While there is certainly no shame in carving out a local market and being content with your lot, any organization that hopes to become a household name has to think about scaling their systems to serve a bigger consumer base. For most, the answer to that is leveraging cloud infrastructure, which ultimately comes down to a choice of Amazon Web Services (AWS) vs Google Cloud Platform (GCP) vs Microsoft Azure.
This applies to developers using rapid deployment to speed up their agile development and beat the competition to market, retailers who need a backend for their new online store, or enterprise businesses using infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) to meet data management demands.
While there is no objective ‘best’ in GCP vs AWS vs Azure, there are features that could make each one better for specific businesses. This blog provides a point of reference about each of these companies put beside one another, so you know what to expect before engaging either of them for cloud infrastructure.
- If you prefer to ask questions about GCP, Azure, or AWS directly, consider contacting a FogOPs expert who can walk you through each of these platforms in depth.
AWS vs GCP vs Azure: The Cloud Leaders
As the undisputed leaders in tech, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google were smart enough on the cloud computing bandwagon early—each using their considerable resources to push cloud technology forward as they solidified their own innovations. As a result, the ‘Big 3’ are essentially the gatekeepers of cloud infrastructure, both as a standard of comparison and a source of motivation for each other. The following entries explain which company types are most likely to benefit from each platform.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
As the competing cloud providers both started as tech companies, one might assume they were out in front of the wave, and that Amazon played a stellar game of catchup. In fact, AWS started in 2000 and went public in 2006, where Azure and GCP both followed for two years. This isn’t to say that the first is the best, but that the retailer was one of the first big companies to see cloud-based business as a viable entity. Today, AWS has branched into every part of cloud computing, with their name attached to countless applications with millions of users and growing every day.
AWS is widely considered the leader in IaaS, with small businesses able to push their brand to a much wider audience, and medium to large companies leveraging managed IT and consulting to overcome their peers. AWS is particularly useful for agile developers who want to instill DevOps or DevSecOps in their sprints, with tools like AWS Codebuild and AWS Codedeploy to empower software engineers using CI/CD. Using AWS, expect to see a service and for every part of your operation bearing its name, but also services that play well with third parties, including GCP and Azure.
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
The most telling fact about the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is that Google uses it for its own infrastructure. Considering the amount of people who must use Google Search, Google Drive, YouTube, and GMail every day, there can be no concerns over its capability to scale to any workload. Having always operated on both sides of the proprietary and open-source divide, their virtual private cloud and managed services are backed by worldwide communities.
If AWS is the practical, uniform entry, and Azure is the reliable one from a reliable company, GCP is the more innovative and analytical among the three. GCP contains several layers of end-to-end big data analytics for developers and companies that want to leverage business intelligence and innovation to compete. You’ll also find that GCP applies the same security principles across all their platforms, with such measures as KMS, security scans, and login data analysis, and that the platform is ideal for the faster data flows needed for CI/CD.
Microsoft Azure
Azure bears the name of the biggest names in tech, which brings a certain air of reliability along with its feature-rich services. Microsoft’s cloud platform has been among the forerunners since 2008, shortly after Ray Ozzie (HCL Notes) and his company Groove Networks brought their file-sharing innovations into Microsoft’s fold.
Since then, Azure has evolved into one of the most reliable cloud infrastructure platforms in existence. Part of the reason for their success is that Microsoft used the public’s familiarity with Microsoft Office to ease them into Microsoft 365, which provided cloud-based SaaS products via subscription. This entry point not only makes deeper use of the Azure ecosystem less daunting, but it remains a complete suite of tools for cloud native architecture and DevOps. For enterprise companies who aren’t new to cloud computing, Microsoft’s resources also mean highly-available data centers in all areas of the world.
More Expertise On Azure vs GCP vs AWS
Performing due diligence on Azure, GCP, and AWS is a smart move for anyone who uses data, whether you’re considering migration or not. If you are considering migration, it’s imperative.
Reading up is good practice, but there’s no better source of information than an expert with experience using these platforms in production. For that, consider using Foghorn Consulting to expand your knowledge base on each of the “Big 3” in cloud computing:
