Cloud Computing –A brief comparison of

Amazon Aws, IBM Cloud Computing,

Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure

Table of Contents
Sl. No. Topics Page
No.
1 Cloud Computing 2-3

2 Amazon Aws 3-4

3 IBM Cloud computing 4-5

4 Google Cloud 5-6

5 Microsoft azure 6-7

6 References 7

Submitted to
Prof Hemalatha Chandrashekhar

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CLOUD COMPUTING
Cloud computing are the remote servers on internet which are used to store, manage, and
process various services in addition to data, software, storage rather than a local server or
computer. There are mainly two types of cloud models

(1) Service Models: - There are three types of services based on business requirements

(a) SAAS (Software as A Service)

(b) PAAS (Platform as A Service)

(c)IAAS (Infrastructure as A Service)

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(2) Deployment Models: - There are three types of deployment models based medium on
which the services are provided to us: -

(a) Public Cloud:-In this type of model services are provided on cloud which is hosted by
the cloud provided and that service is open to all.

(b) Private Cloud:-In this type of model services are provided to a single occupant. So
occupant has the total control over it and can be modified according to needs.

(c) Hybrid Cloud: -This type of model is the combination of public cloud and private cloud
model. It is providing high security feature of private cloud and easy to access feature of public
cloud

AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS)

Amazon Web Services (AWS), which is a subsidiary of Amazon provides cloud computing
platforms to different users as per their need like individuals, companies and government.
Launched in March 2006, AWS offers 165 fully featured services from data centres globally.
AWS is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform.

For broad range of applications like compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics,
machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), security, and
application development, deployment, and management AWS provides broad range of service
selection as per the user need. Not just broad selection of services but in addition to have great
breadth of services, AWS has deepest functionality within those services. This makes the
process of migration from existing apps to the cloud easier, faster and more cost-effective.

AWS has millions of active customers across the globe from virtually every industry, every
size ranging from start-ups to public sector government organisations also. AWS partner
network includes systems integrators who specialize in AWS services and independent
software vendors (ISVs) who adapt their technology to work on AWS.

“The AWS Marketplace, a digital catalogue of software from ISVs that runs on AWS, offers
35 categories and more than 4,500 software listings from more than 1,400 ISVs, nearly two
times more software listings than you can find anywhere else.”

AWS is leading cloud platform because: -

 Through AWS cloud you can build nearly anything you could even imagine
 Two times more software listings than you can find anywhere else
 In 2014, AWS pioneered event-driven serverless computing space with the launch of
AWS Lambda. AWS Lambda lets developers run their code without provisioning or
managing servers, and you don’t have to worry about provisioning, scaling, patching,
or managing any of the underlying servers

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 In 2018, AWS became the first cloud provider to offer 100 Gbps of network bandwidth
with our C5 and EC2 instance types.
 AWS at a greater scale has most operational experience than any cloud service provider.
 AWS Architecture is most flexible and secure which supports 85 security standards and
compliance certifications and all 116 AWS services that store customer data offer the
ability to encrypt that data.
 AWS is continuously innovating at an unmatched pace covering the new areas like
machine learning, IoT, Serverless Computing.
 Advantage to differentiate and deliver solutions fast

“For the ninth consecutive year, AWS has secured the top-right corner of the Leader’s quadrant
in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), earning highest
placement for Ability to Execute and furthest for Completeness of Vision”.

IBM CLOUD COMPUTING

IBM Cloud Computing concept was started in 1960s with the development of Virtual Machine
(VM) , ( the virtual machines are the combination of both software’s and hardware’s) which
enabled memory sharing across different VMs which provided the mainframe with their own
portioned space that can help them to run multiple applications and process at the same time
and began selling its VM technology from 1972.

IBM build a strategy to develop its cloud computing infrastructure from 2007 as they wanted
to work towards the standardization and proliferation in their in the data that was produced and
looking forward to fill the gaps in the existing Cloud Computing environment.

IBM cloud or popularly known as IBM Smart Cloud work under three umbrellas knowns as
Smart Cloud Foundation, Smart Cloud Services and Smart Cloud solutions. The Smart Cloud
platform generally consists of IBM Software, Hardware, services and practises which is
beneficial to develop and deploy applications to support the business and open up new
innovative opportunities and revenue streams. The different kind of cloud models that are being
provided by IBM are public, private and Hybrid cloud models. The services that are being
provided include Cloud Functionality which provide ready for use functionality and are able to
add single or multiple services to any application and to provide an ease of using the cloud
computing to the customers they have provided Starter Kits that provide sample application
that are associated with runtime environment and by generating application templates they
provide predefined services to accomplish a particular task . It provides a cloud dashboard that
allows to create, view and manage the apps and services which will assist in organising spaces
and organizations.

The pricing strategy that is used by the IBM includes discounted subscription and price and
configure your own scenario and the charges vary on the basis of resources used (GB – hours)
.The no of features that are provided by IBM include Continuous Delivery which include
develop , build , test and deliver using DevOps best practises .It also provides with a unique

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feature known as Function as a platform (FaaS) which is a unique feature as the system
dynamically responds to the user needs . One of the most advanced and remarkable features of
the IBM Cloud Computing is that with changing needs and advancements in technology it is
also upgrading its services such as Analytics Engine and Internet of Things platform which
uses flexible framework to develop Hadoop and Spark Analytics applications. It combines
speed and easy to use programming model and a unified design that enables users to combine
interactive queries, streaming analytics, machine learning, and graph computation within a
single system and Internet of Things Platform where you can manage your connected devices
by the help of Watson Assistant which helps to build conversational interfaces with any
application .

