The technological advancement in cloud computing we are inching towards, is shifting the entire enterprise on cloud computing. The market capture of all cloud computing companies is increasing by leaps and bounds. The competition between the companies to capture new customers is heating up to get lion’s share. Major Cloud service providers like AWS (Amazon Web Service), Google Cloud Platform (GCP) are fighting for the “Numero Uno” position in the cloud market by offering new features and regular price drops. Let us throw light on a few important factors that will help us understand who’s winning the race for the number one post.
- Computing Power: The AWS is one of the front-runners in the competition as it has been offering cloud services since 2004. The computation power offered by AWS’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is tremendous. Users of EC2 can setup virtual machines on the cloud as per their power and memory capacity requirements. Users of EC2 can use the enhancements like load balancing and auto scaling that helps them to scale up or down the infrastructure as per their requirements. On the other hand, Google with its Google Compute Engine offers the users the choice to launch their virtual machines in the regions of their choice. Similar to EC2 Google compute engine also offers its users different enhancements like load balancing, support for different Operating Systems etc.
- Networking: Users of AWS can perform network calls between instances under the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) where the users can group and bring their isolated virtual machines under one umbrella. Under the Virtual Private Cloud, users can define networking topologies, can create subnets, network gateways and provide private IP addresses. While under Google’s Compute engine, there is a single network for each instance i.e. virtual machine (VM). This single instance offers IP address and network gateway for all other instances (VMs) connected to it. For access security these instances can be secured with firewalls and these instances apart from private IP address can also be given a public address.
- Storage: AWS provides the users with temporary storage that initializes when an instance starts and gets destroyed when the instance stops. Apart from temporary storage, AWS also offers its users with the Block Storage that can be attached to instances as hard-disk or kept separate similar to external hard-disk. Google Cloud Engine offers temporary storage as well as a permanent storage disk. Users as per their infrastructure may opt for appropriate storage mechanism.
- Database: Both the cloud giants extend top-notch database support services. AWS supports relational and NoSQL database, it also extends support to big data and analytics backed by MapReduce, whereas Google Cloud Engine supports relational and Google Cloud SQL with an option to use NoSQL as a general database. Along with these big data and analytics in Google Cloud Engine is supported by Cloud DataProc.
- Pricing: Pricing policy of both the cloud giants is different as follows: AWS cloud users are charged on the hours of using the service. The users of AWS are usually charged as per one of the models like on-demand (as the name suggests users pay for the usage), reserved (reserve the instance for a period of 1 year to 3 years by paying upfront cost for utilizing the service) or spot (refers for biding for availing extra capacity). While Google on the other hand charges the users based on the usage in minutes (minimum 10 min). Google charges on the “on-demand” manner by hourly rate when a particular instance is used for longer duration in a particular month.
Irrespective of the comparisons of different cloud services provided by GCP and AWS, finding the right cloud computing partner depends on the extensive research and business infrastructure needs. The winning side in this competition is surely the user as the cloud computing service provider companies are ready to offer exciting perks, free credits, amazing deals and discounts to woo their users. Even though it is very difficult to say who is winning the race, one thing that all users and customers must keep in mind is to choose the cloud computing partner that understands all their requirement and fulfils their business needs. Contact us to get started with your cloud