AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Choose the Best Cloud Platform in 2024

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As applications are shifted out of on-premise data centers to innovate, decrease costs, and boost agility, cloud computing has become a fundamental driving factor for businesses today.

Companies are unsure which option is the best due to early concerns about security and data sovereignty. These three are leading today, but what is the distinction between AWS vs Azure vs Google? Let us give you a detailed analysis.

The topics covered in this blog are:

What is the AWS Cloud Platform?

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the cloud service platform of Amazon. It provides users with computation, storage, and delivery, among other things.

When these software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) offerings, and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) when merged, they deliver a scalable way for the company to deploy applications fast.

AWS

Features of AWS

Amazon delivers 18,000+ services, which include:

  • Computing
  • Storage solutions
  • Cloud app integration
  • Analytics and machine learning
  • Productivity tools
  • Developer and management tools

What is Azure?

Microsoft Azure, like AWS, is an integrated platform that offers SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS options for computing, storage, development, and databases. Companies can utilize the platform to deploy and operate applications and other services in the cloud.

Features of Azure

It has repurposed and proposed a number of easily configured, swiftly delivered services by leveraging the existing structure set in place by Microsoft’s software and business app offerings, including:

  • Cloud development platform
  • Blockchain technologies
  • Predictive analytics
  • Comprehensive IoT integration
  • DevOps features

What is Google Cloud Platform?

Google is known to begin its operations in 2008 and has only recently occurred as a serious competitor to both AWS and Azure. GCP offers IaaS and PaaS, as well as a serverless platform with computation, storage, databases, different networking options, and database and IoT administration, similar to the other two platforms.

Google Cloud Plateform

Features of Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform is swiftly catching up to the competition, with Google’s huge worldwide reach and nearly limitless capacity for innovation. It currently provides the following services:

  • Productivity management
  • Data storage and management
  • Cloud app development
  • AI and machine learning engines ( including API of cloud speech, vision, and much more)
  • Business analytics

Also check: Our blog post on Azure Certification Path 2023

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Market Shares and Growth Rate

The most recent cloud market share statistics and trends will help MSPs and IT consulting firms understand the managed cloud services market’s future moves and prospects.

According to Canalys, some interesting facts to remember include:

Cloud Services Market Share: In Quarter 1 of 2022, the top three cloud infrastructure providers were AWS (33% market share), Microsoft Azure (21%), and Google Cloud (8%).

Market Dominance for Cloud Services: The Big Three public cloud service providers (CSPs) now control 62 percent of the market, with a spike from 58 percent in Quarter 3 2022.

Overall Cloud Services Spending: In Quarter 1 2022, global cloud infrastructure services spending totaled $55.9 billion, up 34% from Quarter 1 2021. In Quarter 1 2022, the Big Three CSPs — AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud — expanded by a collective 42 percent over Quarter 1 2021.

Google Cloud vs AWS vs Azure Market Shares and their Growth Rate

Check Out: Azure Data Factory interview questions and Answers

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Who are the Users?

It is understandable that AWS is the oldest player in the cloud business, so it has a larger user base and community support. AWS is known to have a larger number of high-profile and well-known clients, including Netflix, Airbnb, Unilever, BMW, Samsung, MI, Zynga, and others.

Along with time, Microsoft Azure is gaining a larger number of high-profile clients. Azure currently brags about 80% of Fortune 500 firms as clients. Its key clients are Johnson Controls, HP, Polycom, Honeywell, Apple, Fujifilm, and others.

On the other hand, Google Cloud uses the same infrastructure as Google Search and YouTube, and as a result, many high-end enterprises trust Google Cloud. HSBC, Dominos, PayPal, 20th Century Fox, Bloomberg, and others are among Google Cloud’s many clients.

All of these cloud service providers, google cloud vs aws vs Azure, provide a variety of cloud computing services that are necessary for any basic organization.

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Availability Zones

We all know that AWS has the glory of being first in the cloud sector, indicating that they have had sufficient duration to create and grow their network. Due to this factor, Amazon AWS hosts in multiple locations throughout the world. Azure and GCP both host in various locations worldwide, but the distinction is in the number of availability zones they have.

  • AWS now has 66 availability zones, with an additional 12 in the pipeline.
  • Microsoft Azure has a total of 54 regions in the world and is accessible in 140 countries globally.
  • Google Cloud Platform is now available in 20 countries and territories, with 3 more to come.

