AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud: Which Cloud Reigns in 2018?

The rapid evolution of cloud computing has revolutionized the way businesses deploy and manage their IT infrastructure. By 2018, the cloud market was dominated by three major players: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Each of these platforms has carved a distinct niche in the industry, offering a diverse set of services and capabilities. Understanding their strengths, service portfolios, market presence, and development trajectories is crucial for any organization seeking to adopt cloud technologies in this competitive landscape.

The Rise of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing enables companies to access computing resources such as servers, storage, and databases over the internet, eliminating the need for on-premises data centers. This paradigm shift provides scalability, flexibility, and cost savings. Instead of purchasing and maintaining expensive hardware, businesses can rent resources on demand and scale them according to workload requirements. As a result, cloud adoption accelerated across sectors including finance, healthcare, retail, government, and technology startups.

The three dominant providers—AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud—have each focused on building extensive ecosystems to meet the growing demands of their customers. Their cloud infrastructures span multiple geographic regions and availability zones to ensure high availability and disaster recovery capabilities.

Amazon Web Services: The Market Leader

Amazon Web Services, launched in 2006, was the first major cloud provider and quickly set the standard for the industry. By 2018, AWS held the largest share of the cloud infrastructure market, a position driven by its extensive service offerings and global infrastructure. AWS’s strength lies in its maturity and breadth. It offers over 140 fully featured services, including computing power through Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), scalable storage via Simple Storage Service (S3), managed databases like Amazon RDS, and advanced machine learning services.

One key advantage of AWS is its vast global presence, with data centers in numerous regions across North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, South America, and the Middle East. This geographic distribution allows AWS to provide low latency and redundancy, ensuring business continuity for multinational organizations.

AWS also invests heavily in innovation, continuously launching new services such as serverless computing with AWS Lambda and container orchestration through Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). Its marketplace offers a wide range of third-party applications and integrations, enhancing flexibility for enterprises.

Despite its many advantages, AWS’s pricing can be complex due to the variety of available services and billing options. However, its pay-as-you-go model, combined with reserved instances and savings plans, offers cost optimization for businesses with predictable workloads.

Microsoft Azure: Leveraging Enterprise Experience

Microsoft Azure, introduced in 2010, grew rapidly to challenge AWS’s dominance. Microsoft’s long-standing enterprise relationships gave Azure a competitive edge, especially for organizations already invested in Microsoft software products. Azure’s seamless integration with Windows Server, Active Directory, and SQL Server makes it an attractive choice for businesses seeking hybrid cloud solutions that combine on-premises infrastructure with cloud resources.

By 2018, Azure had established a comprehensive suite of services including virtual machines, app services, databases, and AI tools. It emphasized hybrid capabilities through Azure Stack, allowing companies to deploy cloud services in their data centers for regulatory or latency reasons. This approach helped Azure appeal to sectors like government, healthcare, and finance, where compliance and data sovereignty are critical.

Azure also invested heavily in security and compliance, aligning with a wide array of international standards. Its Security Center provides unified threat protection and policy management across cloud and on-premises environments.

In terms of global infrastructure, Azure expanded its footprint with data centers in more than 50 regions worldwide, aiming to match or exceed AWS’s geographic coverage. This network supports Azure’s hybrid and multi-cloud strategies, enabling customers to deploy workloads closer to end users.

The pricing structure of Azure is consumption-based, similar to AWS, but includes unique benefits such as hybrid licensing discounts. Azure’s user-friendly portal and extensive developer tools further enhance its appeal for organizations seeking to modernize applications and leverage cloud innovation.

Google Cloud Platform: Innovation and Open Source Leadership

Google Cloud Platform is the youngest of the three but made significant strides by 2018, especially in areas like big data, artificial intelligence, and container orchestration. Google leveraged its expertise in search, data analytics, and machine learning to differentiate its cloud services.

One of GCP’s core strengths lies in its network infrastructure, which includes one of the world’s largest private fiber optic networks. This backbone provides fast, reliable, and secure connections between data centers, offering low latency and high throughput for cloud applications.

GCP is recognized for pioneering open source technologies such as Kubernetes, the industry-standard container orchestration platform originally developed by Google. Its strong commitment to open source extends to tools like TensorFlow for machine learning and BigQuery for data analytics, attracting developers and data scientists focused on innovation.

Google Cloud’s service offerings include compute engines, serverless functions, managed Kubernetes, scalable storage, and a suite of AI and machine learning APIs. Its BigQuery service enables enterprises to perform real-time analytics on massive datasets without infrastructure management overhead.

