Comparing AWS, Microsoft Azure & Google Cloud

Comparing Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure & Google Cloud
Comparing Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure & Google Cloud

This blog on AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud highlights and describes the main factors of comparison among the top three cloud giants Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.

Growth rates and their worldwide market shares: In terms of market shares in the cloud space, Amazon Web Services has been leading the list for as long as anyone can remember with around one – third of public cloud share in its name. In the second place comes Microsoft Azure, with around 16% of the world-wide market share. The third place is bagged by the Google Cloud Platform which owns around 10% of the market share worldwide, but it has the highest growth rate among the three.

Which top companies use each of them? Major companies that use the Google Cloud Platform are HSBC, PayPal, 20th Century Fox, Bloomberg and Dominos. As Amazon Web Services is the oldest among the three, it has many high-profile clients. It has more popular customers like Netflix, Airbnb, Unilever, BMW, Samsung, MI and Zynga. Microsoft Azure is also gaining its share of high-profile clients with time. Some of its major customers are Johnson Controls, Polycom, Fujifilm, HP, Honeywell and Apple. As of now, Azure has almost 80 per cent of Fortune 500 companies as its clients. With many top successful companies using them, all the three cloud platforms are equal in this point of comparison.

Features and Services provided by them: Google Cloud: Under the category of computing services, Google Cloud provides Google Compute Engine under IaaS, Google App Engine under PaaS, Google Kubernetes Engine under Containers and Google Cloud Functions under Serverless Functions. Under the category of Database services, GCP provides Google Cloud SQL under RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), Google Cloud Datastore and Google Cloud Bigtable under NoSQL (Key-Value type), Google Cloud Datastore under NoSQL (Indexed type).


Under the category of Storage services, GCP provides Google Cloud Storage as Object storage, Google Compute Engine Persistent Disks as Virtual Server Disks, Google Cloud Storage Nearline as Cold Storage and ZFS / Avere as File Storage. Under the category of Networking Services, GCP provides Virtual Private Cloud under Virtual Network, Google Cloud Load Balancing under Elastic Load Balancer, Google Cloud Interconnect under Peering and Google Cloud DNS under DNS.

Amazon Web Services: Under the category of computing services, Amazon Web Services provides Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud under IaaS, AWS Elastic Beanstalk under PaaS, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Container Service under Containers and AWS Lambda under Serverless Functions. Under the category of Database services, GCP provides Amazon Relational Database Service under RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), Amazon DynamoDB under NoSQL (Key-Value type), Amazon Simple DB under NoSQL (Indexed type). Under the category of Storage services, GCP provides Amazon Simple Storage Service as Object storage, Amazon Elastic Block Store as Virtual Server Disks, Amazon Glacier as Cold Storage and Amazon Elastic File System as File Storage. Under the category of Networking Services, GCP provides Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) under Virtual Network, Elastic Load Balancer under Elastic Load Balancer, Direct Connect under Peering and Amazon Route 53 under DNS.

Microsoft Azure: Under the category of computing services, Microsoft Azure provides Virtual Machines under IaaS, App Service and Cloud Services under PaaS, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) under Containers and Azure Functions under Serverless Functions. Under the category of database services, GCP provides SQL Database under RDBMS (Relational Database Management System), Table Storage under NoSQL (Key-Value type), Azure Cosmos DB under NoSQL (Indexed type). Under the category of Storage services, GCP provides Blob Storage as Object storage, Managed Disks as Virtual Server Disks, Azure Archive Blob Storage as Cold Storage and Azure File Storage as File Storage. Under the category of networking services, GCP provides Virtual Networks (VNets) under Virtual Network, Load Balancer under Elastic Load Balancer, Express Route under Peering and Azure DNS under DNS.

Availability Zones of each platform: Amazon Web Services, is the earliest product in the market, they are hosting in multiple locations worldwide. Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure have also expanded worldwide, but they have a lower number of availability zones compared to AWS. AWS has around 70 availability zones and growing. Microsoft Azure has around 60 worldwide and Google Cloud Platform has around 30 zones.

Pricing Models: Google Cloud Platform being the youngest player in the cloud space, is the clear winner here, as it strives to provide the lowest costs possible with customer-friendly pricing and discounts offered. Microsoft Azure is intermediate in terms of pricing, whereas Amazon Web Services lags in terms of competitive pricing.

Overall comparison of Pros and Cons of each:

Google Cloud:

Pro: Since Google developed the Kubernetes standard that AWS and Azure now offer, it is strong in the containers services. It specialises in high compute offerings like BDA (Big Data Analytics) and has good scope in Machine Learning. It also offers good scale and load balancing as it is good in handling data centres and has fast response time.

Con: It does not offer as many different services and features as AWS and Azure. It also doesn’t have as many global data centres as AWS or Azure, although it is quickly expanding its centres across the globe and growing rapidly.

Amazon Web Services:

Pro: Its biggest strength is its dominance in the cloud space. The reason for its popularity is majorly the massive scope of its operations. It has a huge and growing number of available services, as well as the most comprehensive network of worldwide data centres. It is the most mature, enterprise-ready provider, with the highest capabilities for managing a huge number of users and resources, among all the three.

Con: Its big weakness relates to cost which might be difficult for companies and enterprises to match up with regard to overall companies cost.

Microsoft Azure:

Pro: Microsoft has taken its on-premises s/w like Windows Server, Office, SQL Server, Sharepoint, Dynamics Active Directory and .Net and repurposed it for the Azure cloud. It is tightly integrated with Windows OS, so enterprises that use a lot of Microsoft software often find that it also makes sense for them to use Azure, causing them to be loyal customers of MS. Also, if you are already an existing Microsoft enterprise customer, you can expect to get significant discounts.

Con: Azure lags in being as enterprise-ready, technical support and documentation as the other two.

Our Verdict and Conclusion: To sum up, AWS vs Azure vs Google cloud all of them are used for the same purpose. They are providing almost the same services. But our winner is Amazon Web Services because it has a heads-up in various categories of comparison like a greater number of regions of availability, more global reach, a huge number of services, and its high market share meaning more number of companies using the technology over Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure. It is definitely a good idea to learn AWS in order to grow in the field of cloud computing.

To read more, click here.

By Shifani Ram

Exit mobile version