Finding out your primary and secondary cloud service has now become a standard norm in IT companies. Recent independent research led by the 451 research team came out with the result that more than 90% of the companies and non-profit organizations are using cloud services in one way or the other via multiple cloud service accounts (source). This is one of the most significant changes that we have seen in the use of cloud technology in the past few years. Still, there are some companies that are still keeping a lot of their data stored in their own physical locations. But the transfer of data to the cloud is bound to happen.
GCP and AWS are the two most famous cloud service providers that are also industry leaders. GCP is a cloud service suite developed and offered by the tech giant Google. On the other hand, we have AWS, which is a cloud service platform developed by Amazon. Today, we are going to compare these two cloud computing platforms and how they are making it easier for users to get computational power as per their needs without much of a hassle.
We have written our comparison of these two platforms based on their features, product reviews, and customer reviews. Also, we are completely unbiased towards any of these two. So whatever we recommend at the end of the article is solely based on our evaluation. But that doesn’t stop you from using the other one, as it all comes down to your personal preferences in the end.
So, without further ado, let’s get started.
Google Cloud Platform
What is GCP?
In recent years, we have seen cloud computing as an IT technology that has grown quite rapidly. Right now, there are a lot of cloud computing service providers in the market, but Google Cloud Platform or GCP is more than just a cloud computing service. It’s a set of computing, networking, storage, big data, machine learning, and even other management-related services. All these services run on the same cloud infrastructure built by Google for its products like Gmail, Google Photos, Google Search, and YouTube.
So when you are getting cloud services from GCP, you are actually getting the same level of performance and security as Google’s end-user products.
Why Do You Need Google Cloud Platform?
Now that you know what GCP is, let’s talk about why you must have it for your business. In recent years, we haven’t seen Google servers going down for a long time. There was an incident in November 2020 when they had a problem, but it was instantly fixed. The GCP provides its services in various locations all across the globe. These locations are divided into regions and zones. As a result, you can choose from where you want Google to operate your applications to ensure low latency and fast response time.
Pros
Given below are the benefits of using GCP as your cloud service provider:
1. Scalability
One of the issues which a lot of companies have to face when they are looking for a cloud service is the lack of scalability options. Many new-age cloud service providers don’t allow users to scale or downscale according to their needs. But that’s not the case with GCP. It allows both upscaling as well as downscaling without being biased to the premium users in any way.
2. Pricing
As a startup or a small business, you are always looking for ways to keep your spendings to the minimum. Well, with GCP, you are getting the best cloud services at a reasonable price. If we look at the pricing model of GCP, it can be divided into four parts:
- Sub-hour billing: In this pricing system, the billing is only made for the particular requested time. For example, if the application is using the computational power for 1 hour each day. Then the filed bill will only include the usage hours and nothing else.
- Sustained use discount: When an application is running for a long time continuously, then Google provides the user an additional discount of 25%.
- Custom machine type: GCP lets the user define the exact amount of CPU power and memory needed to complete the task. As a result, the users will be charged in accordance with the number of resources utilized.
- Preemptible instance: If the user wants to keep running the application no matter what, then a system is used which is built keeping in mind the fault tolerance. Thus, if one machine gets affected, the system will enable the other machines, and the working of the application won’t face any hindrance.
3. Private Network
A company that requires high efficiency, accuracy, and time management can get a separate private network for accessing GCP services. This also allows users to customize their scalability whenever they want according to their current project. For some companies, GCP’s private network works like a charm as it uses fiber cables to transfer the data. The efficiency increases allowing the network to handle large amounts of traffic.
4. Google’s Commitment to Development
Hosting is one of the services which the Google Cloud Platform offers to its users. The public domain of Google is made up of extensive infrastructure. The company is working tirelessly to find out new ways to make the development and deployment process easier for its users. In addition to this, Google is also working on expanding its infrastructure to new locations so more and more people can deploy their applications on Google’s cloud and save their hardware costs.
5. Security
Whether it’s the hosting of a website or an application, a developer is always concerned with the security of the server. But with Google, you are getting the best of the best as Google has its own security model, which is pretty impressive. Moreover, the workforce at Google comprises a number of network security professionals, which keep a close eye on even the smallest of the network’s security issues and fix them as soon as possible.
6. Redundant Backups
No matter how great your security is, you still need to be serious about the backups, and that’s precisely what GCP does. It provides users with the redundancy of data storage, which is a real-time fail-safe measure against the crashing of the hard drives or any other type of storage failure. Google initiates automatic backup of the files that are present in the application so the duplicate files can be used in case of loss or if some component is not able to function correctly. Google’s redundancy works by storing data in multiple locations. Thus, if the infrastructure at a particular location gets damaged due to natural disasters or other reasons, the application can be launched from some other location having its data backup.
7. Multiple Services
GCP offers a wide variety of cloud computing services so all the requirements of a user can be fulfilled from one single platform. GCP offers compute engines, container engines, app engines, storage and database services, big data services, machine learning services, networking services, security services, and each of these has sub-services that you can find on the official GCP’s official website. All these different services can be managed from a single dashboard.
