Just a few years ago, the majority of companies hosted their IT systems on-premises. Today, that dynamic is shifting as more and more organizations switch their operations to the cloud. In 2018 alone, the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market grew 31.3% totaling $32.4 billion, up from $24.7 billion in 2017.
To meet the growing demand for cloud services, three key players have emerged: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.
Amazon was first on the scene in 2006 and has been a leader in the cloud services landscape ever since with a dominating 47.8% market share in 2018. But Microsoft and Google have made strides in recent years to compete and are continuing to close the gap with 15.5% and 4% market share in 2018, respectively.
Below we’ll compare cloud services to help you determine the best cloud platform for you and your business.
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
AWS is a popular choice for organizations large and small, including enterprise-level customers like Netflix, Airbnb, and Samsung. Because of its early foray into the IaaS and PaaS cloud markets, AWS is well-positioned as a leading cloud service provider compared to its nearest competitors who joined the industry a few years later.
As a result of this head start (and Amazon’s deep financial pockets), AWS has the largest cloud infrastructure and an impressive catalog of 175+ mature services for customers to choose from.
Amazon Web Services review
AWS has a large set of compute, storage, database, analytics, application, and deployment services to support organizations’ evolving and growing needs.
Pricing
What you pay will depend on the services you need and how much you actually use. AWS uses a pay-as-you-go model that lets you decide exactly which services you want and charges you based on consumption (similar to utilities payments).
Pay-as-you-go gives businesses the flexibility to adapt to changing needs and scale operations without breaking the budget or missing capacity due to inaccurate forecasts. Use the AWS pricing calculators to estimate your costs based on your projected service needs.
Storage
AWS has a variety of storage options. You can pick and choose or combine services depending on your preference and needs.
A few key storage services include:
- Amazon S3: Scalable object storage in the cloud
- Amazon Glacier: Long-term, archived storage in the cloud
- AWS Storage Gateway: Hybrid storage integration
Compute
AWS has a strong portfolio of compute services to help you develop, deploy, run, and scale your applications and workload securely and effectively.
A few key compute services include:
- Amazon EC2: Create virtual servers hosted in the cloud
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Lets you run and manage web applications
- AWS Lambda: Allows you to run your code in response to events
Pros
It’s no surprise that AWS has a lot in its favor. Here are just a few advantages of AWS:
- Extensive, mature cloud service options that serve SMEs to large enterprises
- Unlimited server capacity
- Instant scalability
- Trusted vendor with reliable stability of services
- Training and certification resources
- Pay-per-use and pay-as-you-go pricing plans
AWS’s size and dominance in the cloud ecosystem make it a great choice for companies of all sizes, including enterprise-level customers who require extensive and reliable computing capabilities with the flexibility to scale.
Cons
Despite its dominance, there are potential disadvantages of AWS. Depending on your needs and priorities, the following cons could make a difference in your choice of cloud service provider:
- High learning curve
- Fewer (and less specialized in) hybrid cloud services
- Complex and potentially overwhelming number of options
- Price breakdowns can be complicated and billing can be confusing
Although the management dashboard is straightforward, AWS requires deep computing knowledge to effectively manipulate and leverage their menu of services. You may need to invest in dedicated IT support through AWS or in additional training and AWS certification for your in-house IT specialists.
Additionally, though AWS does have hybrid cloud services, they are not AWS’s core focus (but the company is working to improve their hybrid offerings). Companies that need to keep some of their systems on-premises (e.g., for compliance or security reasons) might not find the support they want.
