Top Cloud Service Providers in 2020
The race for leadership in public cloud computing is a fierce: Amazon Web Services(AWS) vs. Microsoft Azure vs. Google Cloud Platform(GCP). Clearly these three top cloud companies hold a commanding lead in the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) markets.
AWS is particularly dominant. According to report from Synergy Research Group, in 2020, “Amazon growth continued to closely mirror overall market growth so it maintained its 33% share of the worldwide [cloud] market. Second ranked Microsoft again grew faster than the market and its market share has increased by almost three percentage points in the last four quarters, reaching 18%.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft is very strong in SaaS, while Google Cloud, which is strong in artificial intelligence, is positioned for aggressive growth as the AI market grows — and is known for offering discounts.
- Amazon Web Services — With a vast tool set that continues to grow exponentially, capabilities of Amazon are unmatched . Yet its cost structure can be confusing, and its singular focus on public cloud relatively than hybrid cloud or private cloud which means that interoperating with your data center isn’t AWS’s top priority.
- Microsoft Azure — Azure is the close competitor to AWS with an exceptionally capable cloud infrastructure. If you’re an enterprise customer, Azure speaks your language, few companies have the enterprise background as Microsoft and has Windows support. Azure knows that you still run a data center, and the Azure platform works hard to interoperate with data centers; hybrid cloud is a true strength of Azure.
- Google Cloud — Google entered the cloud market late and it doesn’t have the enterprise focus that helps draw corporate customers. But its technical expertise is profound, and its industry-leading tools in deep learning and artificial intelligence, machine learning and data analytics are significant advantages.
Compute
AWS:
Amazon’s flagship compute service is Elastic Compute Cloud, or EC2. It is described as a web service that provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It offers a huge variety of options which include, a huge variety of instances, support for both Windows and Linux, bare metal instances, GPU instances, high-performance computing, auto scaling and more. AWS also offers a free tier for EC2 which includes 750 hours per month for twelve months.
Within the compute category, various container services of AWS are increasing in popularity, and it also has options that support Docker, Kubernetes, and its own Fargate service that automates server and cluster management when using containers. It also offers a virtual private cloud option known as Lightsail, Batch for batch computing jobs, Elastic Beanstalk for running and scaling Web applications, as well as a few other services.
Azure:
Microsoft Azure’s primary cloud-based compute service is known as Virtual Machines. It provides support for Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, Oracle, IBM, and SAP, as well as enhanced security, hybrid cloud capabilities and integrated support for Microsoft software. Like AWS, it has an extremely large catalog of available instances, including GPU and high-performance computing options, as well as instances optimized for artificial intelligence and machine learning. It also has a free tier with 750 hours per month of Windows or Linux B1S virtual machines upto 12 months.
Azure’s version of Auto Scaling is known as Virtual Machine Scale Sets. Azure has two container services: Azure Container Service is based on Kubernetes, and Container Services uses Docker Hub and Azure Container Registry for management. It has a Batch service, and Cloud Services for scalable Web applications is similar to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. It also has a unique offering called Service Fabric that is specifically designed for applications with microservices architecture.
GCP:
Google’s list of compute services is somewhat shorter than that of its competitors. Its primary service is called Google Compute Engine, which supports both custom and predefined machine types, per-second billing, Linux and Windows support, automatic discounts and carbon-neutral infrastructure that uses half the energy of typical data centers. It offers a free tier that includes one f1-micro instance per month for up to 1 year.
Like all of the leading cloud vendors, it’s well set up to offer containers and microservices. Google offers the Kubernetes Engine for organizations interested in deploying containers. And it’s worth noting that Google has been heavily involved in the Kubernetes project, giving it deep expertise in this area.
Storage
AWS:
AWS’s storage services includes its Simple Storage Service (S3) for object storage, Elastic Block Storage (EBS) for persistent block storage for use with EC2, and Elastic File System (EFS) for file storage. Some of its innovative storage products include the Storage Gateway, which enables a hybrid storage environment, and Snowball, which is a physical hardware device that organizations can use to transfer petabytes of data in situations where Internet transfer isn’t practical.
