Google Cloud is an Infrastructure as a Service Cloud (IaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) solution that provides infrastructure tools and services for building applications on top of a public cloud computing platform. As one of the leading global infrastructures, this product allows users to securely manage enterprise data, receive valuable insights, and store documents. Google Cloud provides its various services through tools and services for data warehousing, security key enforcement, application programming interface (API) management, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML).
The use cases of Google Cloud can be divided into four main categories:
- Big data
- Compute
- Services
- Storage
The solution is utilized by organizations of all sizes and industries, as it is suitable for the following purposes:
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Running and building applications: Google Cloud lets businesses run and build their applications anywhere because of its commitment to open-source, hybrid, and multi-cloud. This can accelerate development time as businesses avoid vendor lock-in.
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Data insight: Google Cloud provides companies with advanced ML and analytics for their data. This can facilitate business decisions and improve work processes, as every team member can have access to data reports via this solution.
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Security: Utilizing Google's technology, this solution helps users protect and defend their data and applications against threats and harmful activities.
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Team collaboration: Google Cloud offers companies advanced collaboration features. They can integrate email, chat, video calling, and document collaboration all in one place when using this platform.
Google Cloud Features
Google Cloud offers multiple features for its clients. Some of these include:
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Big data features: The solution offers full big data services through tools such as BigQuery and Google Cloud Dataflow. These tools allow users to process large data queries as well as create, monitor, and receive reports from data processing pipelines.
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Containers: The solution offers containers, which allow users to speed up deployment and scale applications.
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Cloud debugger: This feature allows users to debug code during the production process. In this way, businesses are able to locate issues early in the code and fix them before deploying the application.
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Cloud save: This feature provides the ability to synchronize cloud-stored data across all devices an organization is supporting. Through it, users can save and retrieve information and maintain all data copies up to date.
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Cloud trace: This Google Cloud feature allows users to detect the reasons for performance bottlenecks and fix the issues. It also provides users with information on the time their product takes to process certain requests, allowing them to follow performance more closely.
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Hosting features: The solution offers two hosting options. App Engine is the PaaS of Google Cloud and Computes Engine is their IaaS.
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Load balancing: This feature balances the traffic of multiple compute instances across various geographic regions.
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Maintenance: Users receive frequent insight into the performance of their applications and through automations, Google Cloud lets them know of any issues that need to be fixed.
Google Cloud Benefits
Google Cloud brings various benefits to its users. Some of these include the following:
- The pricing model of Google Cloud allows users to pay only for the selected features and tools they wish to use, which saves their organizations money.
- Users can rely on accelerated content delivery through Google Cloud Content Delivery Network (CDN).
- Google Cloud offers a wide variety of tools and libraries, which assist users in the development of cloud applications.
- The tool has an advanced admin control that allows users to easily add or remove new users and maintain the security of business platforms.
- Google Cloud offers consulting services whereby experts provide assistance with cloud strategy development.
- The platform is updated on a frequent basis, which can increase companies' productivity through consistent innovations.
- Google Cloud offers remote access from anywhere at all times via Google's web applications.
- The solution reduces the risks of data breaches as it offers minimal storage of offline data.
- Users can expect support not only from the platform but from the growing online community as well, where their questions can be answered in a timely manner.
- The product provides detailed documentation for its clients, allowing them to benefit from tutorials and other samples, in order to learn to work with it in the most efficient way.
Reviews from Real Users
Isuru P., an assistant vice president at a tech services company, likes Google Cloud because it is easy to deploy next-generation applications using it.
An IT solutions consultant at a tech services company rates Google Cloud highly because they find the solution stable with a good user experience and a straightforward setup.
Windows Azure is Microsoft's cloud platform, where developers can create, deploy, and maintain their apps. This cloud application platform allows developers to concentrate on the actual applications, while it takes care of all the elements behind the apps.
Windows Azure works across multiple frameworks and languages. It is fully scalable, localized in that it is hosted globally in many datacenters, and has widespread capabilities with elements of application development, deployment, and management.
