Benefits of Cloud Computing

The cloud offers seamless access to diverse technologies, enabling swift innovation and the realization of any imaginable concept. Resources ranging from infrastructure services like computing, storage, and databases to advanced features like machine learning, Internet of Things, data lakes, and analytics can be swiftly provisioned to meet specific needs.

Cloud computing eliminates the need to allocate excessive resources in advance to accommodate future peaks in business activity. Instead, you can precisely provision the required resources, with the flexibility to scale them up or down instantly based on evolving business demands.

The cloud enables the transition from fixed expenses associated with data centres and physical servers to variable expenses, where you only pay for IT services as you consume them. Additionally, the economies of scale inherent in cloud services contribute to significantly lower variable costs than in-house solutions.

You can leverage the cloud for rapid expansion to new geographic regions, enabling global deployment within minutes. For instance, AWS boasts a global infrastructure footprint, enabling the deployment of applications across multiple physical locations with just a few clicks. This proximity to end users reduces latency and enhances the overall user experience.

Worldwide Vendor Market Share

Sourced from: Cloud Market Share Q2 2023: AWS, Microsoft, Google Battle | CRN

AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS)

Amazon Web Services is the most extensive and widely adopted cloud platform worldwide, offering over 200 fully featured services across global data centres. AWS is used by millions of customers, including fast-growing startups, major enterprises, and prominent government agencies, to reduce costs, enhance agility, and accelerate innovation.

The USPs of AWS

AWS surpasses other cloud providers with a significantly larger array of services and features, ranging from infrastructure technologies like computing, storage, and databases to cutting-edge technologies like AI, machine learning, data lakes, analytics, and Internet of Things. This breadth of offerings facilitates a faster, easier, and more cost-effective transition of existing applications to the cloud and empowers the creation of any imaginable solution.

AWS boasts the most extensive and dynamic community of tens of thousands of partners worldwide and millions of active customers. Clients from diverse industries and varying sizes, including the public sector, organizations, startups, and enterprises, run many use cases on AWS. The AWS Partner Network (APN) comprises thousands of systems integrators specializing in AWS services and thousands of independent software vendors (ISVs) adapting their technology to integrate with AWS seamlessly.

AWS is the safest and most flexible cloud computing environment available. The foundational infrastructure meets the security standards for global banks, military, and other high-sensitivity organizations. This commitment to security is fortified by an extensive set of over 300 security, compliance, governance services and features, and support for 143 security standards and certifications.

AWS allows for faster experimentation and innovation by leveraging the latest technologies. The continuous acceleration of innovation at AWS results in the introduction of groundbreaking technologies that can transform businesses.

AWS’s unparalleled experience, reliability, maturity, performance, and security offer a dependable foundation for critical applications. With over 17 years of delivering cloud services to millions of customers globally across diverse use cases, AWS possesses the most operational experience at a larger scale than any other cloud provider.

Popular Customers of AWS

Netflix:Netflix relies on AWS for most of its computing and storage requirements, including analytics, databases, recommendation engines, video transcoding and numerous functions utilizing over 100,000 server instances on the AWS platform.
BMW Group: BMW Group leverages AWS to acquire the agility and flexibility necessary for democratizing data usage and expediting innovation.
Philips: Philips is an early adopter of AWS that utilizes AWS services to manage the Philips HealthSuite Platform, ensuring scalability, cost-effectiveness, and regulatory-compliant solutions.
Salesforce: Salesforce shares a global strategic relationship with AWS, utilizing AWS compute, storage and AI solutions to create and deploy innovative business applications.
Pinterest: The exabyte data platform of Pinterest is hosted exclusively on AWS, managing log search and analytics that surpass 1.7TB. This implementation has led to a 30% reduction in operational costs.
Coca-Cola: After its migration to AWS, Coca-Cola has reduced operational costs by 40% and IT ticket volume by 80%.

Regions & Availability

AWS boasts the most expansive global cloud infrastructure. Gartner has acknowledged the AWS Region and Availability Zone framework as the endorsed strategy for operating enterprise applications demanding high availability.
The AWS Cloud covers 102 Availability Zones across 32 geographic regions worldwide, with disclosed intentions to introduce an additional 15 Availability Zones and 5 AWS Regions in Germany, Canada, Thailand, Malaysia and New Zealand.

MICROSOFT AZURE

The Azure cloud platform encompasses over 200 products and services crafted to empower you to bring innovative solutions to fruition, addressing current challenges while shaping the future. It offers the flexibility to build, run, and manage applications across various clouds, on-premises, and at the edge, utilizing the tools and frameworks as per your preferences.

The USPs of Microsoft Azure

Acquire security from the ground up, supported by experts, and embrace proactive compliance trusted by enterprises, governments, and startups.

