Cloud Providers Comparison: Which One Is Right for You

Jul 17, 2024

For anyone seeking cloud services or looking to launch a career in cloud computing, it’s essential to understand what makes one cloud provider different from another.

This article will review cloud computing infrastructure and the primary types of cloud computing environments. We’ll also cover major cloud providers and their services so you can better understand what makes each provider unique.

What is Cloud Computing Infrastructure?

Cloud computing is an infrastructure system or software developed by third parties that is accessible for free through the Internet. Providers offer these primary cloud computing environments: IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS solutions.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)

IaaS focuses on organizations seeking a physical server or a virtual machine residing in a private or public cloud with a specified amount of compute resources, memory, and storage to host their applications and data.

Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS)

PaaS provides a vendor-specific platform for clients to develop applications. Oracle, Microsoft, SAP, IBM, and Salesforce.com are examples of the PaaS provider offering. Software engineers leverage these vendor-specific instances to create client-facing applications.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

SaaS offerings are usually finished software applications. Clients will subscribe to this software service. Each client will have a separate instance and data storage. SaaS offers limited customization compared to PaaS or IaaS.

Hybrid Cloud Platforms

Cloud providers create hybrid clouds from multiple environments communicating via LAN or WAN, VPN, and APIs. Organizations with complex structures and varying needs, including on-premises, cloud presence, and content delivery network requirements, favor a hybrid design. IT systems become unified inside the hybrid cloud when apps can move between places. Organizations with regulatory requirements often leave legacy applications inside their data center. However, organizations can reduce their long-term capital expenditures by moving to a public cloud once their regulated applications become approved to live in the cloud.

Cloud Computing Costs

Every cloud computing service provides many advantages to organizations, such as optimizing existing workloads or creating new ones. Companies developing a new product or service should consider the various cloud platform options when designing or remediating an application. Organizations considering a cloud strategy should perform a cost analysis before executing the new development effort.

The cloud computing utility cost model is a price strategy that many providers use. The cost model will vary depending on which offering the client chooses to subscribe to.

The cost for IaaS will include the following:

The cost of the physical server or virtual machine
The cost of bandwidth consumption for both inbound and outbound connections
Additional features (including 24×7 x 365 monitoring)

PaaS and SaaS provide additional services compared to IaaS.

With PaaS, the client will be billed for the cost of the platform, storage, and bandwidth consumption. Additionally, PaaS providers also charge for software license consumption. Developers utilizing the vendor application development tools must pay a subscription fee.

SaaS models are the most cost-effective. The SaaS application offered by cloud providers like Microsoft incorporates the entire offering into a per-user subscription rate.

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Major Cloud Providers

Each cloud service provider will have a separate offering, such as IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS services. Below, we’ve outlined some of the major cloud providers today and the attributes of their unique cloud models.

Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a leading cloud computing service that leverages Google’s extensive expertise in internet-scale computing, data analytics, and artificial intelligence. Built on Google’s cutting-edge infrastructure, GCP offers a comprehensive suite of cloud services that cater to businesses of all sizes.

Key features of GCP include:

Compute Services: Offering flexible virtual machines and serverless computing options.
Google Storage: Providing scalable and durable object storage solutions, including Google Cloud Storage for unstructured data and persistent disk storage for virtual machines.
Big Data and Analytics: Featuring powerful tools like BigQuery for large-scale data analysis and Cloud Dataflow for real-time data processing.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: As a pioneer in AI and ML, GCP offers advanced services like TensorFlow and Cloud AutoML.
Networking: Providing global load balancing and content delivery network capabilities.
Containerization: GCP is at the forefront of container technology, offering services like Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) for orchestrating containerized applications.

GCP’s strength lies in its innovative approach, stemming from Google’s extensive internal research and indexing capabilities. This innovation-driven philosophy makes GCP particularly attractive for companies pursuing cutting-edge technologies such as machine learning, big data analytics, and containerization.

Amazon Web Service (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers over 170 services for different industries. It provides cloud storage, Amazon CloudFront for content delivery, and Amazon Glacier. Amazon EC2 allows users to use virtual computer clusters.

Many AWS services are not directly accessible to users, but they offer APIs for developers to use.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure supports over 1 million users and offers services, including VM-like devices for Integrated Services, Active Directory connectivity for on-premises directories, mobile engagements with real-time analytics, and user behavior analysis and storage services.

Key features include:

Active Directory integration for hybrid environments
Mobile engagement tools with real-time analytics
Diverse storage options, including blob, file, and SQL Server-based databases
Native support for Windows Server workloads and SQL Server databases

Azure cloud infrastructure is rich in Microsoft’s enterprise applications, operating systems, and back-end platform portfolio. Unlike Google and Amazon, Microsoft Azure has a larger ecosystem of third-party developer applications. Google and Amazon rely on more third-party connections and application services.

Oracle Cloud

The Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers 65 cloud solutions, including standard applications like Kubik, Terraform, and cloud events. Oracle has one of the world’s most accessed electronic medical records platforms. When Oracle purchased Cerner, this gave Oracle a strong cloud presence to grow its medical services business.

IBM Cloud

IBM Cloud provides 174 cloud regions within their cloud computing offerings, including data analytics, docker container and Kubernetes, artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT ecosystem marketplace, private cloud networking, and data storage.

IBM, like Oracle, aims to build private and public cloud offerings. Many of IBM’s acquired companies are cloud-ready. IBM continues to let acquired companies stay separate for several years unless merging into the unified cloud platforms makes business sense.

Managing Cloud Costs via CloudOps

Managing cloud consumption costs is paramount for organizations. Early adopters of cloud services quickly realized the expected cost savings for moving the cloud became far out of reach. The cost of bandwidth, cloud storage, virtual machines, and advanced services, including cybersecurity, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning, became expensive add-ons.

Many organizations have created a CloudOps team, which comprises resources from IT, finance, compliance, and risk management teams, to help manage the cost of the cloud.

CloudOps teams help manage the cost of cloud consumption while ensuring the financial decisions made by the organization do not place the cloud data or applications at risk for a cyberattack. However, CloudOps teams also help lower costs by exposing provider cost-cutting opportunities or identifying situations that necessitate contract termination.

Knowledge for Today and in the Future

Understanding cloud computing technology and the different types of major cloud providers is more critical now than ever. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure continue to grow their global footprint by building out service zones in the United States and other countries.

Pursuing a cloud administration degree can help you develop foundational knowledge of these significant providers and better understand how their evolution will impact organizations’ ability to govern and protect personal data and utilize cloud technology to accelerate growth.

Ready to take the first step toward a career in the cloud? Book an appointment today with one of CIAT’s expert Admissions Advisors to discuss the pathways you can take to achieve your educational and career goals.