The Comparison of the Best Cloud Computing Service Providers – AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud
The web is changing every day. We are consuming more and more data. Every website you visit, every tweet you make, every photo you upload – behind the scene they all need some computational power to complete those tasks.
Not only computation power achieves all those magic. Modern web services also require database engine, containers, RAM, processing power and sometimes – machine learning capability too.
Why Choose a Cloud Computing Platform?
As our requirements are growing, the need for computation power is growing too. We all need a faster response, and that comes in the expense of more processing power, more RAM, speedier disk storage and a better hardware stack overall.
While Google is the champion when it comes to the search engine market that is not the case in cloud computing, The undisputed champion of cloud computing is Amazon Web Services. Most high profile web applications, mobile applications use the computation power of AWS (Amazon Web Services) as the backend. For example, Netflix, NASA, Slack with thousands of other companies use Amazon Web Services.
What Is Cloud Computing?
Watch the following video to have a brief idea about Cloud Computing. The video wraps up cloud computing and also provides a simple definition of cloud computing.
One of the benefits of cloud computing platforms is you pay what you use – no extra payment.
You Pay What You Use
Although Google launched its own cloud offering as Google Cloud Platform just after two years (in 2008), Amazon Web Services had already been making headlines as the undisputed champion of the cloud space. AWS has been phenomenal in every sector since then.
Synergy Research Group’s 2018 report, found out that AWS’s worldwide market share is steady at around 33% for straight twelve quarters now.
Similar to Amazon Web Services, and Google Cloud, Microsoft launched its own cloud platform as Microsoft Azure. Though Microsoft Azure started after Google Cloud in 2010, it has more market share than Google Cloud now. Microsoft is adding new features to the Azure platform every few months.
Market Statistics
The cloud computing market share provide an idea about the current cloud computing market share. A recent study from Synergy research group states that Amazon has 34% market share, Microsoft Azure has 14% market share IBM cloud has 7% market share and lastly, Google Cloud compute engine is there with just 6% market share.
In this article, we will compare AWS vs. Google Cloud vs. Microsoft Azure Cloud platform. All these platforms have their own pros and cons in this article we try to do a fair comparison between AWS vs. Google Cloud vs. Google Cloud Platform engine.
Why Choose Amazon Web Services (AWS)
The Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform is the pioneer of the cloud computing industry. AWS provides you to easily manage computing power, data storage, databases, containers and other functionalities which are necessary for mobile application developers or high scale web app developers. AWS has a range of products including developer tools, management tools, mobile services, and applications services.
The Basics of AWS
The basic Amazon AWS Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) involves 4 segments:
- Computation Power
- Storage
- Networking
- Database
Whatever your cloud platform needs are, chances are AWS has already made it available for public use. Many devs use the application services with the computing and database infrastructure of AWS to build highly scalable and enterprise-level mobile apps.
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Simple Storage Service (S3) are the two most vital offerings of AWS. These two have laid the foundation of all the other offerings of AWS.
Pricing
Since its inception, AWS has revised its pricing a few times to be competitive with other cloud providers. AWS offers a free trial of their services for new users and startups. If you want to switch to AWS, it’s a good idea to try before using it permanently.
You can calculate AWS pricing here:
Why Choose Google Cloud Platform (GCP)?
The Google Cloud Platform provides a lot of services for developers. However, the App Engine product is the most popular among the catalog.
Google App Engine allows app developers to create applications without dealing with the server at all. Google App Engine is a fully managed solution for developing both web, command line or mobile applications in an agile manner. Moreover, you can perform all your computing with the same hardware that Google uses for its myriad services including Google Search, Gmail, YouTube and more. Google Cloud also provides storage, networking, and databases.
Combining these services you can quickly create highly scalable apps and web services. Although Google has lesser facilities than AWS and Azure, Google Cloud still caters to a vast audience.
Pricing of GCP
Google Cloud Platform may fall behind its features and accessibility, however, GCP makes it up in cost efficiency. GCP uses a pay-as-you-go pricing model and bills as per second of usage.
Google is putting a lot of efforts to make sure that the Google Cloud Platform remains relevant to the competition.
You can calculate your Google Cloud Platform pricing here:
Why Choose Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure gives you the ability to deploy and manage virtual machines. Like other platforms, you can increase or decrease your computation power as per your need within just a few minutes. If your application or web services require large scale parallel batch computing, Microsoft Azure can handle it too like Amazon AWS. Large scale parallel computing is a unique feature that is only available on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure.
Microsoft Azure Pricing
When considering Microsoft Azure pricing, you have to keep in mind that the costs will depend on what types of products you use.
The hourly server cost can start from $0.099 per hour and goes up to $0.149 per hour. However, the prices always don’t remain stable because of the extra services you might use. However, the prices are competitive to AWS and Google Cloud.
You can calculate your pricing here:
Final Thoughts on Amazon AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud
Each platform has its own pros and cons. For example, AWS has the most reliability and large set of features where Google has a lesser price in exchange for fewer features. Microsoft Azure stays in the middle with good sets of features, compatibility, and pricing.
Here’s a side by side comparison of each platform.
It’s up to you to choose your preferred cloud platform. Our suggestion would be doing a bit of research about your app/web services first and find out which services you need. Then you can do a cost analysis to find out your suitable cloud platform.
Either way, you will need a very fast loading time. If you are planning to host a web service, do not forget to check this article on Top 10 Ways to Improve PageSpeed.
If you are running or planning to use WPERP, you should definitely use the cloud engine. You can read in-depth about why we recommend using WPERP on the cloud.
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Paul Jacob
Server Management today is comparatively easier than before. Many thanks to industry-leading PaaS platforms (Platform as a Service) that have made setting up a server convenient. Many essential server management functions are now available through single click auto-install features which saves a lot of time enabling you to be more productive.