AWS Vs Azure Vs Google - What Lies Ahead For The Future of Cloud?

Three companies, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon are the largest players in the public cloud platform. The three of them provide reliable, flexible, and safe cloud services through Google Cloud Services (Google), Azure (Microsoft), and AWS (Amazon).

These three platforms come with a host of features, with some of them common among the three. The common features include security, identity management, compliance, self-service, instant provisioning, and autoscaling. 

However, they are all different and have unique features that make them good for different organizations. AWS is a little bit bigger when it comes to maturity and functionality compared to the other two. However, Google and Azure are introducing new features and functionalities to beat the competition from AWS. 

So, how do they compare, and what lies ahead for the future of the cloud platform? Here are a few things to look at;

Multi-Cloud Support

Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS have different features made to support the multi-cloud infrastructure. This is important since research has indicated that the future of the database market is on the cloud.

Google Cloud Services was the last to include support for multi-cloud infrastructure. It offers Anthos services that allow its customers to use Kubernetes clusters and similar loads on Azure and AWS.

AWS was the first cloud platform to include support for multi-cloud infrastructure in its services. It started with EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) and ECS (Elastic Container Service). This allows users to use and manage their K8 applications and containers on Google Cloud Services and Azure.

Azure started supporting multi-cloud infrastructure after AWS but went a little bit further to allow its users to use Arc to run different Azure services on Google Cloud Services and AWS. This makes it the best option for those who want a cloud platform that comes with more features for multi-cloud infrastructure support.

Storage

Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS come with different and reliable storage functionalities and services. However, AWS stands out among the three. 

It offers a storage service known as Simple Storage Service, or simply Amazon S3 that comes with effective community support, tested technology, and extensive documentation.

Databases

Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS come with different services and tools for database management. Google Cloud offers Cloud SQL to handle all its database management requirements for its users.

Azure comes with Azure SQL Database with different features to handle and manage SQL databases offered by Azure.

AWS, on the other hand, comes with RDS (Relational Database Service) with support for some of the most popular databases, including PostgreSQL and Oracle, among others.

The three come with different tools that allow you to perform different database functions such as optimizing database tuning in your DBMS.

Compute

Google Cloud comes with GCE (Google Compute Engine) which allows users to take care of all their compute requirements through the management of virtual machines. These VMs come with preconfigured settings. However, users can customize these settings to match their requirements.

On the other hand, AWS comes with EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) while Azure offers Virtual Machine scale sets and Virtual Machines. These services perform the same functions as those provided by Google Cloud when it comes to storage.

Documentation

It would be very difficult to use any of these cloud platforms without proper documentation from the respective companies. Fortunately, they all come with good documentation to guide users through everything that they do.

Comparing the three documentations, Azure stands tall and is much more extensive. It also has the best community support compared to the other two.

Location

Google Cloud, Azure, and AWS have amazing coverage throughout the world. This allows the three cloud platforms to ensure that users can enjoy peak performance by giving them a shorter route to their target customers.

Even though new regions are added from time to time, Google Cloud has a presence in over 30 countries while Azure enjoys more than 60 regions. AWS, on the other hand, enjoys a presence in more than 75 regions.

Which Cloud Platform Stands Out?

Looking at the three cloud platforms discussed in this article, it is easy to notice that they are all competing to try and beat each other. However, they all come with unique features and different options for their users.

That notwithstanding, AWS comes with more features and functionalities making it the better option. This might not last for long though since Google Cloud and Azure are making major strides to command a larger market than they currently do.