AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Choose Wisely for Enterprise App Development
By: Distillery Tech
Enterprise companies around the world have made the switch from self-hosted infrastructure to public cloud configurations. While most enterprises will always need some on-premise technology, they are developing their applications directly in the cloud. This allows the development teams to stay product focused, rather than having to work on the infrastructure to support the application.
By moving to the cloud, enterprises have an existing physical infrastructure that is continuously maintained and updated. This gives them more resources and time to dedicate to the mobile app development project at hand.
Currently, there are three main cloud platform providers that take up the majority of market share. They are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). While Azure and GCP are growing consistently, AWS remains the clear leader in market share. Each platform has its own features and pricing that could match your mobile application development requirements. Keep reading to how each platform compares against each other.
Amazon Web Services
Features
The amazon cloud platform offers almost every feature under the cloud computing industry. Their cloud services allow you to gain easy access to computing power, data storage or other functionality necessary for app developers. AWS has many products that fall under many categories. In addition to the features mentioned above, they offer developer tools, management tools, mobile services and applications services. As you can imagine, the application services combined with the computing and database infrastructure are critical components to a successful enterprise mobile app development team.
Pricing
In addition to a wide range of services, the AWS cloud has adjusted the pricing of cloud computing since inception in 2006. Their prices are very competitive with all of the other cloud providers. The pricing for their cloud services has continued to decrease due to competition and pricing structures. AWS offers free tiers of service for startups and individuals. It’s an easy way to try before your buy. Moreover, development teams can purchase servers by the second, rather than by the hour. Depending on what services the team uses, you can certainly find a reasonable AWS price structure that is lower than the cost of all that infrastructure investment.
You can calculate your pricing here:
Advantages
On top of that, the Amazon Web Services cloud platform offers developers over 15 years of enterprise infrastructure. Since the admin teams as AWS continuously work to improve the platform, your development team can benefit from their experience. When it comes to management capabilities and skills, AWS has some of the best talent in the market. Of course, you would want to choose a platform that has plenty of experience to build on.
Microsoft Azure
Features
Similar to AWS cloud services, Azure offers a full variety of solutions for app developer needs. The platform gives you the ability to deploy and manage virtual machines as scale. You can process and compute at whatever capacity you need within just minutes. Moreover, if your custom software needs to run large-scale parallel batch computing, it can handle it too. This is actually a unique feature to AWS and Azure over the Google Cloud Platform. The all-encompassing Azure features integrate into your existing systems and processes, offering more power and capacity for enterprise development.
Pricing
When considering Azure pricing, you have to keep in mind that the costs will depend on the types of products the development team needs. The hourly server cost can range from $0.099 per hour to $0.149 per hour. Of course, if you measure the costs by just per instance, the prices might not seem consistent. However, the prices are pretty comparable to AWS when you factor in the price per GB of RAM. As the main enterprise cloud service providers compete for your business, the prices remain competitive across the board.
You can calculate your pricing here:
Advantages
In addition to the full set of features and customizable pricing, the Azure platform is one of the fastest cloud solutions available. If you are looking for a solution that excels in speed of deployment, operation or scalability, then you might want to choose the Azure platform. They are the leader in speed when it comes to cloud computing solutions.
Google Cloud Platform
Features
Once again, the Google Cloud Platform has a myriad of services for developers. As an enterprise mobile app development team, you might be interested in the App Engine product. This allows an app developer to create applications without dealing with the server. It’s a fully managed solution for developing applications in an agile manner. Furthermore, you can perform high level computing, storage, networking and databases with GCP. These are all great products to use depending on the type of app development you are working on. Although Google has a few less services than the competitors, you can find all the requirements for mobile application development projects.
Pricing
Where GCP may fall behind in additional features, it makes up for in cost efficiency. The platform also has pay as you go pricing, billing to the “per second” of usage. Setting GCP apart, it offers discounts for long term usage that starts after the first month. This is great if you need to start a new mobile app development project and want to keep costs low. By contrast, it could take over a year to get long term discounts on the other cloud service providers. Clearly, Google is putting pressure on the competing cloud providers to keep market prices lower.
You can calculate your pricing here:
Advantages
As GCP continues to grow in the cloud industry, they offer another level of security. Since Google is no stranger to enterprise level security, you can rely on their secure solutions. They have over 500 employees that are dedicated to security protection. You will get data encryption, multiple layers of authentication and third party validations. For developers who need an extra buffer of security, the Google Cloud might be the best platform for you.
When comparing AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud, you have many features and costs to consider. Rather than trying to pick on solution, use enterprise cloud services that fit your development needs. This can be a single cloud provider. Or, you can combine services from two or three of these providers. Since the costs are relatively comparable, find the right mix of solutions to fit your enterprise development requirements.
Still have questions about Cloud Platforms? Let us know!
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