The pricing model of Google Cloud is designed to be simple and customer-friendly. It automatically applies sustained use discounts to workloads running for extended periods and offers committed use contracts for further savings. This transparent pricing appeals to startups and companies seeking predictable costs.

While Google Cloud’s market share in 2018 was smaller compared to AWS and Azure, its rapid growth and focus on emerging technologies have made it a compelling choice for organizations pursuing digital transformation and cloud-native development.

Comparing Ecosystems and Partner Networks

Another important factor in the cloud provider comparison is the breadth and depth of their ecosystems. AWS has cultivated one of the largest marketplaces for third-party applications, enabling customers to deploy software solutions that complement native cloud services. This ecosystem includes consulting partners, managed service providers, and software vendors offering tools for security, monitoring, migration, and more.

Microsoft Azure leverages Microsoft’s extensive partner network, including independent software vendors (ISVs) and system integrators experienced in enterprise IT. This ecosystem is particularly strong in industries with established Microsoft infrastructure, facilitating cloud adoption through familiar tools and support channels.

Google Cloud focuses on partnerships with startups, open source communities, and enterprises pushing AI and data analytics innovation. Collaborations with companies like SAP, Salesforce, and Cisco help broaden Google Cloud’s appeal to traditional enterprises moving towards cloud-native architectures.

Service Availability and Geographic Reach

In 2018, the geographic distribution of data centers was a key differentiator among cloud providers. AWS led with the most global regions and availability zones, followed closely by Microsoft Azure, which aggressively expanded its data center presence to meet local data residency requirements. Google Cloud, while having fewer regions, strategically targeted key markets and leveraged its global network for optimized performance.

The availability of multiple availability zones within each region allows providers to offer high availability and disaster recovery options. Customers can design their architectures to be resilient against failures by replicating workloads across zones or regions.

This global presence impacts latency, regulatory compliance, and disaster recovery planning, which are essential considerations for enterprises operating across borders.

Innovation and Future Outlook in 2018

Each cloud provider’s roadmap and innovation pace influence their competitive positioning. AWS’s focus on breadth means continuous additions of specialized services such as IoT, blockchain, and quantum computing platforms. Azure’s investments in hybrid cloud, AI, and edge computing reflect Microsoft’s strategy to support enterprise digital transformation. Google Cloud’s innovation centers on open source, machine learning, and data analytics, enabling cutting-edge workloads.

The competitive landscape in 2018 shows that no single cloud platform can claim superiority in every category. Instead, the choice depends on business priorities such as existing technology stacks, budget constraints, geographic requirements, and desired services.

By 2018, AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform each emerged as leaders in the cloud infrastructure market, offering powerful tools and capabilities that address diverse customer needs. AWS remains the dominant force with its vast service catalog and global reach. Azure appeals to enterprises invested in Microsoft technologies seeking hybrid solutions. Google Cloud attracts innovators focused on data analytics and machine learning.

Understanding the foundational differences and strengths of these providers sets the stage for deeper exploration into pricing, security, performance, and real-world applications. The following parts of this series will provide a comprehensive analysis to help businesses determine which cloud platform is the best fit for their goals in 2018.

Security and Compliance in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud in 2018

Security remains one of the paramount concerns for organizations adopting cloud computing. In 2018, enterprises and developers evaluated cloud providers not only on features and costs but also on how effectively their data and applications are protected. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform have all invested heavily in enhancing their security frameworks and compliance certifications, reflecting the critical nature of trust in cloud environments.

This section examines the security models, compliance certifications, and core features of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, highlighting their strengths and areas to consider when selecting a cloud provider.

Shared Responsibility Model

All three providers emphasize a shared responsibility model for security. Under this model, the cloud provider is responsible for the security of the cloud, which includes protecting the infrastructure, hardware, and foundational services. Customers, meanwhile, retain responsibility for securing their data, user access, applications, and configurations in the cloud.

Understanding this delineation is key for organizations to implement appropriate security controls, avoiding gaps or overlaps in protection.

Amazon Web Services Security Features

AWS maintains a comprehensive security program combining infrastructure protections, identity management, encryption, and compliance frameworks.

Identity and Access Management

AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a core service enabling granular control over who can access resources and what actions they can perform. Features include multi-factor authentication, fine-grained permission policies, roles for service-to-service access, and temporary security credentials.

IAM supports integration with external identity providers through standards such as SAML, facilitating single sign-on (SSO) and federated access for enterprises.

