AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP: A Comparative Analysis

What are AWS, Azure, and GCP?

Since the early 2000s, cloud computing has taken the IT world by storm. With big-name companies like Microsoft, Google, and even Amazon competing for the top spot in cloud computing services, the plethora of services cloud computing offers is mind-blowing. So, let’s look at the three platforms and compare them head to head.

1. AWS - Amazon Web Services

Since its constitution in 2002, Amazon has become one of the leading cloud computing services in the market. Offering products and services like computing, storage, database, management, analytics, to name a few, to enterprises, individuals, and governments.

2. Azure

Azure or Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing service provided by Microsoft. Like AWS, it offers storage, artificial intelligence, networking, databases, and computing. Azure was launched after AWS but has since grown rapidly, thanks to its widespread business applications.

3. GCP - Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud Platform, more commonly known as Google Cloud, is also a public cloud computing service that uses the same infrastructure as its end-user products. The benefits it offers lie in the same group as the above two. The one major advantage that GCP holds over AWS and Azure is its unrivaled Kubernetes application container deployment.

AWS vs. Azure vs. GCP

1. Storage Services

Let’s start with Azure. Azure encrypts the stored data for security and offers redundancy, i.e., making multiple copies of the stored data to ensure durability. To access the resources within this storage, use any language that can make HTTP/HTTPS requests.

Coming to GCP, it also offers data encryption for security plus the redundancy for robustness. Google Cloud uses Object Lifecycle Management or OLM for configuring data to automatically provide you or transition your account to a lower-priced storage option. Quite a nifty feature if you’re on a budget.

Finally, AWS offers EFS, EBS, S3, and Amazon Glacier for Archived Storage, among other options. The storage is allocated when an instance is created and destroyed when a model has been deleted, i.e., temporary storage.

2. Pricing

All three cloud computing services offer pay-as-you-go or pay-to-go pricing models. If you were to compare AWS and Azure on their pricing styles, you’d find both now charge by the minute.

GCP has the two-beat when it comes to pricing because it uses sustained usage discounts and preemptive virtual machines to offer great deals and make it an affordable option.

Diving deeper, AWS provides you with three models: on-demand, reserve, and spot. In comparison, Azure lets you choose between monthly and prepaid subscriptions.

The three public cloud computing services have been a boon to technology development in the past two decades. While the three fight for the top spot, presenting aggressive pricing options and a host of services, the user benefits.

While choosing between the three should have been the plan of this article, it simply comes down to what your individual needs are. Each platform provides that extra touch, and it only comes down to which one suits your requirements the best.

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