Whether on-premises, across multiple clouds, or at the edge, Azure will meet you wherever you are. Integrate and manage your environments effortlessly with services specifically designed for hybrid cloud scenarios.

With a dedication to open source and support for all frameworks and languages, build in the manner that suits you best and deploy your creations wherever you choose.

Microsoft’s continuous innovation supports your current development needs and aligns with your visions for future products.

Popular Customers of Microsoft Azure

New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP): DEP uses a Microsoft infrastructure specifically designed with modern security considerations. With the solution in the cloud, Microsoft manages disaster recovery, reducing the necessity for maintaining certain skill sets in-house.
CCC Group: CCC Group utilizes Azure Data Lake and Data Warehouse to collect, store, and segment data.
Panasonic Connect Co: Panasonic Connect Co maximizes the benefits of PaaS services such as Azure IoT Hub, Synapse Analytics, and Azure Kubernetes Services.
Hamburg Commercial Bank: Hamburg Commercial Bank opted for Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop to achieve improved performance, reliability, and enhanced interoperability with other Microsoft technologies previously invested in.
Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust: Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust adopted a new, integrated platform using Power Platform and Microsoft Teams for video consultations. During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, the Trust rapidly deployed Microsoft Teams to facilitate remote work and staff collaboration.

Regions & Availability:

Microsoft operates highly secure data centre facilities globally, forming a distributed infrastructure that sustains thousands of online services. This expansive, globally distributed infrastructure prioritizes sustainability, bringing applications closer to users, ensuring data residency, and providing customers with comprehensive compliance and resiliency options.
As of March 2023, Microsoft Azure boasts 160 active data centres spread across 60 regions worldwide. These Azure regions, defined by geographical areas, house one or more physical Azure data centres. Operating within a latency-defined perimeter, these data centres are strategically positioned to deliver optimal performance and security to users.
Azure leads with over 60 announced regions, surpassing all other cloud providers. It is accessible in 140 countries, showcasing a global presence that sets it apart in cloud computing.

GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM (GCP)

Google Cloud, also called Google Cloud Platform, offers computing resources dedicated to developing, deploying, and operating web applications. While its cloud infrastructure supports applications like Google Workplace, GCP primarily serves as a platform for constructing and managing custom applications. These applications can subsequently be published on the web, leveraging the extensive capabilities of its hyperscale data centre facilities.

The USPs of the Google Cloud Platform

Google’s comprehensive data foundation lets you integrate workloads and handle the complete data life cycle. This solution is engineered to operate data seamlessly across various environments, allowing you to utilize your data on any cloud, on-premises, and within popular SaaS applications. Designed with a focus on AI, it offers the latest tools for machine learning analysis, prompting, tuning, training, and deploying custom foundational models, all interconnected with your business data.

Google Cloud enables developers to build faster, safer, and cost-effectively utilizing the next generation of modern infrastructure tailored to specific workloads and industry requirements. Benefit from infrastructure optimized for AI, container-based applications, traditional enterprise workloads, and high-performance, distributed workloads, all while contributing to cost reduction and a reduced carbon footprint.

GCP equips teams of all sizes to excel in their work regardless of the location and device. Google Workspace combines innovative tools favoured by the modern workforce for collaboration and creation, including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Chat, Google Calendar, Google Sheets, Google Docs, and Google Meet. With over 3 billion monthly active users, Workspace is the most popular productivity and collaboration software globally, offering new, user-friendly, generative AI features to enhance team productivity.

Benefit from built-in security features that mirror the same capabilities Google employs to safeguard more individuals and organizations online than any other provider. Google aids organizations in transforming their cybersecurity programs by providing frontline intelligence from Mandiant to comprehend the latest cyber threats.

Popular Customers of the Google Cloud Platform

Etsy: Utilizing the collaborative tools offered in Google Workspace, Etsy meets the evolving needs of sellers and buyers innovatively, fostering continued growth and enhancing the sustainability of its operations.
X (formerly Twitter): Twitter’s complete shifting of its ad analytics data platform to Google Cloud granted developers increased agility, allowing them to configure existing data pipelines more easily and build new features acceleratedly.
Airbus Defence and Space: Airbus Defence and Space’s Intelligence business line employs Google Cloud to construct a scalable online platform, enabling customers to access petabytes of satellite imagery in real-time.

Regions & Availability

Google Cloud provides global coverage through regions distributed worldwide, ensuring low cost, minimal latency, and optimal application availability for customers.

Follow the link to have a look into a tabular comparison of the solutions provided by the CSPs: AWS, Azure and GCP.
https://cloud.google.com/docs/get-started/aws-azure-gcp-service-comparison