Encryption and Data Protection

AWS offers robust encryption options for data at rest and in transit. Storage services like S3, EBS, and RDS support server-side encryption with AWS-managed keys or customer-managed keys stored in AWS Key Management Service (KMS).

TLS encryption is standard for data in transit, with services supporting HTTPS endpoints and VPN connectivity options. Customers can also implement client-side encryption for sensitive workloads.

Monitoring and Threat Detection

AWS provides a suite of monitoring tools such as CloudTrail for logging API calls, CloudWatch for operational metrics, and AWS Config for resource inventory and compliance auditing. These services enable the detection of suspicious activities and facilitate incident response.

AWS GuardDuty, launched shortly after 2018, represents advanced threat detection powered by machine learning, but in 2018, customers relied on partner solutions and native tools for threat intelligence.

Compliance and Certifications

AWS supports numerous compliance standards critical for regulated industries, including ISO 27001, SOC 1/2/3, HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and GDPR readiness. The AWS Artifact portal provides on-demand access to audit reports and compliance documents, simplifying customer audits.

Microsoft Azure Security Capabilities

Microsoft Azure approaches cloud security with a strong emphasis on identity, data protection, and compliance tailored for hybrid environments and enterprises with existing Microsoft investments.

Azure Active Directory and Access Control

Azure Active Directory (AAD) is a cloud-based identity and access management service integral to Azure’s security. AAD offers SSO, multi-factor authentication, conditional access policies, and identity protection mechanisms.

Azure also supports role-based access control (RBAC), enabling detailed permission assignments to users, groups, and applications, aligned with organizational roles.

Encryption and Network Security

Azure provides encryption at rest and in transit across its services. Transparent Data Encryption protects Azure SQL databases, while Storage Service Encryption applies to blob, file, and queue storage. Customers can manage encryption keys using Azure Key Vault or bring their keys.

Network security features include Azure Firewall, Network Security Groups (NSGs), and Azure DDoS Protection, guarding against network attacks and unauthorized access. Virtual network service endpoints allow secure connectivity between Azure services and virtual networks.

Security Management and Monitoring

Azure Security Center is a unified management system that provides continuous assessment, actionable recommendations, and threat protection across Azure and on-premises workloads. It integrates with Azure Sentinel, Microsoft’s security information and event management (SIEM) solution, to enhance threat detection.

Azure Monitor and Log Analytics enable detailed telemetry collection, helping organizations maintain visibility and respond quickly to incidents.

Compliance Offerings

Microsoft Azure maintains an extensive portfolio of compliance certifications, including ISO 27001, HIPAA, FedRAMP, GDPR, SOC reports, and industry-specific standards. Azure provides a Trust Center with detailed compliance documentation and customer guidance.

Azure’s hybrid benefit licensing also ensures compliance continuity for enterprises transitioning from on-premises to cloud.

Google Cloud Platform Security Approach

Google Cloud builds its security infrastructure on Google’s decades of experience securing global services like Search and Gmail. The platform’s security model emphasizes automation, data protection, and innovation in threat detection.

Identity and Access Management

Google Cloud IAM offers fine-grained access control, allowing administrators to assign roles to users and service accounts based on least privilege principles. It supports multi-factor authentication and integrates with Google’s Cloud Identity for unified identity management.

Google also supports SAML-based federation and OAuth 2.0 for secure application authentication.

Data Encryption and Privacy

Google encrypts all data at rest and in transit by default, using advanced cryptographic standards. Customers can also use Cloud Key Management Service to control their encryption keys or employ customer-supplied encryption keys for additional security layers.

Google Cloud’s VPC Service Controls enable isolation of resources, reducing risks from data exfiltration in multi-tenant environments.

Security Operations and Threat Intelligence

Stackdriver, Google’s monitoring and logging suite, provides integrated visibility into applications and infrastructure. Google Cloud also offers Cloud Security Command Center, which consolidates security findings, vulnerability assessments, and threat intelligence into a single pane.

Google uses machine learning to identify threats and anomalies across its network, supporting proactive defense mechanisms.

Compliance and Certifications

Google Cloud complies with key industry standards such as ISO 27001, SOC 1/2/3, HIPAA, PCI DSS, GDPR, and FedRAMP. The company publishes transparency reports and compliance certifications to help customers meet regulatory requirements.

Google’s commitment to privacy and data protection makes it a preferred choice for data-sensitive organizations in finance, healthcare, and government sectors.

