AWS vs Azure vs GCP: Comparing The Big 3 Cloud Platforms

Cloud computing has transformed how we work and brought about an exhilarating era of technological development. The global markets are dominated by GCP, Azure, and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

By 2023, the hybrid cloud market will reach $97.6 Billion. Different components can be tailored to integrate with various cloud systems. This gives companies a flexible and cloud-agnostic system.

AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform control combined 67% of the global cloud computing market. Azure, AWS, and GCP have much experience managing cloud infrastructure. You can expect better service, engineering training, and higher-quality technical support.

Your cloud service needs may require only one provider; however, multi-cloud strategies might necessitate multiple. When deciding, you must identify which vendor provides the best services to meet them. This guide will help you understand GCP Azure and AWS. The differences between the three will also be discussed here, as well as which of them to select.

What is Google Cloud Platform?

Google Cloud Platform provides services spanning computing, network connectivity, processing big data sets, and machine learning/artificial intelligence/networking integration. It was launched in 2008 but has gained significant traction more recently. While offering less broad a range of services than AWS/ Azure does presently - it is continually working toward expanding to compete effectively against them.

Azure and AWS both have powerful machine-learning capabilities. Google Cloud Platform is unique because of its internal expertise and research, which has allowed the giant search engine to remain successful for many years.

GCP is unique because it develops open-source technologies. Google is an integral player in the development of Kubernetes, as it has expertise with Kubernetes. GCP provides IaaS, PaaS, and server-less computing. Furthermore, it offers networking database management services and IoT management features. Google's innovation culture is an excellent fit for start-ups and companies prioritizing these technologies and approaches.

Benefits of Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform has many advantages.

#1: Customer-centric Approach

Google proudly offers a comfortable and enjoyable user experience for all its clients. It's safe for us to assume GCP will do the same.

GCP ensures that any changes or improvements are easy to manage and do not confuse users. GCP also gives customers more reliability when disasters strike by allowing immediate backups without interrupting secondary centers.

#2: Improved Execution

Google Cloud Hosting has been enhanced for enterprises. Individuals can remotely access data in any place. The network can execute complex operations with ease due to its extensive infrastructure. Google Cloud Machines are capable of handling visitors simultaneously. You will notice a decrease in the load time of your site if you plan to switch to Google Cloud Hosting.

#3: Constant development

Google Cloud Platform also includes hosting. An extensive infrastructure contains the public domain. The infrastructure itself is being rapidly developed to keep up with the demands of the future. Google Infrastructure will expand to new places shortly. The network will be strengthened. Google has 17 offices.

#4: Migration to Live Virtual Machine

Live Virtual Machine Migration (VM) is an excellent benefit to engineers and administrators because it allows systems to run smoothly. At the same time, infrastructure maintenance and upgrades are being performed. This ensures your VMs, software, and hardware remain safe and functional during software or hardware failures.

Surprisingly, their competitors offer different functionality. Azure, AWS, and smaller cloud providers provide virtual machines, but they do not offer live migration.

#5: Backups

If something no longer needs to be there, then it is redundant. Google's redundant backups are built-in. Google creates a backup if a part isn't working. You are now storing data at different places (at least two). Users won't be able to lose data in the event of an accident. Data analytics ensure data integrity by redundancy. It ensures durability and reliability.

#6: Improved Pricing 

Pay-per-use services (charged based on time and resource usage) allow you to focus only on the actual demand. You can remember the hassle of maintaining and running on-premises hardware. And, best yet, you get discounts based on your usage.

GCP is even more cost-effective and affordable than its biggest rivals, AWS and Microsoft Azure. Google Cloud Platform offers instances at a lower cost. Compute Engine is usually between 40% - 50% cheaper than AWS or Azure.

#7: Use of Private Network

Private networks increase efficiency, accuracy, and time management. Google provides its network to users so they can control the scaling of their projects. GCP's private network can be a real blessing for cloud platforms. Fibre optic cables are more flexible and efficient for data transfers when used in a network.

#8: Robust Security

Google is the undisputed industry leader when it comes to security. They have access to top security experts who protect Gmail, YouTube, and their search engine - and then share the details with their users.

