In comparing these two cloud giants, we’ve been seeking the same answer that many quests for: which is better Google Cloud or Azure?
Here at Cloud Office, we are partial to Google Cloud. Which is why we use it to power our WordPress hosting solutions. Google Cloud continues to improve its state-of-the-art platform. Growing and evolving its offerings while planning new data center locations for the year ahead.
Google’s accelerating popularity and success is reflected by the doubling of its annual cloud revenue run-rate, reducing both Azure market share along with AWS market share. If you care about speed and pricing, the Google Cloud Platform is definitely one you want to check out.
Azure has also made great strides in recent years. A result of Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella, shifting the company to a ‘cloud first’, ‘mobile first’ strategy. Like Google, Microsoft continues impressive data center expansion plans and is heavily investing in improving its network infrastructure.
Compute
At a glance, each provider adopts a similar approach to VMs, which form a fundamental part of any cloud environment, and will run almost every type of customer workload you can think of.
The cloud giants have different naming conventions for VMs. They are known as Azure virtual machines on Microsoft Azure and Compute Engine on the Google Cloud Platform. Both providers also use differing high-level terminology and concepts.
Networking
Google Cloud and Azure continue to utilize and expand their own network infrastructures, working with partners, to interconnect their globally deployed data centers. They have ambitious expansion plans and offer state-of-the-art networking services to offer high-speed connectivity across virtual machines, other cloud services, and on-premises servers.
Storage
Understanding the different storage and disk types your cloud provider utilizes is critically important. These devices will directly impact expected throughput (IO), max IOPs per volume/instance, and the ability to burst capacity for short times – which have a significant influence on performance.
Security
When we talk about cloud security, we are focusing on the underlying technologies, controls, processes, and policies which combine to protect your cloud-based systems, data, and infrastructure.
Microsoft and Google are renowned for a deep commitment to providing the highest levels of cloud security. With each provider continuing to evolve a security model built on a development history spanning more than a decade.
At a high level, they deliver cloud security in three ways:
- Security of the cloud platform – delivering security capabilities that are built into the infrastructure of the cloud platform, providing protection by default.
- Security in the cloud platform – delivering security products and services within the platform that can be configured to protect your applications and data.
- Security anywhere – expanding security capabilities beyond the cloud platform to protect your assets regardless of location.
But we’re still only scratching the surface. Taking a wider perspective, the constant competition between leading cloud providers can only be a good thing. As they seek to gain market share from each other, we’ll reap the benefits of new and improved products and services, wider availability, and lower prices. Long may it continue.