Read More: About Azure Firewall vs NSG

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Top Features

Before moving on other factors, let’s checkout the comparison of top features between these cloud giants:

Top Features

Service Level Agreement (SLA) Availability

  • Amazon EC2 - 99.5% annual uptime

  • Amazon S3 - 99.9% monthly uptime

99.9% uptime

99.95% monthly uptime

Caching

Elastic Cache

Redis Cache

Cloud CDN

Processor

128 Nos

128 Nos

96 Nos

Marketplace

AWS marketplace

Azure marketplace

G Suite Marketplace

Maximum Memory in VMs

3904 GiB

3800 GiB

1433 GiB

GIT Repositories

AWS source repositories

Azure source repositories

Cloud source repositories

Supported OS

Core OS, Cloud Linux, Windows, SLES,  Ubuntu, etc

SLES, CentOS, Windows, Oracle Linux, etc

Windows, CoreOS, SLES, FreeBSD, etc

Platform as service

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Cloud Services

Google App Engine

Storage of Object

Amazon S3

Azure Block Blob

Google Cloud Storage

Managed data warehouse

Amazon Redshift

Azure SQL warehouse

Google Big Query

File Storage

Amazon EFS

Azure Files

Avere and ZFS

Kubernetes Management

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Serverless Computing

Lambda

Azure functions

Google Cloud functions

API Management

Amazon API Gateway

Azure API gateway

Cloud endpoints

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Services

AWS provides over 200 services, whereas Azure provides up to 100 services. Google Cloud, on the other hand, is catching up to Azure and AWS by offering more than 60 services.

So let’s see what all these three cloud giants have offering in terms of services.

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Compute Services

This is one of the most important roles in managing computing workloads. A cloud service provider should be able to scale a large number of nodes in a fraction of minutes. On the basis of computing, the top comparisons between aws, azure, and google cloud are:

Services

IaaS

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

Virtual Machines (Azure VMs)

Google Compute Engine (GKE)

PaaS

AWS Elastic Beanstalk

Cloud services

Google App Engine

Containers

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Container Service

AKS (Azure Kubernetes Service)

GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine)

Container Deployment

-

Container service

Container Engine

Container register

EC2 registry

Container registry

Container registry

Serverless Functions

AWS Lambda

Azure Functions

Google Cloud Functions

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Storage Services

This is yet another very critical factor and is related to data storage. On the basis of Storage Services, the top comparisons between azure, aws, and google cloud are:

Services

Object Storage

Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

Google Cloud Storage

Hybrid Storage

Storage gateway

Stor Simple

Egnyte Sync

Virtual Server Disks

Amazon Elastic Block Store

Managed Disks

Google Compute Engine Persistent Disks

File Storage

Amazon Elastic File System (Amazon EFS)

Avere and ZFS

Cold Storage

Amazon Glacier

Azure Archive Blob Storage

Google Cloud Storage Nearline

Back-up Solutions

Storage gateway & Cold Archive storage

Azure Backup

-

Disaster Recovery

Disaster recovery

-

Azure vs AWS vs Google Cloud: Database Services

Services

RDBMS

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)

Azure SQL Database

Google Cloud SQL

Block Storage

EBS

Page Blobs

Persistent disks

NoSQL: Key–Value

Amazon DynamoDB

Google Cloud Datastore and Google Cloud Bigtable

NoSQL: Indexed

Amazon SimpleDB

Azure Cosmos DB

Google Cloud Datastore

Database Migration

Database migration services

Database migration services

-

Google Cloud vs AWS vs Azure: Networking Services

Services

Amazon VPC

Virtual Private Cloud

Peering

Direct Connect

Google Cloud Interconnect

Elastic Load Balancer

AWS Elastic load balancer

Azure Load Balancer

Google Cloud Load Balancing

DNS

Amazon Route 53

Azure DNS

Google Cloud DNS

Also Check: Our blog post on Azure Interview Questions and Answers

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Cloud Tools

Currently, there is too much rivalry among these three cloud platforms. All three providers have begun to offer their services according to the latest trends and customer demands, and are likely to expand them in the future.

Vendor

AI/ML

  • AWS SageMaker

  • AWS Comprehend

  • Amazon Polly

  • Amazon Lex

  • Amazon Rekognition

  • Machine Learning

  • Transcribe

  • Translate

  • AWS DeepLens

  • TensorFlow on AWS

  • Apache MXNet on AWS

  • Deep Learning AMIs

  • Azuer Machine Learning

  • Azure Bot Service

  • Azure Cognitive Services

  • Cloud Machine Learning Engine

  • Dialogflow Enterprise Edition

  • Cloud Speech API

  • Cloud Natural Language

  • Cloud Translation API

  • Cloud Job Discovery (Private Beta)

  • Cloud Video Intelligence

IoT

  • IoT Core

  • Greengrass

  • FreeRTOS

  • IoT 1-Click

  • IoT Button

  • IoT Analytics

  • IoT Device Defender

  • IoT Device Management

  • IoT Hub

  • IoT Edge

  • Time Series Insights

  • Azure Stream Analytics

  • Cloud IoT Core (Beta)

Serverless

  • AWS Lambda

  • Serverless Application Repository

  • Functions

  • Cloud Functions (Beta)

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Hybrid and Multi Cloud Options

  • AWS Outposts

  • AWS Snowball

  • AWS Local Zones

  • AWS Wavelength

  • AWS Snowcone

  • VMware Cloud on AWS

  • Amazon ECS Anywhere

  • Amazon EKS Anywhere

  • Anthos

  • Cloud Build

  • Operations

  • Looker

  • Traffic Director

  • Cloud Run for Anthos

Also Read: What is Microsoft Cloud Background Check?

