heavily invested in Microsoft in terms of technology and developer skills – of which there are undoubtedly many – Microsoft Azure will continue to be a strong proposition.

There is always Google, which could prove a more serious enterprise competitor.