CLOUD SERVICE PROVIDERS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Nikunj Mani Gupta, Rinkul Singh and Suman Shekhar Das

PG Students, Department of computer applications,
Galgotias University, Greater Noida.

Abstract: Cloud computing is an emerging technology and an increasing number of organizations and
businesses around the world use cloud computing services to improve their performance in the
competitive marketplace. However, one of the biggest challenges in using cloud computing services is
performance measurement and the selection of the best cloud service providers based on the quality of
service requirements. Today, numerous cloud services are provided by leading enterprise companies
such as Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud in the form of customized, reliable, and cost-
effective web applications. Cloud services attract many individuals and organizations from different
disciplines such as health, business, and education. In this paper, we aim to introduce the most popular
Cloud Service Providers to cloud customers. We also provide a comparison between these CSPs
concerning different criteria related to the services they provide. The analysis presented in this paper
helps individuals and organizations make critical decisions on the benefits and cost of cloud technology
before they move their business to this new environment.

I. INTRODUCTION

Cloud Computing: It is the on-demand delivery of IT resources including servers, storage, databases,
networking, software, analytics, and intelligence over the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing to offer
faster innovation, flexible resources, and economies of scale. Pay only for cloud services you use, helping
lower your computing costs, run your infrastructure more effectively and efficiently, and scale as your
business needs change. Cloud works in a distributed environment that makes it agile, highly scalable,
reliable, location independent, and low cost.

IaaS: In an IaaS model, a cloud service provider hosts the hardware components originally present in an
on-premises data center, including servers, storage, and networking hardware, as well as the
virtualization or hypervisor layer. The IaaS provider also provides a variety of services to convoy those
infrastructure components. These can include detailed billing, monitoring, log access, security, load-
balancing, as well as storage-resiliency, such as backup, replication, and recovery. IaaS customers access
resources and services internet and can use the cloud provider's services to install the remaining
elements of an application stack.

SaaS: SaaS eliminates the need for organizations to install and run applications on their servers or in their
data centers. This dislodges the expense of hardware procurement, provisioning, and maintenance, as
well as software licensing, installation, and support. Rather than installing the software, or having
additional hardware support for it, customers subscribe to a SaaS offering. Generally, they pay for this
service using a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model. Transitioning costs to an operating expense allows many big-
business to exercise better and more foreseeable budgeting. Users can also terminate SaaS offerings at
any time to stop those costs.

PaaS: PaaS does not normally replace a business's entire infrastructure. Instead, a business trusts PaaS
providers for key services, such as application hosting or Java development. A PaaS provider supplies a
strong and optimized environment in which users can install the software. Users can emphasize making
and running applications rather than constructing and maintaining the underlying infrastructure and
services. Many PaaS products are toward software development. These platforms offer to compute and
storage infra, as well as text editing, version-management, compiling, and testing services that help
software engineers create new software more quickly and efficiently

Finding a cloud service provider (CSP) has become an intricate judgment. Nowadays it’s not a question of
which option we should work with, but rather, how to achieve the right performance and dispense risk
across multiple vendors while optimizing the cost. Because of the above discussions, it can be envisaged
that every organization should finalize CSP based on its Capabilities in IaaS, SaaS & PaaS. If any
Organization is looking for Iaas then it should look for those CSPs which are having an edge on Iaas.

Amazon Web Services provides user on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals,
companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis and offers reliable, scalable, and
inexpensive cloud computing services. The AWS Cloud is spread over 84 Availability Zones within 26
geographic regions around the world, with announced plans for 24 more Availability Zones and 8 more
AWS Regions. it is the world’s most broadly adopted cloud platform and offers over 200 fully-featured
services from data centers globally.

Featured AWS services are Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS, Amazon
DynamoDB, AWS Lambda, Amazon LightSail, Amazon SageMaker, Amazon VPC, AWS IAM, and Amazon
CloudFront.

Amazon EC2: It stands for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud which provides scalable computing capacity.
Using EC2 dislodges you to invest in hardware, so you can develop and deploy applications effectively and
efficiently. You can use Amazon EC2 to launch as many or as few virtual servers as per your need,
configure security and networking, and manage storage. Various configurations of CPU, memory, storage,
and networking capacity for your virtual machines, are known as instance types.

Amazon RDS: It stands for Amazon Relational Database Service and is a web service that gives an
effective and efficient way to set up, operate, and scale a relational database. It provides cost-efficient,
resizable capacity for relational databases and manages common tasks. You can use the database service
you are already familiar with MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server.

Amazon S3: It stands for Amazon Simple Storage Service and it is a storage service that offers scalability,
data availability, security, and performance. Amazon S3 also provides management features to optimize,
organize, and configure access to your data to meet your specific business, organizational, and compliance
requirements.

AWS IAM: It stands for AWS Identity and Access Management and provides access control across all of
Amazon Web Services. With IAM, you can tell who can access which services and resources, and under
which conditions. With IAM, you manage permissions to your workforce and systems to ensure the least
permissions.

Google Cloud Platform is a public cloud wholesaler like competitors Amazon Web Services
(AWS) and Microsoft Azure. With GCP and other cloud wholesalers, clients can access computer resources
housed in Google’s data centers around the world for free or on a pay-per-use basis. GCP offers a
collection of computing services to do all from Google Cloud Platform cost management to data
management to delivering web and video over the web to AI and machine learning tools.
App Engine: App Engine is one of the most vital main verge services provided by Google Cloud Platform.
It is the initial main verge service in the cloud. It is the first relief by GCP as far back as 2008. It is the
humblest way to organize and scale your applications in GCP. It supports Java, .NET, Node.js, PHP, Python,
and Ruby using pre-configured runtimes.

Cloud Storage: It is a soporific service for storing and accessing your data o Google’s infrastructure. The
service chains the show and scalability of Google’s Cloud with inventive security and distribution skills.

Cloud Bigtable: Cloud Bigtable is a firm, fully-managed, highly- scalable No SQL database service. It is
considered for the collection and maintenance of data from 1TB to hundreds of PB.

Cloud CDN: Cloud CDN uses Google’s globally distributed verge points of presence to cache HTTP(S) and
load stable content close to your clients.

Access Transparency: Access transparency seizures near real-time logs of manual, embattled accesses
by Google administrators, and assists them to clients via their Cloud Logging account.

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and an online portal to access, store and manage
resources and services provided by Microsoft. Azure has at the time of recording 67 available and
announced regions globally more than 160 physical data centers, numerous availability zones, and
millions of users. it is one of the largest cloud computing offering over 200 services and serving millions
of applications, integration, and customers.

Virtual Machines:- Azure virtual machines provide users with options to create Windows or Linux
virtual machines in a matter of seconds with a large amount of customization.

Virtual Network:- Azure virtual network enables Azure resources to communicate with each other or
other on-premises networks securely via internet connectivity. In this type of service, user can create
their private networks and provides users with an isolated and highly secure environment for
applications, and also allows user to design their network.

File Storage:- Azure file storage provides file-sharing capabilities accessible using the SMB (server
message block) protocol. In the Azure file storage Service, the data is protected by SMB 3.0 and HTTPS
also takes care of managing hardware and operating system deployments. It also improves on-premises
performance and capabilities.

SQL Database:- Azure SQL Database is a general-purpose relational database service(DBaaS) based on
the latest stable version of Microsoft SQL Server Database Engine. SQL Database Accelerates app
development and simplifies maintenance and also migrating workloads to the cloud saves cost and time.
It helps to optimize performance with machine learning and adaptive technologies.

Azure Active Directory:- Azure Active Directory helps manage user identities and secure resources
using intelligence-driven access policies. Azure Active Directory increases IT efficiency and cuts down
costs for helpdesk, and users have access to any application from any location or device. With this service,
users can improve security and can respond to advanced threats in real-time.
Amazon Web Services is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. AWS is being a broad-based provider of
services. AWS’s future aim is on attempting to own increasingly larger portions of the supply chain used
to deliver services to users.

Strengths

Engineering supply chain: Amazon Web Services is using its engineering prowess to innovate in areas
such as AWS-designed CPUs that give better price/performance relative to x86 counterparts for some
workloads.
Large financial commitments: Amazon Web Services continues to perform best in the market concerning
the size and frequency of large financial commitments that enterprise organizations make use of the
platform and the company’s continued market share leadership.
Innovation leader: Amazon Web Services grab the pace in the market for innovation, which guides the
roadmaps of other CIPS providers. As the innovation leader, Amazon Web Service has materially more
mind share across a broad range of customer types than all other providers.

Cautions
Challenging renewals: Many Gartner clients across multiple geographies have examined unexpected
pressure from Amazon Web Services sales, which have accelerated over the past year, to increase annual
spend commitments by 20% to renew existing contracts. Since these users typically have a dependence
on the platform, they may feel as if they have limited recourse.
Offering complexity: Understanding the number of solutions, such as those related to containers,
databases, and data management, requires technical skills to appreciate the differences between the
offerings and make the right choice. Many organizations require third-party assistance as a result of the
complexity.
Bare-bones offerings: Amazon Web Services' new services are not ready for meaningful enterprise
consumption for periods because these bare-bones offerings are matured in public. Further, AWS’s
leadership position in IaaS and dbPaaS creates a misleading effect for other offerings, such as Amazon
Web Services Outposts, which has experienced modest traction to date.

Google is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is strong in nearly all use cases
and is bit by bit improving its frame capabilities. Google continues to invest in being a broad-based
provider of IaaS and PaaS by escalating its capabilities as well as the size and reach of its go-to-market
operations. Its operations are geographically diversified, and its clients tend to be startups to large
enterprises.

Strengths

Revenue growth: GCP’s revenue growth over the past year was impressive, even if it’s currently
incurring losses. The company is a charming business for its core competencies, such as data and
analytics, but GCP is also gaining ground with traditional enterprise workloads such as SAP.
Growing enterprise mind share: GCP is making gains in terms of mind split with enterprises. The
company has seen steadily enhanced adoption and lands at the top of survey results when infrastructure
leaders are asked about strategic cloud provider selection in the next few years.
Innovation velocity: Google continues with impressive year-over-year improvements that see GCP close
significant gaps with both AWS and Microsoft Azure in terms of CIPS capabilities and, in some cases, go
faster past them. For example, GCP has the mainly fully-featured Kubernetes service of any provider in
this market.

Cautions

Postsales satisfaction: Some Gartner clients have poor experience commerce with GCP after committing
to use the platform. Much of this stems from the speedy growth of GCP and the organizational immaturity
that results.
Limited incentives: Google is currently attracting clients with brutal pricing relative to its competition,
but the discounting is likely to eventually taper off as the company continues to mature concerning
revenue and customers.
Financial losses: GCP is the only CIPS provider with a significant market share that at present operates at
a financial loss. Further, GCP’s success erodes Google’s overall healthy disgusting margins, and the cloud
division is a minor part of the parent company’s overall revenue.

Microsoft is a Leader in this Magic Quadrant. Microsoft Azure is robust in all use cases, which include
extended cloud and edge computing. Azure is predominantly well suited for Microsoft-centric
organizations. Microsoft has an investment focus on creating architectural improvements to the Azure
platform and providing a broad range of enterprise-focused services. Its operations are geographically
expanded, and its clients tend to be midsize and large enterprises.
Strengths

Broadly appealing: Microsoft has the largest sets of capabilities, covering a full range of enterprise IT
needs from SaaS to PaaS and IaaS, associated with any provider in this market. From the perception of
IaaS and PaaS, Microsoft has compelling capabilities reaching from developer tooling such as Visual
Studio and GitHub to public cloud services.
Enterprise relationships: Enterprises frequently choose Azure because of the trust in Microsoft built
over many years. Such strategic alignment with Microsoft gives Azure advantages across almost every
vertical market.
Data services adoption: Microsoft Azure’s incursions in operational databases and big data solutions
have been markedly successful over the past year. Azure’s Cosmos DB and its joint contribution with
Databricks stand out in terms of customer adoption.

Cautions

Resiliency: Microsoft has made concerted efforts to improve resiliency with perilous services such as
Azure Active Directory, but many Gartner clients remain concerned about the real-world impacts when
such critical services are unavailable. Further, Microsoft continues to react sluggishly to the rollout of AZs
with the likelihood that some regions will never be equipped with such resiliency capabilities. Services
such as the Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) continue to experience some outages, predominantly in
association with updates and maintenance events.
Commercial complexity: Microsoft has very complex licensing and contracting, and a complex account
management structure with patchy cloud skills in the field. Further, Microsoft's sales pressures to
produce overall account revenue prevent it from effectively deploying Azure to bring down a customer’s
total Microsoft costs.
Novel innovations: Azure’s novel innovations in the market for IaaS and PaaS compared to its
competitors over the past year were substantially less appealing. Additionally, contempt Microsoft
Azure’s beginnings as an application PaaS provider, Azure’s product execution and adoption in this
segment have been rather mixed.

Comparison Between AWS, GCP, and Azure:

Parameter Amazon Web Services Google Cloud Platform Microsoft Azure

Starting year 2006 2011 2010

Available Region 26 24 54
Computing types provided Iaas, Paas, and Saas with Iaas, Paas, and Saas with Iaas, Paas, and Saas with
major contributions in Iaas major contributions in Paas major contributions in Paas
IDE Support SDK support for Eclipse Direct support in Cloud9 IDE SDK support for Eclipse &
Visual Studio
Virtualization Technology XEN Virtualization KVM Hypervisor Hyper-V Hypervisor
Technology Virtualization technology Virtualization technology
Pricing types On-Demand, per-second Pay as you go, on-demand per Pay as you go pricing
billing second billing

Compute Services Elastic Compute Cloud Compute Engine Virtual Machine

Virtual Machine Scale sets
PaaS Elastic Beanstalk App Engine Standard Cloud Services
App Engine Flexible
VPS LightSail Virtual Machine Images
Kubernetess/Docker Kubernetes(EKS) Container Engine Container Services(AKS)
containers EC2 Container Services Kubernetes Engine
Integrate systems and run Lambda Cloud Functions Functions
backend logic process Event Grid
Key tools Athena, Quick sight, BIgQuery, Cloud Dataflow, HDinsight, DataFactory, ML
SageMaker, Kex, Greengrass MLengine, IOT core, Studio, Azure Boot, Cognitive,
IoT, Lambda, Deeplens Functions IOT hub
Storage Object Amazon Simple Storage Google Cloud Storage Blob Storage
Service Storage Service
Virtual Amazon Elastic Block Store Google Compute Engine Managed Disks
Server Disks Persistent Disks
Cold Storage Amazon Glacier Google Cloud Storage Archive Blob Storage
Nearline
File Storage Amazon Elastic File System ZFS/Avere Azure File Storage
Database RDBMS Amazon RDS Cloud SQL SQL database
service NoSQL: Key– Amazon DynamoDB Cloud DataStore Table Storage
Value Cloud Bigtable
NoSQL: Amazon Simple DB Google Cloud Datastore Cosmos DB
Indexed
Networking Virtual Amazon Virtual Private Virtual Private Cloud Virtual Networks
Service Network Cloud(VPC)
Elastic Load Elastic Load Balancer Google Cloud Load Balancing Azure Load Balancers
Balancer
Peering Direct Connect Google Cloud Interconnect ExpressRoute
DNS Amazon Route 53 Google Cloud DNS Azure DNS
Pre-configured OS 1. Amazon Linux 1. Cent OS 1. Cent OS
2. Cent OS 2. Debian 2. FreeBSD
3. Debian 3. Ubuntu 3. OpenSUSE Linux
4. Oracle Linux 4. Red Hat Linux 4. Oracle Linux
5. Red Hat Linux 5. Windows Server 5. Ubuntu
6. Ubuntu 6. Windows server
7. Windows Server
Hybrid and Multi Cloud AWS Snowball Anthos Azure Arc
AWS Snowcone Traffic Director Azure Backup
AWS Outposts Looker Azure Active Directory
AWS Local Zones Cloud Build Azure Security Center
VMware Cloud on AWS Operations Azure Blob Storage
AWS Wavelength Cloud Run for Anthos Azure Stack
Amazon ECS Anywhere Azure Centinel
Amazon EKS Anywhere
Available runtimes
1. .NET 1. Python 1. .NET
2. JAVA 2. JAVA 2. JAVA
3. PHP 3. Node 3. Node
4. Python 4. PHP 4. PHP
5. Ruby 5. Ruby 5. Python
6. GO 6. Ruby

Machine Learning
Frameworks Supported 1. Apache 1. TensorFlow 1. PyTorch
2. MXNet (With Gluon API) 2. DistBelief 2. TensorFlow
3. TensorFlow 3. Many in-built API's to 3. Scikit-learn
4. Caffe framework support development 4. MXNet
5. Chainer
6. Keras
 Benefits Breadth and depth of its Deep expertise technology Adjustable billing
services Adjustable pricing model Accuracy and expandable.
Developer functionality Advance costing than High level availability
Economic benefits for Competitors Price-effective differentiate to
customers
Live Migration of Virtual the competition
Gold standard for reliability Machines Integrated public and private
and security
Delegation to cloud
Control market position
Continued Help for open source
Sizeable , develop fully
offerings
Help for huge organizations
Worldwide reach

Limitations Cost prohibitive Safety and privacy Consequences with

Usage is not facile Bounded control and documentation
Stewardship of price flexibility Imperfect management
Vendor pin- down devices
Overcoming
Insufficient characters or Comparatively hard to use
Technical support fee
services Expensive
Historically not as enterprise Data transfer cost
focused Require platform expertise

Analysis Report:

 AWS has a head start of 5 years.

 AWS has a large number of availability zones and regions.
 AWS has around one-third of market shares in its name.
 GCP has a growth rate of almost 100 percent.
 High-end customers using all three cloud platforms
 AWS has a large number of services.
 Azure has the integration with open-source and on-premise systems, such as MS tools, that are
mostly used in almost all organizations.
 GCP has more customer-friendly pricing models and discount models.

Amazon Web Services scoring high in this cloud war of Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS vs Google Cloud,
it easily analyzed, top of all the leading cloud providers, today. However, it is difficult to predict for how
long Amazon Web Services will be the King of the leading cloud provider, given that Azure and Google
Cloud Platform are continuously working their way up on the top cloud leaders list. Even though Amazon
AWS has the added advantage of being the first one of its kind, Azure and Google Cloud Platform also have
their own advantages. Using Microsoft Azure cloud platform makes more sense to several enterprises that
use MS tools since it is easy to use MS tools with Azure cloud. And, Google Cloud Platform offers the best
pricing model for the services, on which Google Search engine and YouTube run, is the only reason
customers need to go for Google Cloud Platform. Analysis report considered, it would be better to say that
it is not about selecting the best cloud service providers, rather it is about selecting the best-suited cloud
provider as per your needs.