Hyperscaler Comparison – Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS vs Google GCP

Three Hyperscaler dominate the cloud market with their products: Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS and Google GCP. That’s no secret. But how do the hyperscaler compare? We’ll take the three Hyperscaler in comparison.

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Hyperscaler Comparison – Microsoft Azure vs Amazon AWS vs Google GCP

A table says more than a thousand words, or was it a picture? In any case we have compiled a table below.

(1) Gartner Says Worldwide IaaS Public Cloud Services Market Grew 40.7 % in 2020, (2) ProCloud november 2020.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft uses its history as the “Office” and “Windows” company as a perfect weapon for the cloud era. Nobody can match with the power of their productivity of apps. In the meantime, it is not just Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Co., but a portfolio of around 27 applications under the name “Office 365”, still growing. Productivity applications do exactly  in practice, which has long been preached as “Empower Employees”. What a user can do with all these applications directly from the cloud today is just awesome and leads to more efficient work and better results. The issue all users have with other providers than Microsoft: identity management. If an employee enters or leaves the company, there is a tedious task to control whether all accounts have been activated or deactivated. Not at Microsoft, there is a central identity (in the Active Directory) about which everything is in control. That’s how easy it could be.

In 2011, Microsoft put 90% of the research and development budget into the cloud, today we see the impressive results. With 54 regions, they have more regions than the other two have together. This is especially exciting for international companies, for the national companies may only be important if Microsoft has a data center in the country and as a Swiss we welcome this privilege now as well. Another effect of the investment are  249 cloud services offered by Microsoft,  they do offer many more services than the competitors.

A weakness of Microsoft Azure is clearly the price. Microsoft is too expensive and with the maturity of the market, this becomes a dangerous asset. Currently, however, it still grows with 59.2 % and the strategy seems to work. Let’s hope that the war funds are soon filled and the price war begins. Currently we see Azure to be 20% – 50% more expensive and the customer is almost forced to use  Reserved Instances to get up to 70% discount. But doing so you commit yourself as well for 1-3 years to Microsoft.

Amazon AWS

What Microsoft brings as History in the on-premise area,  Amazon has in the cloud area. AWS already launched its services in 2006, earlier than any other competitor. Jim Fanning (head of AWS-Switzerland since 2016) therefore also comments on the Handelszeitung’s questions:

“Why should a company come to you? Google or Microsoft have equally  solutions?
AWS started in 2006, which was very early, and we’ve been offering Cloud for longer time range than any other competitor, and there’s no algorithm to make up for this experience – you can not press a magic button and suddenly you have all the knowledge about the cloud business.

But what makes AWS different?
90 percent of our developments are based on what our customers demand, and this focus – which we call customer obsession – is a special value.”

Customer Obsession sounds good, right? We are curious if they keep growing with it. The market share is huge, but the others are growing faster.

Google GCP

Google is the fast-growing challenger, additionally we like the simplicity of the cloud portal. The significantly less market share than the other two might be the reason why they tag the price very aggressive. We like the combination of the price and a data center location in Switzerland. Unfortunately, the Google Brand is known as “data octopus”. This is not exactly conducive to getting the client to entrust one’s (most important) data to you. We say: That’s a gut feeling. Look at Google’s security and compliance information, they’re trying hard to do a good job. But the others – especially Microsoft – as well.

Speaking of compliance: The three American companies are of course subject to the Cloud Act – which in practice, however, (almost) does not apply and requires a legal action in which the Hyperscaler also goes to court for you. But if you feel uncomfortable about it – and Alibaba is not good for you either – As a Swiss company, we also have our own hardware in Datacenters in  Basel & Zurich  (Switzerland) with a ready to go cloud offering.

Huawei and Alibaba

In the table above, we have not listed Alibaba and Huawei. For the simple reason that they only play a minor role in Switzerland and Europe. The market shares (Alibaba 9.5%, Huawei, 4.2%) are mainly generated in the Asian market and especially in China. It is interesting, however, that Huawei is growing by 202.8% (2020 compared to 2019). According to Gartner, 90% of the revenue happens in China. A quick price comparison shows that Huawei with the cheapest region (CN North-Beijing4) still does not beat the price leader Google (also compared with the cheapest region US Iowa).

What’s next?

We are a cloud specialist with a multi-cloud focus and can tell you what the best cloud is for you, maybe it’s a mix of several? We’re here to help. With our Multi Cloud Portal you also get all information centrally accessible and our support is unbeatable. Interested? Contact us, we are happy to help!