Managed Services on AWS vs Google Cloud vs Azure
In today's rapidly changing technological landscape, organizations are ever-increasingly implementing cloud-based solutions to optimize their operations.
Managed services are also gaining traction as a way for organizations to focus more on their core competencies, and less on IT infrastructure management. These cloud-based services operate as a way for businesses to outsource their IT administration tasks and responsibilities.
In this blog post, we'll compare three renowned cloud providers' managed services, AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, and assess their suitability for today's business environment.
Cloud-Based Managed Services Offered
AWS
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most popular cloud provider on the market, with a market share of over 30%, as reported by Synergy Research Group. AWS offers an extensive range of managed services for database, machine learning, security, analytics, and more.
AWS provides a vast array of managed services for application deployment, load balancing, and maintenance tasks. The notable managed services offered by AWS are:
- Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk
- Amazon RDS
- AWS CloudFormation
- Amazon CloudFront
Google Cloud
Google Cloud offers managed services for database, analytics, machine learning, and more. Google Cloud offers a suite of services comparable to AWS.
Google Cloud offers several on-demand services with pay-as-you-go pricing, which is highly suitable for businesses of all sizes, ranging from start-ups to large-scale enterprises.
Google Cloud's popular services are:
- Google Kubernetes Engine
- Cloud SQL
- Cloud Bigtable
- Cloud Machine Learning Engine
- App Engine Flexible Environment
Azure
Microsoft Azure offers an extensive range of cloud services, including computing, storage, analytics, and networking. Azure's pricing models are flexible, scalable, and highly customizable.
Azure provides both PaaS (Platform as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) solutions. Some of the essential managed services offered by Azure are:
- Azure Virtual Machines
- Azure Backup
- Azure Kubernetes Service
- Azure Cosmos DB
- Azure Active Directory
Pricing Comparison
The cost of managed services can differ significantly based on the amount of usage required, the level of customization sought, and the needs of the business. Therefore, it becomes critical to have a clear understanding of your organization's requirements before selecting a cloud-based managed service.
Below we provide a comparative analysis of the pricing offered by our selected cloud providers for their respective standard managed services.
AWS
Amazon Web Services offers a straightforward pricing structure based on the unit, and it charges only for what the user consumes.
For Amazon EC2, the hourly cost, depending on location for an on-demand instance, ranges between $0.00264/hour to $0.04096/hour.
Amazon S3 charges for storage space used per month, and the charges are on average $0.023 per GB per month. For data transfer, the charge is $ 0.05 per GB transferred.
Google Cloud
Google Cloud's pricing model consists of pay-as-you-go pricing, which is based on resource usage.
For example, the cost for a standard Google Compute Engine instance varies from $0.077 per hour to $3.686 per hour, depending on the configuration.
Google Cloud also offers a committed use discount for users who expect to use the resources for more than one year. Savings range from 57% with one-year commitments to 58% with three-year commitments.
Azure
Azure charges its users based on resource usage. The pricing model considers various factors like storage usage, data transfer out, and the number of requests made.
For example, the pricing structure for a basic A2 instance is fixed at $0.0864 per hour, including the necessary resources.
Azure also provides various cost-saving programs like reserved instances, spot instances, and hybrid use benefit.
Conclusion
Our comparative analysis shows that AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure all offer robust managed services' set, and flaunt of a good market reputation.
The primary determining factor while selecting one of these cloud providers is Businesses' unique requirements and the cost associated with such services.
Hopefully, our blog post provides valuable insights to help businesses make an informed decision on their ideal cloud managed service provider.