Also read- Oracle Cloud vs AWS, Which to Choose for your Business?

Google uses 256-bit AES encryption technology for its data protection services. It is ensured by the companies that every key encryption is encrypted using a series of master keys, which are regularly updated. They also improve security through their relationships with ISPs around the globe.

What is Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure, one of three major cloud providers, provides clients with storage, analytics, and networking services. As the second-largest platform behind AWS, Azure is rapidly expanding and quickly closing in on AWS in terms of market share.

Azure is the cloud of choice for 80% of Fortune 500 companies. Azure offers options for computing, storage, and development, as well as database services as SaaS. Platforms and organizations can manage cloud-based applications and services.

Azure offers a variety of services to enterprises. Microsoft's relationship with the enterprise segment is long-standing, making it a popular choice among some customers. Azure, Office 365, and Microsoft Teams allow organizations to offer enterprise software for their employees while leveraging the cloud.

Benefits of Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is widely recognized as being one of the top-performing clouds currently available, offering customers several distinct advantages that give them an edge against their competition, including:

#1: Hybrid Deployment

Azure allows you to deploy hybrid solutions, unlike Amazon Web Services. You can use both your local resources and the cloud.

#2: Compliance and Security

Azure's development services offer various features to protect data and comply with regulations. Microsoft Azure was designed to meet the business' privacy and security needs. Azure security features include built-in threat intelligence, certifications for compliance, and advanced threat protection.

Microsoft offers the best compliance services compared to any other Cloud provider. You can be assured that your data will be stored in compliance with the regulations if you are working in the legal or finance sectors.

Azure provides organizations with role-based control of access, which allows them to manage who can access their applications and data. It also provides encryption in transit and at rest, which ensures that all data remains protected during its entire lifetime.

#3: Ease of Integration

Azure is compatible with various technologies, such as Linux and Kubernetes, making integration effortless with existing infrastructures and tools, plus simple administration and application deployment.

#4: Compatibility with On-premise Tools

Microsoft Azure subscriptions allow organizations to be selective in the workflows, virtualized assets, and applications they choose to deploy. Companies can migrate their entire IT infrastructure into the cloud or retain some on-premises IT and run a hybrid model.

#5: Advanced Analytics Tools

Microsoft Azure provides companies with an array of business intelligence and advanced analytics tools that can help them gain insight from their data. Services offered include Azure Machine Learning, Power BI, and others that allow companies to utilize Azure's services to analyze their data to gain insight and enhance decision-making capabilities.

Azure can integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Dynamics 365, Office, and other products from the company. It provides a seamless user experience and improves productivity.

#6: Disaster Recovery

It is innovative and cost-effective to back up data in the cloud. The 99-year retention period is a great benefit, and there's no need to take tapes or drives away. Azure has built-in features for disaster recovery, which will ensure your critical business applications and data remain available even if there is a catastrophe or an outage. Site Recovery is Azure's disaster recovery solution. You can recover either at a second site or directly into the cloud.

#7: Flexibility

Microsoft Azure provides a wide range of services that can be customized to your business needs. Virtual machines, databases, and storage are all included in these services. Choose the benefits most important to your company and pay only for what you use.

#8: Market Reach

Azure has an extensive network of strategically placed data centers worldwide. Due to this global presence, businesses can access Azure services and applications without experiencing any latency. Azure's globally distributed data centers allow organizations to expand seamlessly their international operations, reaching previously unreachable customers and markets.

#9: Faster Time-to-Value

Microsoft Azure is known for its speed. Azure's pre-built solutions and tools make it easier to create and deploy applications. A faster time-to-value results in more adaptable and flexible responses for organizations according to changing market needs.

What is Amazon Web Services?

AWS launched in 2002. Amazon is known for instant delivery and streaming services, but AWS accounts for a large part of Amazon's profit. AWS offers various services, including servers, cloud storage, network, mobile, security, email, and remote computing. AWS dominates the market with 33%.

AWS is a popular platform for building applications because it offers many services. AWS provides teams with access to an expansive suite of tools for databases, analytics and management, IoT, Security, and Enterprise Applications - making them ideal solutions.