Azure is comprised of several different service modules, including Infrastructure; Web; Mobile; Dev & Test; Big Data; Media;Storage, Backup & Recovery; and Identity & Access Management.
Microsoft Azure works as a:
- Platform as a service (PaaS)
- Software as a service (SaaS)
- Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)
Microsoft Azure is available:
- On-premises
- Hybrid
- Multi-cloud
- At the edge
Compared to its competitors, Microsoft Azure:
- Has more affordable features
- Has easier migration for organizations already using other Microsoft tools
- Has several educational resources available
- Provides robust support
- Is ideal for small and large businesses
Microsoft Azure Features:
- Scalability
- Stability
- Flexibility
- Azure Site Recovery
- Active Directory
- Monitoring features
- Cloud-based
- Automated tasks
- Change capability cadence
- Showback capabilities
- Information protection
- Azure Data Lake
- Excellent portal
- Intuitive user interface
- Remote desktop
- Fast provisioning
- Data security
- Data resiliency
- Speed of service
- Integrated delivery pipeline
- Disaster recovery
- Robust templates
- Flexible coding languages
- Virtual systems testing
Benefits of Microsoft Azure:
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Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Because Microsoft Azure is an IaaS, organizations can deploy as well as manage applications easily and quickly. Azure also provides you with the ability to customize the cloud software to meet your specific business needs.
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Seamless integration: Microsoft Azure is built to seamlessly integrate with existing IT departments via hybrid databases, secure private connections, and storage solutions.
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Cost-effective: Because Azure can harmoniously exist in your business environment with your data center, it is a very cost-effective solution.
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Analytics support: Azure is designed with built-in support that is used to analyze data and provide key insights. Azure offers Cortana Analytics, Stream Analytics, Machine Learning, and SQL services.
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Unique storage system: Compared to other cloud services, Microsoft Azure has more data centers and delivery points, which helps create an optimal user experience and also helps deliver content faster. In addition, Microsoft Azure makes it possible for organizations to exchange content across several virtual machines.
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Enhanced flexibility: Azure provides extreme flexibility by allowing you to choose any level of functionality you require. It also supports many of the same technologies IT teams and developers usually depend on, making it easier for them to manage.
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Easy implementation: Microsoft Azure is easy and quick to deploy. If necessary, you can change web apps to Azure with almost zero downtime.
Reviews from Real Users:
"It is a flexible solution that is straightforward to use," says the principal consultant at a computer software company.
OmarJ., future datacenter consultant: Microsoft Azure Cloud at a tech company, adds that "The user interface is very nice and makes everything easy to use."
“You can build an environment in minutes. It's very good in terms of being an infrastructure as a service, and I found that really fascinating,” says an information technology consultant at a computer software company.
"I think Azure's level of automation to achieve efficiency or agility is valuable. I also like the change capability cadence, the showback capabilities, and understanding what our costs are," says an enterprise architect at an energy/utilities company.
Marco C., Ing. at Wolters Kluwer, says "The valuable features of Microsoft Azure are that it is cloud-based and has good storage. The storage is completely managed by Azure. We do not need to do any patching of security because it is handled by Azure which is a benefit. The solution is fully compatible with the Microsoft technology stack and is very scalable."
"The most valuable feature of Microsoft Azure is it has everything together in one place. It is one large tool with lots of small tools that are updated often," says the owner of a media company.
I have worked with AWS for 4 years now and I agree with the recommendation.
If you make some research AWS will be shown as the top solution in many white papers. We made an evaluation to compare it with Google and Azure. In our case, AWS is the most cost-effective.
Depending on the solution you are running you need to check the license cost for your servers. If you have a lot of Windows solutions Azure may be a better fit.
Regarding performance, we did have an incident where the complete region was unreachable. So, make sure to consider recovery sites.
I would like to recommend MS Azure to start with.
The reasons are:
1. I bet you're using many Microsoft tools, like Office 365, Team, etc. so you're pretty familiar with the MS UX which is excellent.
2. It's easy to start/learn Azure and configurations, they have very detailed documentation online.
3. It's relatively cheaper with Azure IaaS with good starting numbers of notes/services.