Table of Contents
Google Cloud Vs. Azure
Google Cloud and Azure are both platforms that offer you services to handle your database, storage, and computing needs. These platforms allow you to store, query, and crunch date. Before diving into the major differences between Google Cloud and Azure, we will explore what these two platforms entail.
- Which Is Better: Azure or AWS?
- Introduction To Amazon Web Services: What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
- How to Upload and Download File From Azure Blob Storage Using C# and PowerShell
- How to check Azure Credit
What is Azure?
Azure is a cloud computing platform developed by Microsoft. It offers various services, including analytics, networking, and storage, and computing. Users can choose from any of the services to scale or for developing new applications. They are also able to run applications already stored in the cloud.
Azure helps businesses manage different sets of challenges and meet their aims and goals. It has tools that support sectors such as finance and e-commerce and used by Fortune 500 companies. Open-source technologies allow users the flexibility to use their preferred technological tools.
Furthermore, Azure provides four forms of cloud computing; platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), serverless, and software as a service (SaaS). It is a flexible, fast, and affordable platform, and its capabilities and pricing make it one of the best public cloud platforms in the market.
Azure was launched in February 2001, a lot later than its competitor AWS. Azure has a pay-per-use model but is free to start. The interesting fact about Azure is that’s almost 80% of all Fortune 500 companies use Azure for their computing needs. It supports many programming languages, such as Node Js, C#, and Java. Azure has 42 data centers across the globe, making it a platform with the highest number of centers compared to other cloud platforms. It has plans to launch a lot more data centers in the future.
What is Azure Used For?
Since Azure offers many different services, it has diverse industry applications. One of the most popular uses of Azure is running containers or virtual machines. These resources can host several infrastructure components such as Windows Server services, Internet Information Services, Domain Name System, and other third-party apps. This platform is used for disaster recovery and backup, and many organizations use it to retain their long-term data.
Products and Services Provided By Azure
Compute
Azure computing services allow users to manage and deploy VMs, batch jobs, and containers. They also support access to remote applications. Compute resources within Azure enable you to configure private or public IP addresses with ease.
Mobile
It helps developers create applications for devices providing support for back-end tasks, notification services, and tools for formulating apps program interfaces (APIs).
Web
Web services entail supporting the deployment and development of web apps. They offer content delivery, and features for search, reporting, notification, and API management.
Storage
This particular category of Azure service provides storage for unstructured and structured data. It supports persistent storage, archival storage, and Big Data projects.
Analytics
This service helps the users distribute storage and analytics and features for real-time analytics, data lakes, Big Data analytics, business intelligence, data warehousing, data streams, and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Networking
Networking includes dedicated connections, gateways, virtual networks, local balancing, diagnostics, traffic management, and network protection from Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
Integration
This service provides server backup, connecting public and private clouds, and site recovery.
Content and Media Delivery Network
These services consist of digital rights protection, media playback, indexing, and encoding.
Identity
Azure offers identity services that ensure only authorized users can access them and help protect encryption keys and other sensitive information. Services include multifactor authentication (MFA) and Azure Active Directory.
Internet of Things
This service entails helping users monitor, analyze, and capture IoT data from sensors and various other devices. It also includes support for execution and coding, analytics, notifications, and monitoring.
DevOps
DevOps provide collaboration and project tools that help software development processes. It also has features for app diagnostics, tool integrations, and test labs for experimentation.
Development
The development service provided by Azure helps developers test applications, track potential problems, and share codes. It supports a variety of programming languages, like Python, JavaScript, and NET.
Security
These products help identify and respond to security threats. They also manage sensitive assets and encryption keys.
Machine Learning
This service offers a developer a chance to infuse artificial intelligence, cognitive computing capabilities, and machine learning into data sets and applications.
Databases
Database services offer DBaaS (Database as a Service) for SQL and NoSQL as well as other databases such as Azure Cosmos DB. These services catch, hybrid, and support migration features and database integration.
Migration
This tool helps an organization estimate workload migration costs and perform the migration of workloads from data centers to the Azure cloud.
Management
This service provides recovery, compliance, scheduling, and monitoring tools, i.e., backup tools that help cloud admins handle an Azure deployment.
Blockchain
Azure blockchain allows the user to create or join a blockchain consortium.
Google Cloud Platform
The Google Cloud Platform offers computing resources for operating and deploying applications. It provides enterprises and individuals a space to build software and use the web to connect the users to that software.
When a user runs an application, a service, or a website on Google Cloud, it keeps track of all the resources it utilizes, especially the amount of power, database queries, data storage, and network connectivity that was consumed.
Similar to Azure, Google Cloud Platform also provides pay-per-use service. Therefore, you have to pay for each of the resources you use on a per-second basis.
Google Cloud Platform Features
People use a cloud platform when they want the services they provide to their employees, users, or customers to work as an application instead of a website. For instance, if you want to help homebuilders to find out the estimate of the structure and size of the floors for the bedroom, you will Google Cloud Platform.
If you want to analyze the performance statistics of athletes, you would need a sophisticated system to help you with it. For such cases, the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is ideal. It helps users reach a worldwide audience, borrow sophisticated analytics systems, use massive data storage, access AI functions, and achieve cost-benefit efficiencies.
GCP is considered to have certain capabilities that make it stand out from its competitors.
Google Cloud offers a service that automates the deployment of modern applications. An app consists of several moving parts. That’s why most developers prefer using the cloud to build their apps.
Google created Kubernetes, which is a container that scales, deploys, and manages data for many applications consisting of hundreds of components. Google took the approach of automating the deployment of these apps to the cloud. For instance, Google opened itself to Kubo, a platform used to help developers using the cloud to deploy their applications.
