Cloud Solution Provider

A head-to-head comparison of the Big Three.

If you’ve ever run out of space on your computer and/or uploaded files to OneDrive or Google Drive for easy access and to save space, you’re already in the realm of cloud computing. But for companies who need not just vast storage, but also computing power, memory, networking and security, cloud computing comes as a blessing, relieving enterprises of the need for costly infrastructure, the tedium of staying abreast of the latest updates, and security compliances.

Whether you’re an individual user, start-up business or a multi-million, multi-national corporation, you can benefit from the infrastructure, platform, and software services offered by the numerous cloud providers that have sprung up in the past decade.

However, picking the right cloud provider is not as simple as choosing the biggest…or the most affordable. Businesses need to align their requirements with the specific strengths of individual providers before making a decision. Factors like reliability, license costs, geographical presence…and of course pricing mechanisms all come into play.

Why cloud computing?

• Reduced expenses for hardware, databases, servers, as well as software and IT human resources
  
• 24/7 availability, i.e. no downtime, regardless of your geographical location
• Scalability: With the ability to add processing power, storage and resources as and when they are needed, there is no obstacle to scaling—up or down
• No update fatigue. The constant push to keep up with updates for all the software needed to run an organization is not just tedious, it’s also a huge drain on IT labour costs. Handing over this responsibility frees enterprises to focus on more important aspects impacting business success

The Big Three

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant ranks Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) in the top three positions. While some differences exist, all cloud providers offer the similar benefits to their customers, i.e.: Resource management, Storage, anywhere-anytime Data access, Security and Technology updates.

They also offer the same broad cloud services, viz: Compute, Storage, Database, Networking, Availability. So it makes sense to compare providers against these services.

On a feature by feature comparison, all three assure SLA availability of 99.5 or more uptime. AWS and Azure are roughly equal when it comes to maximum processers in VMs, i.e. 128; with a total of 96 processors, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is quite far behind. The same can be seen in memory in VMs, with AWS leading at 3904 GB, Azure close behind at 3800 GB, and GCP providing less than half at 1433 GB. When it comes to Operating Systems, AWS is the clear winner with support for almost all operating systems, including Windows, Oracle Linux, Ubuntu, and SLES.

Compute

AWS and Azure are evenly matched in compute provisioning capacity. Both offer the ability to scale many nodes in virtually seconds. All three are also equally strong in furnishing PaaS services. This makes sense since developers’ demand for a PaaS environment has been steadily going up, and with DevOps becoming mainstream, this is only going to go up further.

Storage

All three offer hybrid storage, the names differ (Storage gateway for AWS; StorSimple for Azure, and Egnyte Sync for GCP) but the offerings are, by and large, the same. They also all offer bulk data transfers, but AWS has the slight edge here. Google doesn’t currently offer back-up solutions, while AWS offers both archivial storage and storage gateway, Azure on the other hand only offers backup. Disaster recovery is another area where AWS scores high, providing almost full disaster recovery in comparison to Azure’s site recovery. With no official protocol, disaster recovery with GCP could prove a bit of a challenge.

Networking

AWS, Azure and GCP are evenly matched here, with all three equally strong in provisioning Virtual Networks, Load Balancers, DNS and Peering connect.

Pricing

This is where AWS really stands out. With largest instances (3.84 TB and 128 vCPUs) costing an approximate USD3.95/hour compared to USD 6.75 with Azure and GCP’s USD 5.32/hour, AWS would appear to be the most affordable. AWS’s pay-per-minute billing also helps cut expenses; although GCP, with its pay-per-second shaves off a few additional nickels. GCP also offers a variety of discounts and customer-friendly pricing models, which makes is popular with companies on tight budgets.

Availability Zones

Given AWS’s enormous head start, it makes sense that it’s data center footprint is just as enormous. With 66 availability zones, as of Q4, 2019, and 12 more on the anvil, AWS is the clear winner in region and availability zone comparison.

Conclusion

With cloud computing becoming ever more ubiquitous, the decision to move to the cloud is more a case of ‘when’ than ‘if’. But picking the right vendor depends to a large extent on your individual requirements, such as workloads, global demand, regulatory compliances, security needs, etc. But while there is no winner-takes-all, AWS would seem the right fit for most organizations.

As an independent partner Teleglobal is well positioned to help you identify the best-fit and most cost-effective Cloud Services Partner for your business. We offer the full menu of cloud services, from cloud migration to integration and optimization.

Contact our cloud experts to learn how we can help you.