General | AWS | Azure | GCP | |
---|---|---|---|---|
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 | Feature rich and reliable | User-friendly interface | Easy to set up | |
Free, robust test accounts | User-friendly interface | |||
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 computing issues | Flexibility in contracting | ||
Active Directory Federation Service makes connecting to the 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 from 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 | Support offers cohesive solutions | |
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 mindshare | ||||
Reinvent ConferenceRe:Invent Conference, Public Sector Summit, and various local Meetups | ||||
Mature documentation and whitepapers around federal/HIPAA/etc. compliance | ||||
Sensitive Data and Security | 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 licencing | Easy billing through Orbitera | ||
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 | |||
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 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" | 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 | 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 | GCP has a weaker understanding of enterprise needs than its competitors | ||
SAML support is often lacking and expensive where it is present | Required to go 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 egressPricing is unpredictable and often changes | Pricing model with SKU, forecasting and charge back leads to riskPricing 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 | ||||
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 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 licensing? | 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 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 DNSSEC? | |||
What are their plans for IPv6 support? | ||||
Innovation | How is Azure pushing the limits on high performance computing? | What other changes are coming? |
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