Amazon and Google started out being unlikely competitors.
One started in 1994 by selling books and the other in 1997 by designing a new search engine for the Internet. In 2002, both realized that they needed to open up their respective systems to developer communities as a technology disrupter, gain traction, and grow fast.
Both gave brick and mortar businesses a run for their money. Both ended as undisputed leaders and have redefined the industry in their own ways.
Both Google and Amazon broadly attract the same segment of consumers, albeit for different reasons.
They have not looked back ever since. The Titans are now eyeing domination of the Enterprise segment with cloud based web hosting services and solutions. Amazon has a significant lead here. What does it take for them to come out as the winner? Is the threat from Google real?
In continuing our series on technology game-changers, we focus on a summary of differences between the Google Cloud and the Amazon AWS from an end-user and developer perspective. In an earlier series (*ISMAC) we had discussed the ubiquitous nature of CLOUD infrastructure in current technology solutions.
Cloud Vendors and Hosting Providers are available dime-a-dozen.
Hosting Providers are good enough for simple web site hosting, be it local or regional. Most hosting providers provide base hardware
infrastructure (either Physical or Virtual Machines) with Linux or Windows Operating System and the corresponding Web(App)server (Apache, Nginx), Database (MySQL), Programming Language Support (PHP, Python, Java) etc.
Cloud Vendors on the other hand provide a whole slew of ready made and integrated software support like Email, Queuing, Messaging, BigData, NoSQL, Storage, Networking, Billing, Logging etc. These services are all independent, but can be installed and setup to work cohesively with each other. In this article, we will look at the offerings
of “Google Cloud” and “Amazon AWS”.
Comprises of a separate Compute engine and App engine. The Compute engine provides the raw hardware and allows the developer to install any tools/technologies they choose. The App Engine on the other hand, comes pre-built with support for PHP, Python (language
interpreters). It allows the developers to directly upload their source code and setup the environment. Google Cloud also provides out-of-the-box one-click deployment of numerous tools in the Data Store, Programming, and Source Code Control, Configuration and Build Management and other Front-End, Mid-Tier, and Back-end packages.
Costing is tiered with a free-tier for almost all functionalities including storage and network usage (upload/download). This approach is
convenient for developers and companies to try out in a smaller scale free before choosing this as a production and scaling platform.
On the other side, setup is slightly non-intuitive for the first-time cloud user. The developer will require a few trials before getting comfortable with
the offerings.
The console is organized very intuitively under various categories – Computing Resources, Storage, Content Delivery, Databases, Networking, Administration and Security, Deployment, Analytics, Mobile, Application Services and Enterprise Services. Within each of these categories, the most common packages are provided in a single-click setup model. Impressive is the ability to setup your own
Simple Email Service, Simple Queuing Service, and Simple Notification Services (for server-side of mobile apps)
Costing is Free for the first 12 months. This provides a wonderful way
for developers and companies to test the platform and even use it in a
semi-production model.
AWS has a much bigger ecosystem and therefore has support on the Internet for almost all situations one could ever face.
Verdict
While both the offerings have similar setup and approach, Amazon’s AWS comes out better due to its maturity and developer-friendly tools. Google Cloud’s free limits are a wonderful idea that could potentially be adopted by AWS. This allows small companies to move to and continue on AWS (without charge) for their small footprint requirements. Google Cloud needs a bit of Usability improvements especially for the developer community.
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