Amazon has a SQL-compatible database called Aurora, Relational Database Service (RDS), DynamoDB NoSQL database, ElastiCache in-memory data store, Redshift data warehouse, Neptune graph database and a Database Migration Service. Amazon offers Glacier, which is designed for long-term archival storage at very low rates. Additionally, its Storage Gateway can be used to easily set up backup and archive processes.
Azure:
Microsoft Azure’s basic storage services include Blob Storage which is used for REST-based object storage of unstructured data, Queue Storage for large-volume workloads, File Storage and Disk Storage. It also has a Data Lake Store, which is used for big data applications.
Azure’s database options are particularly extensive. It has three SQL-based options: SQL Database, Database for MySQL and Database for PostgreSQL. It also has a Data Warehouse service, Cosmos DB and Table Storage for NoSQL. Redis Cache is its in-memory service and the Server Stretch Database is its hybrid storage service designed specifically for organizations that use Microsoft SQL Server in their own data centers. Unlike AWS, Microsoft offers an actual Backup service, as well as Site Recovery service and Archive Storage.
GCP:
GCP has a smaller list of storage services available. Cloud Storage is its unified object storage service, and it also provides a Persistent Disk option. It offers a Transfer Appliance which is similar to AWS Snowball, as well as online transfer services.
When it comes to databases, GCP has the SQL-based Cloud SQL and a relational database called Cloud Spanner which is designed for mission-critical workloads. It also has two NoSQL options which are, Cloud Bigtable and Cloud Datastore. It does not have backup and archive services like Azure.
Key Cloud Tools
Looking ahead, experts say that emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT) and serverless computing will become key points of differentiation for the cloud vendors. All three leading vendors have begun experimenting with offerings in these areas and are likely to expand their services in the coming year.
AWS:
Pagemaker to Serverless: As in other areas, AWS has the longest list of services in each of these areas. Highlights include its SageMaker service for training and deploying machine learning models, the Lex conversational interface that also powers its Alexa services, its Greengrass IoT messaging service and the Lambda serverless computing service.
AI and ML: Among its many AI-oriented services, AWS offers DeepLens, which is an AI powered camera for developing and deploying machine learning algorithms to use with things like optical character recognition and image and object recognition. AWS has announced Gluon, an open source deep learning library designed to make it easy for developers and non-developers alike to build and quickly train neural networks without having to know AI programming.
Azure:
Cognitive Services:Having invested heavily in AI, Microsoft offers a machine learning service and a bot service on Azure. It also has many Cognitive Services which include a Bing Web Search API, Text Analytics API, Face API, Computer Vision API and Custom Vision Service. For IoT, it has several management and analytics services, and its serverless computing service is also known as Functions.
Supporting MSFT Software: Not surprisingly, some of Azure’s top tools are geared toward supporting on-premises Microsoft software. Azure Backup is a service that links Windows Server Backup in Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows Server 2016. Visual Studio Team Services hosts Visual Studio projects on Azure.
GCP
Big on AI: For Google Cloud Platform, AI and machine learning are big areas of focus. Google is a leader in AI development thanks to TensorFlow, an open source software library for building machine learning applications. The TensoreFlow library is very popular and well regarded. An addition to its popularity is that AWS recently added support for TensorFlow.
IoT to Serverless: Google Cloud offers APIs for natural language, speech, translation and more. In addition, it offers IoT and serverless services, but both are still in beta previews.
Pricing
Understanding pricing among these three cloud leaders is challenging — and pricing changes; it can also changed based on the specific arrangement that a customer can wrangle from their services.
- AWS Pricing: Amazon’s pricing is particularly unpredictable. It offers a cost calculator, but number of parameters involved make it difficult to get accurate estimates.
- Azure Pricing: Microsoft Azure doesn’t make things any simpler. Because of Microsoft’s complicated software licensing options and use of situation-based discounts, its pricing structure can be hard to understand without outside help or considerable experience.
- GCP Pricing:In the contrast, Google uses its pricing as a point of differentiation. It offers customer-friendly prices that beat the list prices of the other providers.
Conclusion:
Certain types of companies will be more attracted to certain cloud vendors. So again, if your firm runs Windows and a lot of Microsoft software, you’ll probably want to investigate Azure. If you are a small, Web-based startup looking to scale quickly, you might want to take a good look at Google Cloud Platform. And if you are looking for the provider with the broadest list of services and worldwide reach, AWS will probably be right for you.