Comparative Insights on Security and Compliance

While AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud all provide comprehensive security capabilities, differences exist that can influence customer choice:

• AWS offers the broadest set of mature security services and a vast ecosystem of third-party security tools, which appeals to enterprises with complex security requirements.

• Azure’s deep integration with Microsoft identity and management tools benefits organizations heavily invested in Microsoft technology stacks and hybrid cloud models.

• Google Cloud’s automated security features and default encryption policies appeal to customers seeking simplicity and cutting-edge threat detection technologies.

From a compliance standpoint, all three providers support the certifications needed by most industries. However, companies with specific regulatory demands should review each provider’s certifications and documentation to ensure alignment.

The Importance of Customer Security Practices

Despite advanced provider security, customers must implement strong governance policies, including:

• Regularly reviewing and tightening identity and access management configurations.

• Encrypting sensitive data and managing keys responsibly.

• Continuously monitoring resource usage and security logs.

• Applying patches and updates to cloud-hosted applications.

• Conducting regular security assessments and audits.

Failing to do so may expose organizations to breaches even with a secure cloud infrastructure.

 

In 2018, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud each delivered robust security architectures and compliance frameworks, catering to diverse business needs. AWS leads with a comprehensive toolset and established ecosystem, Azure excels in identity management and hybrid cloud integration, while Google Cloud innovates with automation and default encryption.

Understanding these differences, along with the shared responsibility model, helps organizations design effective cloud security strategies. The next installment will explore performance and global infrastructure, key considerations for latency-sensitive and geographically distributed applications.

Performance and Global Infrastructure in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud in 2018

As organizations increasingly rely on cloud platforms to run mission-critical applications, the performance and availability of these environments become paramount considerations. The ability of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform to deliver low latency, high throughput, and global reach significantly influences their adoption. In 2018, these providers competed by expanding their data center footprints, improving networking technologies, and optimizing performance across services.

This final part of the series provides an in-depth analysis of the performance capabilities and global infrastructure of AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, highlighting their strengths, geographic presence, and what customers should consider when choosing a cloud provider for performance-sensitive workloads.

Global Data Center Footprint and Regions

A key differentiator among cloud providers is the number and distribution of their physical data centers, organized into regions and availability zones (AZs). These locations allow customers to deploy applications close to end-users, reducing latency and ensuring high availability.

Amazon Web Services

By 2018, AWS maintained the largest global footprint, operating 17 geographic regions with 50 availability zones worldwide. This widespread presence spanned North America, South America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East, with plans to open new regions continuously.

Each AWS region contains multiple isolated AZs connected by low-latency links, designed to provide fault tolerance and disaster recovery capabilities. AWS also offers edge locations through its CloudFront content delivery network (CDN), enhancing performance for static and dynamic content delivery globally.

The breadth of AWS’s global infrastructure is a compelling advantage for multinational organizations requiring local data residency and redundancy.

Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure operated in more than 30 regions globally in 2018, more than any other cloud provider at that time. Azure’s regions cover over 140 countries with a rapidly growing network of data centers.

Azure regions are made up of multiple availability zones, offering redundancy and failover capabilities. Azure’s ExpressRoute service enables private, high-speed connections between on-premises networks and Azure data centers, improving performance and security.

Azure’s extensive regional presence makes it suitable for enterprises with complex geographic requirements and compliance needs.

Google Cloud Platform

Google Cloud’s global infrastructure in 2018 included 15 regions with 44 zones, focusing on major metropolitan areas across North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. Google’s approach leverages its private global fiber network, which provides high-speed, low-latency connectivity between its data centers.

Google Cloud CDN utilizes Google’s edge points of presence, accelerating content delivery close to users. The provider’s network is recognized for its speed and efficiency, benefiting applications with stringent performance needs.

Although Google’s region count was lower than AWS and Azure in 2018, its strategic locations and backbone network offered competitive advantages.

Performance and Network Latency

Network latency and throughput are critical for cloud applications, especially those involving real-time processing, video streaming, gaming, or financial transactions.

AWS benefits from a vast private fiber network interconnecting regions and AZs, minimizing latency between services. Its global CloudFront CDN accelerates content delivery by caching data at edge locations worldwide.

Azure’s network performance is enhanced by its ExpressRoute connections and peering with multiple ISPs. This results in reduced latency for hybrid cloud scenarios where data transfers between on-premises and cloud environments are frequent.

Google Cloud’s network is distinguished by its use of software-defined networking (SDN) and Google’s backbone infrastructure. These technologies enable high throughput and low latency across regions and zones. Google also supports intelligent routing to optimize network paths dynamically.