Google has creative cost control. Instead of leading in cost-effective services, its strategy with GCP entails cost competitiveness at every stage. For instance, Google provides a lifecycle manager for data storage, which helps offload and eliminate objects that haven’t been used in over a month.
GCP is also extremely user-friendly. A cloud platform can be overwhelming for a lot of new users. Google makes it easy for new users to understand all the information and services offered. A public cloud is a new service for people who aren’t used to the technicalities involved in such platforms. GCP provides a step-by-step guide on how to use it, along with examples.
Differences Between Azure and Google Cloud
Now that we are well-versed in the main features, we will explore the differences between Azure and Google Cloud. However, before diving into the key differences, we will also shed light on some of the similarities between both platforms.
Computing
The main feature of both platforms is computing. Azure provides Virtual Machines, and Google Cloud provides Google Compute Engine. Both platforms provide comparable computing power. Both platforms have the same on-demand, pay-per-use pricing and offer several discounts.
Microsoft offers more discounts via EA (Enterprise Arrangements) if organizations make company-wide installations of Microsoft Servers.
Both platforms support NIX images and Windows.
| Compute Service | Google Cloud | Azure | Features |
| Virtual Machine Instances | Google Computer Engine | Azure Virtual Machines | ● Azure offers more regions and availability zones ● Google provides lower prices across all instance types as well as Custom Machine Types |
| Auto Scaling | Managed Instance Groups | Azure Autoscale | ● Azure lets its users autoscale using a wide variety of metrics ● Google provides auto-healing and built-in load balancing |
| Container as a Service | Google Kubernetes Engine | Azure Kubernetes Service | ● AKS supports Visual Studio and Azure DevOps ● Google is considered the most robust Kubernetes service |
| Function as a Service | Google Cloud Functions | Azure Functions | ● Azure offers an end-to-end experience from coding to deployment and monitoring ● Google’s service emphasizes simplicity. |
Storage
The Google Cloud Platform has a few services that provide storage, such as Google App Engine Persistence Disk and Google Cloud Storage. Microsoft Azure handles Blob Storage. Both platforms demonstrate incredible performance when it comes to storage, and it is difficult to decide a winner between them.
Databases
With regards to cloud databases, both GCP and Microsoft Azure provide good service. They both offer NoSQL databases or relational databases. When it comes to relational databases, Azure offers SQL Server. In NoSQL, it offers its flagship product known as DocumentDB paired with value store/cost-key TableStorage.
The GCP database server is known as CloudSQL. It is a managed MySQL database, while GCP NoSQL services are called BigTable and Cloud Datastore.
BigTable can integrate with Hadoop and drive most of Google’s services and products.
Both platforms are excellent in their respective database service provisions.
Key Differences
Google Cloud has the ability to host a variety of systems and manage both business and software growth. Azure manages enterprise storage, communicates with Windows-based systems, and runs applications. Both are good at their respective performance. The key difference between both platforms is that Google focuses on public cloud computing, while Azure is more focused on businesses and organizations that wish to interoperate with their very own data centers. Many Windows-based servers run In Azure’s public cloud. In other words, Azure provides its users with a hybrid option. Its aim is to compete in a bigger cloud market along with leaders in cloud platforms like AWS.
Users are required to sign up for a Microsoft account to use Azure services. Users can launch any type of service using their account for a specific period. The services are then billed to their account. Users are given the option of creating a separate billing account. Organizations using the services can create a standard billing structure similar to their organizational billing through a separate billing account.
Similarly, GCP also requires its users to create a Google account to use its services. However, GCP organizes service usage by project instead of an account. A user can create multiple types of projects under the same account. The benefit of this structure is that when organizations use this platform, they can create multiple projects for different departments and groups. This structure is also useful if someone wants to test a project. The project can be created, tested, and then deleted. The resources in the project are also deleted.
VM Types
Both platforms offer a range of machine types that can deploy multiple configurations. VM resources can be scaled to meet demand. For example, CPU and RAM can be updated to high-end specifications.
Both platforms are excellent in this category, and your choice of machine types will differ depending on your requirements.
Pricing
Azure is not easy to understand because of the complex software licensing options and the utilization of situation-based discounts. The pricing structure is difficult for even the most experienced users to understand.
In contrast, Google Cloud offers a customer-friendly option. It provides a price list that beats other providers’ price lists. It also uses flexible contracts and deep discounts to win projects from customers that have spent a lot of money on other cloud platforms and are now seeking savings.
Here is a table that provides a comparison between Azure vs GCP.
| Azure | GCP | |
| Compute | Virtual Machines and Virtual Machine Scale Sets | Google Compute Engine |
| Storage | Microsoft Azure Storage | Google Cloud Storage |
| Databases | Azure SQL database | Cloud SQL |
| Documentation | High quality | High quality |
You may also like following the below articles
- Azure storage explorer
- How to access Azure VM (Virtual Machine)
- How To Monitor Azure Functions
- What is Resource Group in Azure
- What VPN Types are Supported By Azure
Conclusion
Both Azure and Google Cloud are cloud platform leaders that have more similarities and fewer differences. However, the platform you choose to work with will depend on your needs. Certain types of companies will go for Azure, and some will go for Google Cloud. For instance, if your organization works mainly with Microsoft Software and runs from Windows, then Azure Cloud would be a perfect choice for you. However, if you are a web-based small start-up looking to expand rapidly, then Google Cloud Platform would be ideal for you since it is user-friendly and excellent for new users. There is also a third option for people who don’t want to choose between Azure and Google Cloud Platform — Amazon Web Services or AWS. AWS offers services similar to Azure and Google Cloud. However, AWS has a bigger global reach and provides more data centers compared to the other two.