AWS leads the market in cloud computing services. An AWS development services provider offers SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS to distribute software across your company quickly.

Benefits of AWS (Amazon Web Services)

AWS is a cloud provider that offers many benefits. Here are a few of them:

#1: Cost-effective

You can only save money if you use the services your company needs. AWS has a very affordable pricing compared to another on-premises services.

Consider the cost of running applications on-premises or in co-location. This can be a considerable cost. AWS's cost-effectiveness is one of its best features.

#2: Offering PaaS Solutions

AWS provides a scalable infrastructure and covers critical domains such as computing, storage, databases, and networking. It takes on the responsibility of managing and configuring platforms. PaaS provides people with various choices for PaaS solutions and eliminates infrastructure concerns.

#3: Integration of IoT and Machine Learning

AWS offers the flexibility to help companies launch IoT networks or integrate artificial intelligence machine learning into their operations. This includes scalability and flexibility issues, as well as security and access to data. Custom IoT software solutions enable companies to integrate IoT faster and more nimbly, which facilitates continuous innovation at a time when they need it the most.

#4: Streamlined Data

You can streamline your data centers and save many resources, allowing you to concentrate on growth and innovation. Consolidating data centers on the AWS cloud will enable companies to save up to one-third of infrastructure costs and provide robust data operations across the enterprise that are centralized.

#5: Zero Commitment

Amazon Web Services can host your website or a content delivery network with high traffic. Amazon Web Services keeps you covered. Your virtual server, database service, or data warehouse can be set up quickly without an upfront commitment fee—Amazon Web Services bills you per minute or hour for specific resources. You are free to cancel your monthly, quarterly, or yearly commitments.

#6: Innovation

Experts around the globe say it's not just Amazon Web Service's low prices but also its dedication to innovation, which allows it to brag about the fact that many leading corporate brands are on its client list.

AWS may have competition from Microsoft and Google in terms of price. Still, few cloud providers can compete effectively with Amazon Web Services regarding dedication and innovation.

#7: Scalability

AWS's flexibility is essential for achieving scalability. AWS allows organizations to grow at their own pace and without limits. They can add resources and expand their cloud environment to adapt to changing business goals and needs. This is an excellent infrastructure for businesses that want to go global or merge companies and need a flexible, consolidated IT infrastructure.

#8: Enhanced Productivity

AWS backing your cloud computing means avoiding the risks and obligations associated with containing an internal IT infrastructure. AWS also reduces the need for IT staff, saving your company time and money.

#9: Agility and Productivity of Staff

AWS migration leads to increased productivity for staff due to the modern software engineering approaches that allow improved efficiency task by task. It leads to a 60% increase in the productivity of IT staff, 7x reduced downtime, and 3x increased features in an average year.

Comparing GCP vs. Azure vs. AWS

When choosing the appropriate provider of cloud services, there are various factors to consider. Here are the comparisons among them that may assist.

#1: Availability Area

#GCP

GCP offers cloud services via the Regions and Zones model (37 Regions, 112 Zones, and 176 edge locations). The closer these services are to end users, the lower their latency will be. This also boosts the performance of all workloads. GCP Regions offer up to three zones that are independent of each other, ensuring resilience in the event of a failure in a zone or two.

#Azure

Microsoft Azure's network of 160 global data centers ensures high availability. Azure Regions offers three distinct Availability Zones with power, cooling, and networking infrastructure.

#AWS

Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure is spread across 99 availability zones (with 15 more in development) and 31 regions. (With another five due to be launched soon). Provider offers Edge Computing Points on all continents except Antarctica. Large networks offer seamless scaling, low latency, and multi-regional data backup.

#2: Security

#GCP

GCP has accumulated a wealth of technical expertise over the past 20 years despite being a relative newcomer to cloud computing. They're not strangers to security. GCP's security is impressive, with various security protocols and tools, such as the Cloud Security Command Center. They have top-notch security across several services.

