Image Added |
General |
---|
STRENGTHSGeneral |
Established and familiar; the option with the greatest brand awareness | Popular in Europe | Innovative, exploring machine learning options such as Tensorflow |
More people have experience with AWS than with its competitors |
| Open-source tools |
AWS was named a leader in IaaS by Gartner's Magic Quadrant |
| Although GCP is young, Google has engine maturity |
Broad geographic reach |
| Leader in capacity |
AWS has the greatest market share |
| Born from education |
Widest range of service offerings with many diverse options |
| "Follower" advantage as newer of the three |
Fewest "strings attached" |
|
|
User Experience |
---|
Experienced, feature , and reliable | User-friendly interface | Easy to set up |
Free, robust test accounts |
| User-friendly interface |
Ease of use and setup |
User-friendly interface |
|
|
Strong and flexible API |
|
|
IAM and Enterprise | Highly extensible and flexible identity model | Greater license flexibility and portability leads to cost savings | Ability (with Forseti) to set and force policy compliance across |
---|
your entire Google domain |
Organizations are separate from accounts | Adding Azure to existing contracts with Microsoft is less trouble than creating a new contract and existing federated Microsoft accounts can be used | Ability to view activity across your entire Google domain |
Direct connect via Internet2 organizational billing | Strong identity management tools | IAM stack tightly integrated with Gsuite |
Control Tower automates setup of multi-account AWS environments, governance, guardrails (policy management), and dashboard visibility into OU, accounts, and guardrails. | Very good understanding of enterprise |
computaing computing issues | Flexibility in contracting |
| Active Directory Federation Service makes connecting to the |
AD Active Directory easier | Gsuite accounts are already provisioned for Gsuite users |
Integrations | Broad 3rd party support with more partners than its competitors | Tight integration with on-premise Microsoft Technology, including SQL and Exchange. | Supports Kubernetes and Docker |
---|
Platform offerings can be easily migrated from on-premise LAMP stacks (MySQL -> Amazon Aurora, etc.) | Platform offerings can be easily migrated |
to on-premise Microsoft tools (MSSQL -> Azure SQL, etc.) | Google created Kubernetes, so the integration is very tight |
Serverless (AWS Lambda) supports Java, Node.js, Python, Java, C#, Go, Powershell and Ruby. Integrated with so many Amazon services making it accessible and powerful. | Azure container service allows deployment of DC/OS, Swarm, and Kubernetes clusters | Google docs accessibility, integration, and collaborative editing |
VMware Cloud on AWS provides hybrid cloud for VMware customers. Possible use cases include HA, DRA, host remediation, autoscaling, and disaster recovery. | IAM Stack tightly integrated with Office 365 |
|
Documentation, Support, and Community | A large amount of training and documentation; lots of learning |
---|
resources are available | Microsoft has lots of man-power they can apply to Azure |
Offers Support offers cohesive solutions |
A large Large user community | There is a growing community for Azure | Reasonably transparent |
Strong front office with solutions and architects | Knowledgable sales team |
|
Support web chat | Existing accounts team |
|
Community |
MindshareReinvent ConferenceGlacier is government compliant and cost effective | Willing to do Buisiness Does Business Associate Agreements for restricted data such as HIPAA. | Very willing to do Business Associate Agreements for restricted data such as HIPAA | Does Business Associate Agreements for restricted data such as HIPAA. BAA includes list on a website that grows over time - pioneered this approach. |
Glacier is government compliant and cost effective |
|
|
FISMA compliant option | Government platform is Department of Justice certified |
|
Cost and Billing | Cost effective | Enterprise Billing tools from Microsoft (rather than a |
---|
3rd party) | Cheaper than AWS for most services |
Storage is cheap | Leverages investment in Microsoft |
liscencinglicencing | Easy billing through |
orbiteraOrbitera |
More advanced, granular billing | Often cheaper and willing to negotiate |
|
Better forecasting tools |
|
|
AWS Egress Waiver available for higher education |
|
|
Unique or Desirable Features | Elastic search | Azure recovery services | Ability to add 1-n GPUs onto a commodity VM |
---|
Scaling | Built in regional failiure prevention | Ability to choose your own instance |
AWS Direct Connect | Integration with SOAP | Seemingly unlimited compute |
Container management service is easy to deploy and fast | Azure Virtual Data Center |
|
IPv6 support | Scalability |
|
| Big Compute: HPC and Batch |
|
Innovation | Fast-paced innovation and development of new services |
| Big query and Tensorflow access for advanced machine learning |
---|
Leaders in machine learning and other cutting edge technologies |
| Custom processor |
WEAKNESSES
Image Added
|
General | Limitations on OS varieties available | Network access can be be prohibitive | Can be difficult to contain GCP project proliferation within your domain |
---|
"Divide and conquer" mentality is monopolistic | Issues with VPN support and bandwith management | "Marketplace" ecosystem is far less mature than AWS and Azure |
Some services lack depth and granularity | There are often problems when scaling to very large cores | Being later to the market means that GCP is less widely adopted |
It isn't possible to point |
load loads to an external IP address | Uses hypervisor which is more knowledge-specific | Product offerings are often unknown and are not marketed well |
Procurement through 3rd party retailers can be complicated | Centered around stacks | "Follower" disadvantage |
| Procurement through 3rd party retailers can be complicated | Storing data solely in the USA is not an option |
| You need to have professional services even to just test something out or "play around" |
Constantly Google is constantly rearranging cloud area, such as when they merged Gsuite and GCP |
| Some faculty are anti-Azure | Setup can be complicated |
| They are Microsoft, so all the pros are there, but so are all of the cons |
Smaller A smaller number of services is available and GCP has a smaller ecosystem compared to its competitors |
| Often playing "catch up" with AWS | Container focused |
|
| Ability to support legacy is limited |
|
