Google Cloud vs AWS: Which is best for your business?

Both AWS and GCP are excellent cloud platforms with their fair share of advantages and disadvantages. But choosing the right cloud service provider for your company comes down to your needs, goals and preferences. If you’re wondering which platform to use, GCP will be better for you if:

• You’re seeking cloud-based container tools. Google’s Kubernetes engine allows you to build, test and deploy applications quickly in any environment, whether a private data centre, public cloud or personal laptop.
• You’re invested in other Google products and services. It makes for a seamless integration.
• You’re building analytics/data-intensive applications. You’ll appreciate its BigQuery as it helps you analyse and manage your data with features like machine learning.
• You’re just starting with cloud computing, as the platform is easier to understand and navigate. It has an easier learning curve and better customer support than AWS.

GCP is best for:

• Companies that are direct competitors with Amazon and cannot use AWS.
• Companies keen on monitoring their infrastructure’s down and uptime. GCP’s operations suite gives you visibility into the performance of your applications and platform. You can set alerts to get notified when metrics are outside their expected ranges.
• Companies seeking unequaled throughput. Google’s global network offers 3X the throughput of AWS and Azure, the other top competing cloud providers.
• Developing cloud-native web and mobile apps.
• Migrating virtual machines without disrupting performance. Even though migration is a highly complex process involving many components, GCP allows for live migration of virtual machines while keeping your instances and application available.

With the pace at which GCP is developing, there’s a possibility it could replace AWS as the leader in cloud computing. Despite coming into the market late, the platform has built a solid customer profile with hotshot organisations like PayPal, Bloomberg, Target and Goldman Sachs. This is because it relies on Google’s global infrastructure, which is already tested and trusted.

GCP has also proven reliable and capable of handling complex cloud infrastructural needs. Plus, the platform capitalises on some of AWS’ weaknesses, like ease of use and pricing. On the flip side, AWS isn’t slowing down. The platform is constantly innovating to maintain its position at the top of the food chain.

Google Cloud Platform prides itself on offering a relatively lower cost than Amazon and other cloud providers. However, comparing both platforms’ pricing is very complicated because the prices differ according to individual use cases, and both platforms have different structures and naming conventions.

Both AWS and GCP use the pay-as-you-go model differently. For a common cloud resource like compute, where both providers offer similar services, GCP charges per second with automatic sustained use discounts. On the other hand, AWS charges per hour with prices depending on whether the required instance is on-demand, reserved or spot instance. The actual cost will depend on specific usage scenarios, but GCP’s pricing model may offer more flexibility, especially if the specific workload does not run continuously. You can use the Google Cloud price calculator to estimate the monthly cost of running cloud infrastructure.

If you’re a new GCP customer, you’ll get 300 USD in free credit to deploy your first project. They offer automatic discounts for running specific Compute Engine resources for a significant portion of the billing month. They call them sustained use discounts. The platform also offers committed use contracts for Compute Engine and Cloud SQL, where they give you a discounted price if you commit to purchasing a certain level of resource for 1 or 3 years.

This question has no straightforward answer because what constitutes “better cloud computing software” is subjective. Your decision should always be based on your specific infrastructural needs, budget and business goals. And the right cloud computing service will help your business achieve its goals by optimising your operations.

GCP’s storage features include Cloud Storage, Cloud Spanner and Cloud SQL. Amazon’s are Simple Storage Service (S3), Amazon Elastic Book Store (EBS) and Amazon Glacier. Both platforms deliver reliable and secure storage services; however, GCP is more desirable for users building AI and Big data applications. For example, Google’s BigTable can process up to five billion requests per second at peak and Cloud Spanner up to two billion. Customers using BigQuery can process data beyond petabytes and terabytes per second. Google’s Vertex AI is also very powerful for big analytics. You can use it to train and deliver machine learning models fast with 80% less code.

Both platforms offer advanced security features to ensure your data is secure. However, GCP further integrates with other security products on Google, like the Google Cloud Armor and Google Identity Aware-Proxy. In addition to security measures, the platform offers tools to ensure you comply with privacy and data security regulations. Examples include California Consumer Privacy Act and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

GCP and AWS provide on-demand computing services that give you access to virtual machines. These virtual machines function like traditional computers and allow you to build and run applications without managing any underlying infrastructure. But, there are differences in what each platform calls their compute product/service.

GCP compute services include:

• Google Compute Engine: an IaaS that provides virtual machines for any project.
• Google App Engine: the first platform-as-a-service product by Google that allows developers to build web apps on a remote server.
• Google Kubernetes Engine: a managed container service for deploying and managing containers on GCP.

On AWS, compute services include:



• Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2): The platform’s infrastructure-as-a-service for accessing virtual machines.
• Amazon EC2 Container Service: Amazon’s container service for managing and deploying containers
• AWS Lambda: A serverless computing platform to allow developers run code without managing or provisioning any servers.

The main difference between these compute engines is that Amazon’s EC2 gives developers resizable compute capacity in the cloud. Google’s Compute Engine, on the other hand, allows developers to run large-scale workloads on VMs hosted on Google’s infrastructure.

The managed databases-as-a-service (DBaaS) that AWS and GCP provide are very similar. In this service, they handle the entire process of configuring, scaling, managing and backing up your databases in the public or hybrid cloud so you can focus on other parts of your project. The only difference between both providers is the names they use and their pricing, which vary due to several factors.

Both AWS and GCP provide application integration and API management for connecting and managing multiple services within their ecosystem and external applications. They also provide numerous SDKs and client libraries to enable you integrate popular programming languages and platforms.

Google Cloud Platform’s network services include Cloud Load Balancing, Cloud DNS and Cloud VPN. AWS’s services include Amazon Route 53, Amazon Direct Connect and Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Both cloud providers offer very powerful networking capabilities. But Google’s load balancing is faster than AWS. Also, since Google already handles some of the technical details, configuring load balancers on GCP is easier than on AWS.