Most popular cloud providers

There are a lot of cloud computing providers, but in this part we will focused on three:

Microsoft Azure;
Amazon Web Services;
Google Cloud.

Microsoft Azure

The first of the presented cloud computing platforms is Microsoft Azure, which provides various resources and services. To use them you must have access to the Internet and you need to create an account on the platform. The registration on the platform is free of charge but there is a pay-per use model that allows you to purchase certain services. There are more than 200 products offered on the platform. The services and products provided by this platform include both free of charge and paid ones. Among them you can find:

Compute (Virtual Machines, App Service, Cloud Services, API Apps, …);
Storage (Storage Accounts, Azure Backup, Disk Storage, Data Box, …);
Databases (Azure API for FHIR, Azure SQL Database, Azure Cosmos DB, …);
Networking (Content Delivery Network, Azure ExpressRoute, Virtual Network, …);
Mobile (App Service, Web Apps, API Apps, Azure Maps, …);
Developer Tools (Visual Studio, App Configuration, Azure Lab Services …);
And many more.

Microsoft Azure also emphasizes the fact that its services are used by as many as ninety percent of Fortune 500 companies, which is certainly a measure of quality and trusts.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Another popular platform offering cloud solutions is Amazon Web Services. The platform was launched in 2006. Currently is the biggest provider of cloud services in the world. One of the reason of its popularity can be the fact that AWS have the biggest network of data centres in the world and a huge number of a offered services. Products offered by AWS are:

Analytics (Amazon Athena; Amazon CloudSearch, AWS Data Exchange, AWS QuickSight, …);
Compute (Amazon EC2, AWS Batch, AWS Serverless Application Repository, …);
Storage (Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), …);
Mobile (AWS Amplify, Amazon API Gateway, Amazon Pinpoint, …);
Developer Tools (Amazon Corretto, AWS CodeBuild, AWS X-Ray, …);
Database (Amazon Aurora, Amazon Neptune , AWS Database Migration Service, …);
And many more.

The list of products offered by AWS is impressive, it is definitely one of the leaders in terms of the number of solutions offered, currently it offers over 175 services.

The biggest cons of the AWS is probably it’s payment model, which is not entirely transparent. Among the other disadvantages of AWS, it is often mentioned that it is not the easiest platform to use and the number of the services offered can be overwhelming.

Google Cloud Platform

The last of the platforms presented is Google Cloud Platform. It was created in 2008. One of Google’s achievements was developing the Kubernetes standard (now AWS and Azure also offering it). Compared to previous platforms, Google offers far less features and products, but its focused on high compute (Big Data, machine learning). The fact that it is still chasing Azure and AWS may also be due to the fact that it entered the IaaS market quite late.

Products: