Title: Google Cloud versus Amazon Web Services
Description: This article will help the readers understand differences between Google cloud vs AWS, their pros and cons, advantages to help you make informed decisions.
Various large and small companies these days use cloud computing services to store their data and infrastructure via a third party cloud service. It helps with extra security, scalability, flexibility, and reduces the cost of maintenance. But since the beginning of the cloud ecosystem, it has become somewhat complex while providing a lot of services, technologies, products, etc., at the same time. But to get the best cloud computing services for your company, you might have to consider diverse options. For instance, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services are in great competition with each other. And if you don’t compare these two well, then you won’t know which one is suitable for your business. So, here in this guide, we are going to compare the features, prices, pros and cons of AWS and Google Cloud to help you choose the best option for your company.
What is Google Cloud?
Google Cloud, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP), was released in 2011 to help various sized businesses grow at their own pace. It provides intelligent and secure services that are also flexible to use. The Google Cloud is known to be the fastest and most powerful cloud infrastructure on the Internet. Even Google itself uses its cloud service for Gmail, Youtube, Maps, etc., because it allows you to manage high traffic on your network.
The Google Cloud platform was written in Java, Python, and C++ languages; even Ruby was used while programming the platform. It offers multiple options for networking that include virtual private clouds, DNS, CDN, load balancing, and more. GCP also allows you to manage huge data and the Internet of Things (IoT), and offers a machine learning cloud speech API and plenty of other services to business owners. However, you must ensure that the platform is accessible from your location in order to use its services.
Availability Zones of Google Cloud
Almost all AWS products can be deployed within regions from all over the world.Every location has its own data center, and all of them stay approximately close to each other. Amazon separates these locations as availability zones, and Google separates the availability of their service into zones from all around the globe. Google’s cloud services are from different regions of the world. The services are mostly Google App Engine and Google Cloud Storage. So, the availability zones are the United States, Asia, and Europe. But you also have to know which features GCP provides before considering it your best option.
The new features of Google Cloud
Google has announced some great new features for GCP users, and among them is Big Query Omni, a multi-cloud analytics solution. It allows you to run the same database across different clouds and data centers in different environments. It also extends Google’s analytics platform to public clouds, and that does not require the user to close the Big Query Omni interface and move or copy databases.
There is a new Confidential VMs computing portfolio that helps you run workloads on the Google cloud platform, and it also makes sure that your information is protected before it is processed in running workloads. Confidential VMs are available in a beta version for Google Compute Engine that will help you remove the cloud adaptation limitation for your clients.
Another new Google Cloud feature is Assured Workloads for Government, which is currently in beta in the United States.With it, users can add controls to their workloads, create more security requirements, set personal access, set data locations, and more.
Customer to Community (C2C) is another Google Cloud feature that allows the customers of GCP and IT executives and other professionals to interact with each other. This service is available in Europe, North America, the Middle East, and Africa. Not only through virtual events, though, but this service also helps you connect with Google Cloud professionals through in-person meetings as well. Customer to Community (C2C) has expanded its availability through forums, methodologies, white papers, etc.
Let’s take a look at the most significant features of Google Cloud at a glance:
- Google Cloud continuously include different languages and operating systems
- The user interface is simple and easy
- Provides you with on-demand self-services
- Has a wide network access
- Resource pooling and elasticity on a speedy level
But amidst all these, you still need to find the pros and cons of using Google Cloud Services.
Pros and Cons of GCP
Pros: Google is no doubt one of the best companies out there that has implemented the best engineering practices. It offers application deployments, Kubernetes management, high-end computing offerings, machine learning, big data management, analytics, scaling, data load balancing, and a lot more. It provides the fastest data security of all time.
- You can obtain higher productivity through quick access to innovation.
- Google Cloud professionals can work from anywhere and anytime.
- Future-Proof infrastructure
- It offers a serverless environment and helps you connect your cloud services to a massive microservices architecture.
- Stable and robust data analysis
- Cost-effective
- Big data
- Machine learning
- Instance and payment configurations are supported.
Cons: However, when you compare GCP with AWS (we are going to get to that part shortly), you will notice that Google does not offer as many services as Azure and AWS. It also does not host as many data centers worldwide as AWS. However, that’s not a thing you should be worried about right now since its data centers are expanding as well.
This is all you need to know about the Google Cloud Platform, and now we should explore Amazon Web Services (AWS).
What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
AWS is a cloud service solution from Amazon that has expertise in computing, storage, and scaling of data, among many other services that help online businesses grow. Scaling, storage, computing, etc. are domains in AWS that Amazon uses as services. These services help developers build and distribute different types of applications and save them on the cloud platform. All these services work in a certain way to ensure that they can blend with each other and create a specific outcome. AWS has three types: infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). Let’s take a glance at the key features that AWS provides.
Important Features of AWS
There is a new feature in AWS called AWS Control Tower that provides you with an organization-level aggregator that detects external AWS Config rules seamlessly. The external AWS Config rules will be visible from the tower, and you can gain access to unmanaged accounts with a link provided by the AWS Config console. And in that case, the tower won’t need to interfere with the unmanaged account access controls.
There is a new management console released by the Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS). With it, you can build, edit, view, and delete Amazon ECS services as well as tasks. Also, it allows you to view the ECS clusters in just a few simple steps. With ECS, you can learn about your controls in data management, explore your data resources, and switch to the existing console from a new console whenever required. The new console will continue to receive updates until it adopts all the functions of the existing control. And then both of the consoles will work just fine.
Another new AWS feature is the AWS IoT SiteWise Monitor, which is compatible with AWS CloudFormation. With it, you can develop and maintain AWS IoT SiteWise Monitor resources. These include widgets, dashboards, portals, properties, projects, etc.
Let’s look at all the AWS features in a nutshell:
- The cost of ownership is lower than private or dedicated servers
- AWS offers Centralized Billing and management
- Also offers hybrid multi-cloud services
- You can deploy your programs in different locations or regions in just a few clicks
These features are liked and disliked by some of the AWS customers. Let us dig for some of the pros and cons of AWS.
Pros and Cons of AWS
Pros: When AWS was released in 2006, it didn’t have any high-value competitors for about a couple of years. But it continued to invest in its services and data centers, and now it dominates the public cloud industry with GCP and Azure against them. After launching Simple Storage Service in 2006, AWS was the market leader in the cloud industry for at least a decade.The biggest reason why AWS is so popular is that it provides global operations, has a huge library of available services, has data centers from all over the world, and is able to maintain a large number of users and resources.
- Easy deployment for applications
- It is simple for DevOps teams to configure and manage AWS infrastructure.
- It takes a little time to deploy your new applications like web or mobile apps.
- AWS is the perfect solution for high-power projects.
- boosts the productivity of the application development team.
- It offers computing, scaling, setup, configurations, etc.
- You can pay for only what you use and have no long-term commitments.
- Limitless cloud capacity.
Cons: AWS can be really expensive for starters, and that’s why it has already lowered its prices over 80 times. AWS has a really complicated cost structure that most companies don’t find understandable. The costs are usually higher when companies are running a high volume of workload on the server.
Now that we know about both AWS and Google Cloud, let’s look at their key similarities and contrasts.
Key similarities and differences between AWS vs GCP
Firstly, you need to create an AWS account to avail of the AWS features and services. And after you create an account, you can utilize any service on your account within the limitations of Amazon. And the services have their own costs that will be billed to your account, and you can organize the billing structures properly by creating a billing account and then sub-accounts.Likewise, Google Cloud needs users to register for an account first. But unlike AWS, their service costs are categorized by projects, not accounts. You can create various projects under the same Google Cloud account. This allows organizations to create multiple projects for the company, and once you are done with the project, it can be deleted as well.
Both AWS and GCP have small limits on their accounts, and those limits are based on technical terms of a particular service that helps the companies prevent fraud. Unfortunately, fraud accounts can also use extra resources, and they can also put the real users at risk. If you find your account at risk, talk to the support team immediately, and they will suggest the necessary steps to get rid of the situation.
Differences in Management Interfaces
Both AWS and GCP have a command-line interface, or CLI, that allows the system to communicate with other programmes or resources. Amazon CLI is the Amazon command-line interface, and Google Cloud SDK is the Google Cloud SDK.All these command-line services are cross-platform, and the binaries are available for Windows, Mac OS, Linux, etc. You can also use the Cloud SDK in your internet browser using Google Cloud Shell. There are web-based consoles in AWS and GCP that let you build, manage, and operate your resources. You can find GCP consoles here.
Differences in Prices
Price is the notable department when you can find differences between AWS and GCP. In AWS, there is a pay-as-you-go model that charges you per hour for using a particular service, no matter how long or short you are using the service for. In GCP, it is the to-the-minute pricing process.
Conclusion
We discovered some drawbacks to AWS and GCP. The disadvantage of GCP is that it is difficult to get started and that it is expensive outside of its free tier. The most significant disadvantages of AWS are that it is a complex process that takes more than 15 minutes to deploy applications on AWS. And if an error occurs during the deployment, you will not be able to request an error description. If your company is not technologically savvy, AWS may not be for you.
Even though Google Cloud has a few features in its free tier, it may be suitable for you if your business is small. Aside from that, choose AWS if you have more experience and knowledge with application and website deployment.