Independent tests in 2018 indicated that Google Cloud often had lower latency within its regions, while AWS offered better overall geographic coverage and Azure excelled in hybrid cloud scenarios.

Compute and Storage Performance

The performance of compute instances and storage services varies based on hardware options, virtualization technologies, and configurations.

AWS offers a wide range of instance types optimized for compute, memory, storage, and GPU workloads. It’s Nitro system, introduced before 2018, offloads virtualization functions to dedicated hardware, improving instance performance and security.

Storage options in AWS include Elastic Block Store (EBS) with different volume types (SSD, provisioned IOPS), S3 object storage, and Glacier for archival. EBS volumes deliver consistent low-latency performance critical for databases and transactional applications.

Azure provides Virtual Machines with flexible sizing and premium storage backed by SSDs for high-performance workloads. Azure Blob Storage offers scalable object storage with tiered options for hot, cool, and archive data, optimizing cost and access speed.

Google Cloud offers custom machine types, allowing tailored CPU and memory configurations. Persistent Disks provide SSD and standard HDD options with consistent performance. Google Cloud Storage is designed for high durability and availability, with multi-regional buckets ensuring fast access worldwide.

Benchmark comparisons from 2018 showed AWS generally led in compute instance variety and storage IOPS performance, while Google Cloud’s custom machine types gave it an edge in workload optimization. Azure’s premium storage matched competitors for latency-sensitive applications.

High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Ensuring continuous availability and rapid recovery from failures is essential for enterprises running critical workloads.

AWS’s architecture of multiple AZs within each region allows customers to deploy fault-tolerant applications that can withstand data center outages. Features like Elastic Load Balancer and Auto Scaling improve availability by distributing workloads and adapting to traffic changes.

Azure’s availability zones and paired regions facilitate disaster recovery scenarios. Azure Site Recovery enables replication of on-premises virtual machines or Azure VMs to secondary locations, providing seamless failover and recovery.

Google Cloud’s multi-zone and multi-region deployments support application resilience. Its global network design helps maintain uptime even during regional failures, while Cloud Load Balancing distributes traffic efficiently to healthy instances.

All providers offer SLAs with high uptime guarantees, typically 99.9% or higher, depending on service configuration.

Cost and Performance Trade-offs

Performance and global infrastructure come with cost implications. Selecting data center regions closer to users may reduce latency but increase expenses due to regional pricing differences. Similarly, higher-performance compute and storage options usually carry premium prices.

AWS’s pricing model is complex but offers discounts through reserved instances and spot pricing, enabling cost-effective scaling for variable workloads.

Azure’s pricing is competitive and benefits organizations leveraging existing Microsoft licenses. ExpressRoute connections, while improving performance, add to costs.

Google Cloud offers sustained use discounts automatically, rewarding longer-running workloads. Its network efficiencies can translate into savings for data-intensive applications.

Balancing performance requirements with budget constraints requires careful analysis of workload characteristics and provider pricing models.

Performance and global infrastructure are critical factors influencing the choice between AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. In 2018:

• AWS’s extensive global footprint and broad service portfolio make it ideal for enterprises needing wide geographic coverage and diverse compute options.

• Azure’s vast regional presence and hybrid cloud capabilities appeal to organizations with complex compliance requirements and existing Microsoft ecosystems.

• Google Cloud’s superior network performance and innovative compute customization benefit latency-sensitive and data-heavy applications.
  

Organizations should consider their application latency tolerance, disaster recovery needs, geographic user distribution, and budget constraints when selecting a cloud provider. Testing workloads in multiple environments can provide practical insights into real-world performance differences.

Final Thoughts

Choosing between AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud in 2018 largely depends on the specific needs and priorities of your organization. AWS leads with the most mature and extensive global infrastructure, making it a reliable choice for enterprises seeking broad geographic reach and a wide variety of services. Azure’s rapid expansion and strong integration with Microsoft products make it especially attractive for businesses invested in the Microsoft ecosystem and those requiring hybrid cloud solutions. Google Cloud distinguishes itself with a powerful network backbone and flexible compute options, which benefit workloads demanding high performance and scalability.

Performance, cost, and geographic presence should be evaluated in the context of your workload requirements and user base. While all three providers continue to innovate aggressively, assessing your organization’s long-term cloud strategy and running pilot tests can help ensure you select the platform best suited to deliver reliability, scalability, and value.

Ultimately, there is no one-size-fits-all answer. Each cloud leader has unique strengths that, when matched properly with your business goals, can unlock the full potential of cloud computing.

 

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