Comparing Cloud Providers

Overview

I will be covering AWS, Azure and GCP. The three providers I have experience with.

I will use a physics analogy.

Position / Velocity / Acceleration.

Position: Azure starts the most behind . AWS the furthest ahead.

AWS has been doing this the longest. This "Infrastructure as a service" way.

Azure is in my opinions working the hardest to "catch up".

I feel like GCP is not as interested in catching up for the sake of catching up. They are focused on solving lucrative problem. AWS wasn't that way but they have moved to that way a lot in the last 5 years, I feel. ( 2022 )

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Spent 30 minutes going over the three provider I'm familiar with Azure, AWS, and Google.

Where they are indistinguishable.

Where they specialized or focused.

We also talked about the Physics model:

Position , velocity, and acceleration.

AWS being the obviously leading position. They are the incumbent and have "_already been doing_" much of the stuff google and azure are releasing "new".

Azure being the most "hungry" and having the highest "acceleration" ( i.e. Adding of new feature and doing the catch up game.) Google having a strong presence in education and ML & AI. You'll find research paper published more oftn in Google blog posts in my experience. Azure having strong ties to classical "Microsoft" BI ecosystem and some good Managed Hadoop Overrings ( Hadoop is an industry leader for analytics infrastructure )

We talked about how to decide which provider.

For exmaple if there was some specific industry you were in, you should look to see if that provider has industry specific offering. AWS for example caters to movie and film and has done so for a while. Their taylored offering is more mature. Azure does provider service to the Movie and film but they are newer to the game.

These factors can affect price and flexibility.

Azure and Google will go further to win the business, where AWS being the incumbent doesn't "chase" as much or as hard.

Business incentive can play a large role in choosing a provider. Azure and Google are more likely to give you credits or points on spending than AWS.

Staffing and Culture can play a role in choosing. You want to choose a provider that play to strength that your staff have for exmaple. Flogging Azure on a Linux Savvy department can be met with resistance as Azure is preceived as a "Windows" thing. You can happily do linux in Azure and not touch a lick of Windows.

If a bunch of staff are _already_ AWS certified, a GCP play prevents you from taking advantage of those skills right away. That said the transition from AWS to GCP isn't as catastrophic at it might seem to some.

You should also consider what services are offerer in which region. You don't want to go with a provider for a something specific that they offer to find that it's not deployed to APAC

Each provder has their own list of services by region: https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/global-infrastructure/regional-product-services/?p=ugi&l=ap

https://cloud.google.com/about/locations

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/global-infrastructure/services/