Cloud computing has come a long way in recent years and is continuing to evolve at an unprecedented pace. It’s amazing to believe what is possible. If we look back AWS (Amazon Web Services) was only founded in 2006, Google cloud was founded in 2008 and Azure (Microsoft) in 2010. That means just 14 years ago the big players in the space weren’t even in operation! Along the way each of the vendors has made real advances formulating their own USPs. One bit to note is that to truly harness this power, you need to be operating a multi-cloud environment.
In this article we will explore the high-level strengths of AWS, Azure & Google Cloud. The goal is to provide insight into the capabilities of each and how businesses should look to implement their services to enhance their digital enablement.
To start we will take a look at AWS. The clear advantage AWS has above the other vendors we are reviewing is the time they have been operating. AWS is also the market leader, which is likely attributed to their time in the market.
In terms of capabilities, AWS’s strength is really towards software development. The breath and depth of its services allow developers to write less code, provide features faster, and ultimately they provide a complete ecosystem of services, that simplifies the time it takes to bring a product to market. AWS has a service for just about everything but with that they are able to charge a premium. As a result companies often find AWS to be rather cost-prohibitive. But it is essential to look at the bigger picture and understand the true costs. Ultimately this ease of deployment can seriously reduce development time and thus reduce cost.
The next contender is Google Cloud. Google currently holds the 3rd largest amount of revenue in the Cloud market space. Google has really upgraded its network infrastructure over the last year. A recent report from Cockroach labs found Googles network infrastructure to consistently achieve 60gbps of transit with AWS averaging 25gbps and Azure with 8gbps. That is some seriously impressive backend infrastructure!
One area that is also very notable is their UI. It provides a very interactive interface allowing new users to learn the platform extremely quickly, which is further enhanced with there code snippets. When a user deploys a service they are able to see exactly what commands would be required to complete the task in the CLI. This feature means that users are very quickly able to skill-up to power users, further enhancing their ability to deploy services in a shorter time.
Google’s strength is all-around containers, AI and machine learning. Google is well known for embracing open source technology and it really shows in there Cloud capabilities. Google lends it’s self really well to companies that are looking to embrace all of these areas in their digital transformation journey.
Our final contender is Microsoft Azure. Azure holds the second-largest cloud market share in revenue. Azure is the common C-Level choice, which is due to there long term involvement in the enterprise space. Microsoft has also really benefited from the Office365 uptake, which often makes a compelling argument for companies to also invest in the Azure platform.
Azure are the leaders in the migration process. They have recently developed on their existing capabilities to introduce Azure migrate. The service allows users to replicate existing on-premises infrastructure to Azure. Once the user has completed there testing and is happy with the replication they are able to failover the infrastructure. The other area in which Azure clearly outmaneuvers its rivals is in the Microsoft stack! Azure is your go-to cloud for Microsoft SQL. They have developed a seriously impressive ‘platform as a service’ offering, which makes deploying to there Cloud super straight forward.
Microsoft’s strength is there existing client base, and the Microsoft ecosystem. For businesses running primarily Microsoft estates then Azure makes the most sense. The other interesting area for power users is there CLI and Powershell. If your engineers are already Microsoft Powershell experts then the transition to Azure Powershell is very smooth and makes automation within their platform extremely easy.
In conclusion here at Next2IT we use a multi-cloud approach. It makes sense to exploit each Cloud platform to its maximum potential. This does introduce a complex environment to manage, but ultimately gives the best results. We hope that our shortly post gives some insight into the current Cloud market space.
If you are looking to move to the Cloud or have already migrated, then speak to Next2IT and find out how we can supercharge your capabilities today!