Azure vs AWS vs Google Cloud: Pricing

Let’s see the pricing comparion of AWS, Azure, and GCP, this comparison is based on the machine type that they offer:

Machine Type

Smallest Instance

In the case of AWS you have to pay around $69/month for the 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM.

In the case of Azure you have to pay around $70/month for the 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM.

In the case of GCP you have to pay around $52/month for the 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM.

Largest Instance

In the case of AWS you have to pay around $3.97/hour for the large instance that come with 3.84 TB of RAM and 128 vCPUs.

In the case of Azure you have to pay around $6.79/hour for the large instance that come with 3.89 TB of RAM and 128 vCPUs.

In the case of GCP you have to pay around $5.32/hour for the large instance that come with 3.75 TB of RAM and 160 vCPUs.

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Advantages

AWS is, without a doubt, the most crucial participant in the cloud computing sector, with a market share of around 33%.

Microsoft entered the cloud industry by bringing its on-premise services to the cloud, including Windows Server, Office, SQL Server, Sharepoint, and others. As Azure is connected with other apps commonly utilized by a majority of enterprises, this helps Microsoft edge out its competitors.

Since Google created the Kubernetes standard, which AWS and Azure currently use, it began supplying containers. Google Cloud, which specializes in high-computing services like big data, analytics, and machine learning, has significant scaling and load-balancing capabilities.

It has a vast range of operations and a vast network of data centers throughout the world. AWS has become the most developed and enterprise-ready supplier because of its ease of offering scalability and holistic security to its users.

Microsoft also offers large savings on service contracts to its customers.

When it comes to cloud services, Google Cloud, which is paired with Google Workspace, is a powerful opponent.

 The 200+ managed services offered by AWS, as well as the ease with which they can be employed.

For their on-cloud needs, businesses rely on Azure.

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Disadvantages

The pricing strategy of AWS has a flaw. While businesses consider AWS to be the best cloud service provider, they are frequently baffled by its pricing structure. Despite its ongoing price reductions, many businesses find it challenging to grasp AWS's cost structure and manage those expenses efficiently while running high-volume workloads on the service.

The platform's maintenance requirements and the high level of skill necessary to use Azure are two areas where Microsoft falls short.

Google does not have a traditional customer connection with businesses. It is, nevertheless, rapidly growing its capabilities and global data center presence. We may expect Google Cloud to become a more formidable competitor to Amazon and Azure in the future.

AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Which option is Best for You?

On the basis of these criteria, we will figure out which is the best alternative for comparison of Amazon AWS azure and google cloud.

Basis

Best Option

Reason

Establishment

AWS

Started earlier (Head start of 5 years)

Availability Zones

AWS

Significant more number of regions and availability zones

Market Shares

AWS

1/3rd of market shares under its name

Growth Rate

Google Cloud

100% growth rate

Users

Tie

Many high-end clients of three cloud platforms

Services

  • AWS

  • Azure

  • No. of services

  • In terms of integration with open-source and on-premise systems

Pricing Standards

Google Cloud

Much more customer-friendly pricing and discount models

As we can see, with the higher weightage in the combat Azure vs. AWS vs. Google Cloud, AWS single handedly wins over all of the main cloud providers today.

Though, as we consider that Azure and GCP are continuously working their way up the top cloud providers list, it’s challenging to decide how long AWS will have the title of leading cloud provider.

Despite the fact that AWS has the glory of being the first of its kind, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud offer their own set of benefits. Several companies that utilize Microsoft tools choose Azure cloud since it is simple to integrate MS tools with Azure cloud. Consumers should choose GCP because it offers the best pricing plan for the infrastructure that runs Google Search and YouTube.

So, all things considered, it’s better to say that it’s not about picking the finest cloud providers, AWS azure and google cloud; rather, it’s about picking the cloud provider that’s most suited to your needs.

Conclusion

AWS, Azure and Google Cloud are all used for the same thing. These providers are practically the same in their services. All platforms, operating systems, and structures are supported. Three technology powerhouses, AWS azure google service comparison, have made an impression on their customers as a result of their commercial offers. In all of the elements that we have compared, deciding which one is the best is still difficult.

So, while deciding which cloud platform to utilize, the idea is to try out the free trial version first of AWS vs Azure vs google cloud and see which one best meets the user’s needs. It means to make use of it and to choose it.

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Sonali Jain is a highly accomplished Microsoft Certified Trainer, with over 6 certifications to her name. With 4 years of experience at Microsoft, she brings a wealth of expertise and knowledge to her role. She is a dynamic and engaging presenter, always seeking new ways to connect with her audience and make complex concepts accessible to all.

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