Cons
GCP does have some cons, and even though they are few, it’s important for you to know about them.
- First, the support fee that the user has to pay is expensive. A user has to pay anywhere around 150 USD per month for even the essential services.
- In case you want to download some data from Google Cloud, you will need to pay 0.12 USD per 1 GB.
- The pricing is a bit complex, and there are multiple layers of it which can be pretty confusing for some users.
Amazon Web Services
What is AWS?
Amazon Web Services (AWS) was launched in the year 2002, and then in 2006, the company came up with its cloud products. AWS is the first-ever cloud computing service provider in the world. It provides a wide variety of services like storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, development tools along with enterprise applications, and much more. One thing which makes AWS better than its competitors is the pay-as-you-go pricing model.
The working of the AWS is separated into different services, and each of the services can be configured. AWS can be broken into three main products: EC2, Amazon’s virtual machine service, which is known as Glacier, and S3, which is Amazon’s storage system. According to the independent report, AWS has 1/3rd of the entire cloud service market in 2020, sitting at 32.4% of the total market (source).
Why Do You Need AWS?
Amazon’s AWS is really a cash cow for the company. The services offered by AWS are quite cost-effective. Thus, from Fortune 500 companies to small-scale businesses, anyone can opt for AWS without putting a strain on their budget.
Pros
Now, let’s discuss the advantages of AWS and how they can be helpful for your business.
1. Cost-Effective
AWS is pushing the concept of non-physical computing technology, which can be worked straight from the cloud. In the older times, companies that are looking for a larger data storage space needed to build their own data centers. But now, with the use of AWS, that hefty task can be transferred to AWS. Moreover, companies don’t have to worry about paying anything extra when they sign up for the AWS service because AWS employs the pay-as-you-go pricing model.
2. Easily Adaptable
It doesn’t matter if it’s your first time using the cloud services or you are switching from another cloud service provider to AWS. The transition is easy, and at each step, you will be assisted by AWS’s professionals. Also, AWS makes it quite easy to scale up or scale down the resources required by your IT products. As a result, your business really doesn’t need to face any scaling issues.
3. Quick development and deployment
When an application is using cloud services, all the IT resources become available with just a single click. Consequently, a company doesn’t have to worry about all the different resources required by an application to run smoothly. Also, the overall development process becomes faster.
4. Secure
AWS follows an end-to-end connection approach to keep its services and user applications closely intact with each other. Organizations like NASDAQ, Healthcare.Gov, Dow Jones rely on AWS for keeping their data secure. Both the physical and virtual framework of AWS is world-class, giving exceptional security to the applications that are using its resources.
5. Leader of Cloud Services
Amazon was the first company that came up with the idea of providing computational units as a service to its customers. Right now, it has a massive network that covers more than 190 nations across the globe. Along with this, over a million active users are taking the benefits of its various services. The customer portfolio of AWS consists of both multi-billion dollar companies and startups. But the endeavor of Amazon doesn’t even stop there, and AWS is also providing a bunch of its services to the public sectors.
There are only a bunch of cloud service providers who are able to provide half of the services which AWS is offering. Thus, running an application using AWS computing services will make your application run quickly and safely.
6. Flexible
As a business owner or IT professional, you don’t really have to scratch your head if you are thinking about integrating AWS with your projects. The auto-scaling method used by AWS will create a self-managing IT infrastructure that closely aligns with your application’s actual needs. On the other hand, a user can take the assistance of Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), which will make multiple images of the spin-up clones for various application environments. As a result, it will eliminate the need to repeat the integration and set up tasks again and again.
7. Higher Operational Resilience
With the use of AWS, the downtime of websites and applications can reduce up to 57%. At the same time, the time-to-restore most of the critical incidents are significantly reduced to 39%. On top of everything, using AWS also reduces the risk of cyberattacks. AWS employs measures like foolproof monitoring, threat detection, and assess the endpoints of the application, so they are entirely secured from all ends.
Cons
AWS also comes with certain disadvantages that are as follows:
- AWS set default limits on various resources, which vary from region to region. In some locations, these limits can be pretty massive, while in some, they are not even visible.
- You can only launch a number of instances per area. Surely you can ask for an increase in the limit, but the limitation on resources put in the first place is quite discomforting.
- In terms of security, there are two main features that cannot be customized at all. First is the EC-2 classic, which allows only 500 maximum instances, and individual security groups can have a maximum of 100 permissions only.
- Moreover, the EC2-VPC can hold up to 100 security groups per VPC (Virtual Private Cloud).
- When you first start using its services, your application will face some downtime, limited control, and you have to check the backup protection manually. But these flaws can be easily overcome after some time of use when you get comfortable with the AWS’s working.
Conclusion
We can’t really push the future of technology aside and keep on working like the old times. No matter what we do, the change in the IT industry is taking place right in front of our eyes, and cloud computing is playing a central role in it. Thus, adopting cloud computing in your business is a great way to be relevant with the market and with the trend. So, your business can also get the benefits of cloud computing without making a significant investment.
We have covered all the important information about GCP and AWS that you may need to figure out which among them is the best option for your business.
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