| Not as trusted |
|
| Services come and go |
|
| Fewer direct connect points |
|
| Higher education engagement could be better |
User Experience | The user interface can be confusing until you are used to it |
|
|
---|
IAM and Enterprise | Reseller often usurps enterprise organization (parent AWS account) layer | It is not possible to customize the Active Directory in Azure | Immature "custom roles" function means sticking with "out of the box" IAM roles. |
---|
There is no global view of activity across the range of accounts | IAM through InCommon can be a challenge | Limited ability to manage as an administrator |
Microsoft license reuse is a minefield | Licensing is complex | Permissions can be complicated |
Inflexible contract for state enterprise entities | Active directory federation service can be a hassle | IAM through InCommon can be a challenge |
No official service level agreement | Vendor lockin means you need to commit to Azure if you're going to use it |
Weaker GCP has a weaker understanding of enterprise needs than its competitors |
SAML support is often lacking and expensive where it is present | Requires going through a VAR - not a value add in the cloud context. |
|
The vendor locks in IAM |
|
|
IAM is not well integrated |
|
|
Permissions and account structure is complicated |
|
|
Integrations | Doesn't always play well with integrations and has a set way to do things |
| No seamless integrations |
---|
There are not any directly integrated apps |
|
|
Documentation, Support, and Community |
| Lack of technical expertise | You have to escalate a ticket to support, which takes a while |
---|
| Unsophisticated networking | There is no phone to directly contact them; if you do get given a way to phone, you will be put on hold for a while |
| Less documentation makes learning harder | Relationship management needs strengthening -- who do you talk to? |
| Mixed experiences with SME | Front office is a "hot mess" and not very helpful |
Sensitive Data and Security | Services often require a great deal of manual configuration to be properly secured |
|
|
---|
Getting HIPAA Business Associate Agreements in place can be challenging |
|
|
Department of Justice did not approve AWS |
|
|
Compliance challenges with GovCloud |
|
|
Cost and Billing | The actual cost is often not articulated clearly and billing can be hard to understand | Level of education discount varies widely based on workload and can be difficult to determine |
|
---|
The billing structure can make it hard to download information because there is so much of it | Multiple enrollments and entitlements (and billing) can be complex |
|
Oracle licensing adds expense | Rebilling subscriptions is a challenge |
|
There is not a large enterprise discount | Inflexible contract with regards to Business Associates Agreement and government compliance |
You must pay for egress
|
Pricing is unpredictable and often changes | Pricing model with SKU, forecasting and charge back leads to risk |
Pricing is unpredictable and often changes |
|
There is no predetermined total cost of ownership |
|
|
|
|
|
Unique or Desirable Features | Widest range of service offerings leads to a feature overload | Poor IPv6 support | Few developer support features for databases |
---|
Limitations on EC2 customizations | SQL server is only in beta as a PaaS service | Lacking Windows infrastructure |
| Default logging | Some overlap in products and features |
|
| There is a collection of tools with little cohesion and no clear strategy |
Innovation | Tools keep being developed and changed at a rate that is hard to keep up with for support purposes and is confusing and intimidating for users | Rollout of changes is often a surprise and there is little warning; the roadmap for the future is often unclear | Roadmap for the future is typically opaque |
---|
| Missing some of the more advanced tools that its competitors have |
QUESTIONS
|
Image Added
|
General | How do regions failover? | What do they do better than other cloud providers? When use Azure vs. others? | What do they do better than other cloud providers? When use GCP vs. others? |
---|
How will they exercise their dominate market position? | Will the open-source commitment continue? | How do you keep up with a vendor that wil need a "catch-up" release cycle? |
Why do people find them so trustworthy? | How do they compare to others with API support? | What migration services are available? Is there a migration readiness assessment? |
How do you go beyond just storing and computing? | Can it host Linux workloads as well as its competitors? | What is the commitment to current services and products? |
Is |
it AWS as effective for research as its competitors? | What is their roadmap? Where are they going? | What is their roadmap? Where are they going? |
Why have so many people opted to use AWS? |
| What are they? What are their goals? |
Does it have the greatest geographic diversity? |
| Where do the services that they provide fit into Google's overall plans? |
How does its architecture work? |
| What is their product strategy? (Both GCP's and Google's as a whole) |
Is it the greatest source of spam? |
|
|
What do they do better than other cloud providers? When use AWS vs. others? |
|
|
User Experience |
|
|
|
---|
IAM and Enterprise | How do you create cohesive institutional deployment? | How does Azure licensing fit with MS |
---|
lisencinglicensing? | How do you do a POC on GPC? Is it possible? |
|
| How do you manage an organization on GCP? |
Integrations |
| Will Office365 - Azure communication improve? |
|
---|
Documentation, Support, and Community |
|
|
|
---|
Sensitive Data and Security | How much more security effort is it to secure something now vs. after the campus has become more experienced? |
| Will HIPAA compliance become available? |
---|
How good is |
cloudtrail Cloudtrail for security? |
|
|
How easy is it to get a Business Associate Agreement? |
|
|
Cost and Billing | Do you have to pay extra for redundancy? |
|
|
---|
Why can't AWS disassociate master billing agreements in single universities for reporting? |
|
|
Is it the most expensive option? |
|
|
Is it expensive to get data out? |
|
|
How do costs compare, especially for specific features? |
|
|
How do we get to pricing predictability? |
|
|
Unique or Desirable Features |
| Does Azure support |
---|
DNS SECDNSSEC? |
|
| What are their plans for IPv6 support? |
|
Innovation |
| How is Azure pushing the limits on high performance computing? | What other changes are coming? |
---|