overview #

The adoption of cloud platforms has been adopted by various companies and projects to introduce new functions, reduce costs, and improve scalability. In addition, the number of individuals using it is increasing, and it has promoted recent business startups. Due to this situation, not a few companies are moving from on-premises (own equipment) to the cloud.

Cloud platforms basically provide services that help develop servers, storage, databases, software, etc. through the Internet, and the prices, functions, and convenience of each company’s cloud platform are different.

Here, we compare each cloud platform and show you the best option for your project.

AWS (Amazon Web Services) #

A cloud platform provided by Amazon.

It is the originator of the cloud platform and is a huge cloud platform that has maintained the top share rate since its appearance in 2004. Even now, the share rate exceeds 30% despite the fact that various options have increased.

It is a service that can be said to be the de facto standard for cloud platforms. Our strength is that we can respond to a wide range of development requirements. It is an existence that should be included in the candidate for the time being.

merit

1. De facto standard It is the de facto standard for cloud platforms and is well documented. Most of the problems can be fixed by checking.
2. Providing two regions in Japan Although it is an advantage only in Japan, we provide the Tokyo and Osaka regions. As a result, services published in Japan will benefit from speed improvements.
3. Abundant services There are almost no services offered by other cloud platforms that are not offered by AWS. There is always a service that meets your development requirements.
4. Extensive documentation It’s rich in documentation.

Demerit

1. Ignore your hybrid cloud strategy A strategy that uses both on-premises and the cloud at the same time is called a hybrid cloud, but AWS doesn’t allow it. If you want to operate on-premises at the same time, AWS seems to be a bit of a difficult choice.
2. Difficult to manage AWS itself has various services, and how to combine them is left to the hands of engineers. However, in many cases, it is difficult to manage by one person, and the administrator will not be able to understand what kind of service is used. For example, if you want to publish a web service on EC2, get an Elastic IP on the EC2 management screen, register a domain on Route53, and if you use DB, contract RDS and link it. There are so many operations required to publish a simple web service, but you can expect it to be more difficult when you try to create a static site with Lambda. Therefore, cloud providers are reluctant to use AWS.

Azure(Microsoft Azure) #

Azure is a cloud platform operated and developed by Microsoft. A big draw compared to AWS is that they are organically supporting the cloud and beyond. If you are using Windows systems on-premises (Windows Server, SystemCenter, ActiveDirectory) and want to move to the cloud, it is a very strong option.

Also, the market share itself is losing to AWS, but Goldman Sachs [survey] (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/07/microsoft-azure-cloud-winner-at-big-companies- goldman-sachs.html), a survey of top IT executives found Azure to be more popular.

merit

1. 22,500 yen worth of free resources At the stage of trying the cloud for the first time, you may be worried about the cost. With Azure, you can use 22,500 yen worth of resources free of charge for one month after you first create an account.
2. Strong against hybrid clouds Microsoft supports hybrid cloud. Get the support you need, when you need it.

Demerit

1. Frequent major service outages Azure has frequent service outages. I think you can see it from the amount of reports on Twitter. In Japan, there have been three failures in the same month.
   1. Storage failure for 2 hours in East Japan region on March 8, 2017
   2. On March 28, 2017, a virtual machine failure occurred in the West Japan region for three hours.
   3. On March 31, 2017, most Azure services such as virtual machines and storage were down in the East Japan region.

GCP(Google Cloud Platform) #

It is a popular cloud platform, although it does not reach the market share of AWS and Azure. Developed and operated by Google, it is very stable.

GCP can be used as a service for big data analysis tools and machine learning projects developed by Google, and is a very powerful option if you want to use them to operate your project.

merit

1. Big data analysis GCP has the technical power of Google’s search engine, which is useful for big data analysis.

Demerit