AWS vs. AZURE vs. Google Cloud | Top 3 Cloud Platform Comparison

Overview

Today’s business needs are compelling IT decision-makers to adopt cloud technology to achieve business goals. As a software entrepreneur are you not able to decide directly which cloud service is the best?

Well, choosing the right cloud platform for your business depends on various factors such as your requirements, budget, resources, etc. If you need a large number of services, probably AWS is best for you. AWS offers 200+ services highest by any. Best DevOps tools like docker and Kubernetes; Azure and GCP are the closest competitors. However, AWS costs you more than any other cloud platform.

Let us now compare each cloud platform based on the various services, security, pricing, and other aspects.

AWS (Amazon Web Service)

AWS is a collection of software processing services that you can rent, and it also allows you to run a vast and powerful computer system for any storage or processing that you can imagine. It provides a high worker productivity record because the firm does not need physical computer storage. Your staff has a large set of software that work with each other and is developed in high-security environments.

Microsoft Azure

Azure is an open-source cloud platform that provides various services such as data administrator, network resources, server management, computing, and many others. It has a vast number of services that will directly help you to solve your toughest challenges quickly. It is basically described as limitless potential and unlimited possibilities. It has advantages like an integrated environment with other Microsoft tools, hybrid capacity, security benefits, and many more.

GCP (Google Cloud Platform)

GCP is a highly scalable and reliable cloud platform offering the best cloud computing services on the web. It allows users to compute and restore data, which is helpful for the developers to inspect, build and deploy the application. It can quickly adopt the latest functionality and has remote access. It provides additional flexibility and controls.

AWS, Azure, AND GCP Comparison

Well, we will start side by side comparison and find out what is the fundamental difference between all of them.

Comparison based on Network

• AWS DIRECT NETWORK

  Amazon direct connect is a global framework around different global reasons, data centers, and edge locations to ensure services and performance. It has a dedicated connection and deploys over 100 AWS direct connection locations around the globe. You can send the data between the different connection locations, which creates private connections between offices and data centers in the global network. It helps improve the application performance by passing public network and connecting directly to the AWS and safe your data between your network and multiple encryption options. It also reduces the networking cost with low data transfer rate.

• AZURE VIRTUAL NETWORK (VNet)

  The Azure virtual network is a technology to create a network communication between two or more virtual machines. It is an environment or network used to run virtual machines and applications in the cloud. After it is created, the services within the Azure network interact securely with each other. It is a highly secure network. We can easily direct traffic from resources. It will the sophisticated network topology in a simple manner. Subnets, routing, and network security groups are its components that actually provide a wide range of functionalities.

• GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM

  Google’s trademark capacity backs GCP for innovation. Currently, Google is rapidly increasing the number of data centers worldwide. Cloud VPN and cloud interconnect allow you to connect via enterprise-grade direct connections. GCP offered three networks: default, auto, and custom.

Comparison based on Storage

Based on Storage comparison, all three-cloud service providers offer various storage options built to apply to diverse sets of needs.

• AWS Storage Service

  AWS provides ample block storage options through EBS (Elastic Block Store) and Amazon simple storage service (S3). It is an industrial standard protocol that most companies prefer. In AWS, if you need a storage approach, there is a service called Amazon Storage Gateway, a hybrid cloud provider that you can utilize in both local catches and the clouds. Same as if you want to access low latency in-memory data store, so you have an elastic cache.
  AWS also offers you an SQL-supported database and data migration service, which decreases downtime. Databases including RDS provide relational databases like Amazon Aurora, MySQL, MariaDB, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Redshift, and Neptune. AWS also has a glacier backup service for backup of storage.

• AZURE Storage Service

  Like AWS, Azure also has a variety of storage services like Queue Storage, Blob Storage, Data Lake Storage, File Storage, and many more. It has an ideal solution for a large amount of unstructured data storage. It also has a traditional storage solution with a vast number of SQL- databases. The unique thing about this cloud storage is that it has only one of the three cloud providers with a backup system. Through this backup system, you can quickly recover your lost data.

• Google Cloud Storage Service

  Similarly, for GCP, there is a variety of storage solutions available. It has both No SQL and SQL databases which is reliable and supportable. It also increases their number of transfer services. Some services like Cloud Spanner, Bigtable, Datastore, and SQL are helpful in strong consistency, managing the relational databases, operational workload, and large analytics database solutions.