The latest addition in the IBM Cloud Computing division is IBM Bluemix which supports
several programming languages which works with the Cloud Foundry which makes it faster
and easier to build , test and deploy applications providing a choice of clouds , different kinds
of framework and variety of application services .One of the most striking feature of Cloud
foundry is that it does not disrupt the current workflow and it is easily compatible with the
different technology and different tools that we use today and gives maximum flexibility to the
user . Currently IBM is working aggressively to become a market leader in the Cloud
Computing paradigm and to scale up its operations it has acquired Red Hat in a 34 Billion$
deal which is considered to be one of the biggest acquisition in the world .

GOOGLE CLOUD COMPUTING

Google Cloud Computing is a public cloud-based service delivered to the customers on pay-
per-use basis i.e. customised use. Cloud computing resources are made available to the
customers as per choice and their usage. The scalability and elasticity are landmark features
provided by the Google Computing Platform (GCP). Its primary service model is to develop
and deploy more modern, containerized applications. GCP strategy is to offer various discounts
for sustained and committed use. Some of its services that GCP operates are Google Compute
Engine, App Engine, Cloud Storage, Nearline, Big Query, Cloud Bigtable, Cloud SQL,
Kubernetes and many more.

What Google Cloud Platform does and why?

GCP’s speciality is to provide a place where individuals and enterprises can build and run
software which can be availed by the users on GCP itself. GCP products cover the categories
such as AI & machine learning, API management, Data Analytics, Databases, Developers
Tools, IoT, Hybrid and Multi cloud, management Tools, Media, Networking, Security and
Storage. GCP keeps track of all the resources it uses such as database queries, data storage,
network connectivity and how much processing power it consumes.

What are its Competitive Strengths?

Automating the deployment of modern applications: An app consists of many moving parts
because of which some developers prefer to build their apps in the cloud. Google is the

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originator of Kubernetes, which is an orchestrator for applications. It was a proactive approach

of google to automate the deployment of these multifaceted apps to the cloud.

Creative cost control: Instead of being a low-cost leader, it enables cost competitiveness in
certain “sweet spot” scenarios. For Instance, Google offers a life cycle manager for its data
storage which deletes the data that haven’t been used in days or more.

Friendlier hand-holding for first-time users: GCP guides its new users by providing step by
step examples of doing majority of the most common tasks, for example, running Linux based
virtual machine.

Google Cloud Storage Vs Amazon AWS

Since Amazon is the leader in the cloud services space, Google is trying to position is strategy
in the following ways-

1. As AWS is the leading player, Google is offering alternatives in custom instances and
pricing models which is giving customers certain advantages.
2. Apart from being the originator of Kubernetes, GCP also caters to customer’s needs by
avoiding vendor lock-in whereas Amazon Kubernetes system is centred only around
Amazon.
3. GCP focusses only on those successful services that customers actually demand and
not so much on experiments and beta tests that AWS conducts as that would not help
the company if it fails. AWS provides various service options which could act as a
disadvantage for them.

MICROSOFT AZURE
INTRODUCTION

In today’s day and age, the volume of data any organization carries with them in
humungous. Hence, working on a platform that is set up on-premises, to store this data, would
be infeasible. Microsoft, thus came up with its own cloud computing technology platform
called “Azure”. Microsoft had first announced “Azure” as an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
and Platform-As-A-Service (PaaS) platform in 2008 and have come up with new updates ever
since. All the regions have several sub-data centres under them that are capable of processing
and storing data that is hosted by hundreds of thousands of servers.

COMPUTING SERVICES

Even though Microsoft Azure comprises of a range of services, only the “compute” and
“storage” services are widely sought after. The score of computing services offered by Azure
include: Websites, Virtual Machines, Database-as-a-Service and Hadoop-as-a-Service.

(i) Websites: The users, if they already have a website or a web-application, can
move it into Microsoft Azure or if they do not have one they can easily create

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one from the scratch by using the Web Application gallery and in just a few
clicks, the website would be fully functional.
(ii) Virtual Machines: Microsoft Azure provides its users the feature of recreating
their personal desktops, where they do their computations, on its platform. This
just requires the user to screen-capture their personal work screen environment
and upload it to Azure. The additional advantage to this is that they only have
to pay for it when the virtual machine is in operation and just have to pay a
nominal cost for it to be stored and not in use.

CLOUD SERVICES
If a user wants to realize the maximum potential of his/her application running in the
cloud, it would be wiser to use Microsoft Azure Cloud Services rather than opting to go for the
Virtual machines because these services would include far lesser overhead administration as
most of the maintenance required for its operation is already carried out and presented. Here,
the user can also configure the cloud service to scale up or down according to the needs.

Tools For Cloud Computing: Microsoft Azure places no restrictions on the tools that
the users wish to use for cloud computing. It is accommodative of a huge spectrum of things
like applications written in Python to using other tools like MATLAB that the users feel are
mandatory to achieve the desired result. It offers:

(i) Cross Platform Support, where the research and academic users who are
familiar with MacOS or Windows or Linux can exploit Microsoft Azure’s
features such as Virtual Machines and Storage.
(ii) General Programming Support to programmers who wish to incorporate Java or
.NET or PHP or Ruby to build their cloud application.
(iii) Support for Python, where Azure has recognized and attributed iPython and
Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) tools. The users can thereby create
applications to perform robust statistical analysis and computations.

Reference Links
1. https://www.bmc.com/blogs/saas-vs-paas-vs-iaas-whats-the-difference-and-how-to-
choose/
2. https://aws.amazon.com/what-is-aws/
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Web_Services
4. https://www.cloudfoundry.org/
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM
6. https://www.ibm.com/in-en/cloud
7. https://www.techrepublic.com/article/google-cloud-platform-the-smart-persons-guide/

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