#Azure

Azure Active Directory makes it easy to control authorizations. Azure's single-point control of permissions and approvals allows for easy management. Azure, however, defaults to "allow" instead of "deny," unlike GCP or AWS, which defaults to "deny" when creating a new network for new CPUs. This means that security teams must focus on making new networks to maintain a development environment.

#AWS

AWS's years of experience in security allow it to offer the safest and most secure technology. AWS makes it easy to get support and answers. AWS offers exceptional protection by default.

#3. Open-source Support

#GCP

Google has several Open Source Projects, including Kubernetes for container orchestration (Kubernetes), Istio for service mesh, TensorFlow, and Go programming language, mostly donated to Cloud Native Computing Foundation. GCP is the right choice if you plan to use or integrate such tools or platforms.

#Azure

Azure is increasingly supporting Open Source projects. However, they are still managed by third parties such as RedHat Terraform and Databricks.

#AWS

AWS's history with the open-source community is extended. AWS supported many notable projects, from Apache Kafka and Linux to MySQL and OpenTelemetry. AWS also opened-sourced projects such as.NET Porting Assistant, Babelfish, and PostgreSQL for PostgreSQL to help developers switch to open-source software.

#4: Computing Services

#GCP

GCP is the latest entrant and has already 50 services. Google, being the technology mogul that it is, has made rapid strides in catching up with the vast number of services AWS and Azure offer.

#Azure

Azure offers users half of the services AWS provides. Azure has around 100 computing service offerings, catching AWS up fast.

#AWS

AWS offers over 200 services, including cloud container services, infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and beyond. AWS offers over 200 services, ranging from infrastructure as a Service to cloud container services.

#5: Containers

The managed Kubernetes solutions offered by each vendor simplify the deployment of K8s, including Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service, Azure Kubernetes Service, and Google Kubernetes Engine.

#AWS

AWS offers an Amazon Elastic Container Service for Docker. Amazon ECS, AWS's managed container services, is built upon AWS security features and native tools (such as Amazon ECR for managing container images to speed deployment). In addition, Elastic Compute Cloud Instances (EC2) provide provisioning, management, and running Kubernetes on AWS instances.

#Azure and GCP

It's more complex to manage Kubernetes yourself on Azure or GCP. EKS costs $0.10 more per cluster per hour to run containerized applications than ECS.

#6: Role of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Data Analytics

These three cloud providers offer extensive data, predictive analysis, data lakes, AI, and machine learning. They are unique but very similar.

#GCP

GCP offers the latest Deep Learning models, as well as powerful hardware accelerators, such as Cloud TPUs.

#AWS & Azure

AWS and Azure both have ML studios that are dedicated to the development of machine learning models. Azure's ML studio doesn't require deep data engineering knowledge, Python programming, or open-source libraries like Amazon SageMaker.

Which One to Choose: GCP, Azure, or AWS?

All three seem similar in quality. Therefore, it all boils down to personal choice and preference.

• AWS stands as the industry leader when it comes to services provided.

• Google Cloud Platform is a good option if you are worried about confusion in pricing or being surprised with an enormous monthly bill.

• Azure and GCP can be a good fit for organizations with Microsoft or Google solutions.

The customized cloud solution will impact your business long-term, even without upfront investment. It is possible to lock in a vendor, even with flexible options. Migration will also be challenging—research carefully before reaching a decision.

Conclusion

Decisions between Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, or Amazon Web Services in 2024 will depend on several criteria. Each provider offers an expansive ecosystem that constantly evolves - which makes making an informed decision difficult.

Before making the best choice for your business, it is vitally important to assess its needs, budget constraints, and regional availability of solutions. GCP's data analytics and machine-learning capabilities may make it the preferred choice. In contrast, Azure provides seamless integration between Microsoft products and services. AWS is the leader in this market and offers a wide range of services.

The choice of GCP, Azure, or AWS ultimately depends on your unique needs and goals. Conduct an in-depth evaluation that considers performance, security, and cost when making this assessment. Furthermore, maintaining flexibility and adaptability to remain current with evolving technological trends is vital for long-term success. This will ensure that you stay relevant after 2024.

Speak to our experts, they will guide you further for the best cloud service solution for your business.