Comparison based on Security

On the basis of Security comparison, all three-cloud service providers are offering various types of security options that incorporate massive amounts of customer, organization, and cloud app security data.

• AWS Security Service

AWS is the oldest cloud service provider, so it has faced many difficulties in the past and found a good solution. There are some aspects of Cloud Security in Amazon Web Service are as follows:

• Strong authentication & authorization- IAM policies
• Following the Least Privilege principle
• Protection from malware like viruses or ransomware
• Properly deploy encryption for data at rest and in motion
• Continuous assessment and remediation of vulnerabilities and misconfiguration
• Aligning the cloud security solution to the business model and requirement
• Cloud deployment with the verified templates and automation to prevent misconfigurations

These aspects contribute toward a strong security posture and ensure early detection and risk remediation in AWS Cloud.

• AZURE Security Service

Similar to AWS, Azure provides endless services to form your network solid and secure. It will automatically alert you in case of serious trouble, but there are some things you can do to ensure double security in Azure.

So I’m sharing ten best Security practices for Azure:

• Key Management
• Secure Storage
• Use Multiple Authentication
• Secure Administrator Access
• Secure Networking
• Manage Your Workstations
• Use a WAF with ATM
• Microsoft Azure Security Centre
• Monitor Activity Log Alerts
• Secure Microsoft SQL Server

• Google Cloud Security Service

Similar to Azure, GCP is best centralized because many capabilities were mapped out from the start compared to AWS features that were only added a few years ago. Within your account, projects are isolated from one another except where you connect services. If you create anything, it was probably either Kubernetes or open source. Those are advantages, needless to say, but not large enough ones.

Comparison based on Pricing

• AWS Pricing

  AWS isn’t really any more precious than any other host with a simple website (for small businesses). Still, costs will go up once when large numbers of visitors come. Otherwise, you host many large files on their servers, or you can start taking advantage of things other than Buckets and Route53 for hosting.
  AWS, the pricing format is complicated enough to form you seek a third-party app to manage all these services. Still, for the minimum instance (for 8 GB Ram and two virtual CPUs), Amazon will cost you nearly USD $69/per month, while the utmost instance (for 128 virtual CPUs and 3.84 Terabyte Ram) will increase you nearly USD 3.97/hour.
  I would argue that AWS pricing can be adapted to be more cost-effective than GCP and Azure. It would not have let GCP keep the upper hand and has acclimated pricing to be competitive too.

• AZURE Pricing

  The cost of Azure depends on multiple factors such as management level, capacity required, and location. Additionally, it offers a free tier, which allows free forever for a few specific models and the free use of certain models for the first 12 months only. Similar to AWS, Azure also provides the pay-as-you-go pricing model. It also provides a choice to pre-purchase its service, which it calls “Reserved Instance.” This scenario requires commitment for 1 or 3 years for several of their products. With Reserved Instance, you’ll receive up to a 72 percent discount for Azure services. It also offers spot instances, allowing users to get Virtual machines from Azure’s spare capacity at a low price.

• GCP Pricing

  It provides various pricing models, long-term reservations, and pay-as-you-go pricing with free tier options. Moreover, Google Cloud prices suffer from factors like compute, SQL, serverless pricing, network, and storage. These types of components are explored when you select a cost- structure for your enterprise. Google offers its customers free USD 300 credit as customers can spend their amount on their Google Cloud products. Additionally, users can use multiple free products like compute, storage, database, IoT, and AI the foremost widely used cloud services in the current system.

Conclusion

For IoT development, Azure is considered the best service in the market. It is also the fastest-growing cloud platform. It does not offer you as many benefits provided by AWS, but Azure isn’t far behind. Compared to AWS, Azure isn’t expensive since it charges basis on minutes. While Google Cloud Platform is way behind in services that are best suitable for Big Data and Machine Learning, they are quickly catching up. It is often the second fastest growing platform in the market. GCP offers you data of google chrome for big data for better development and allows you to use Big Query to develop your application rapidly. It also gives $300 credit to undertake their services. It charges based per second and provides maximum flexibility. So, this is often pocket-friendly and user-friendly as well.

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