Top Cloud Computing Platform Comparison

AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud vs. Huawei Cloud

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aelf

5 min readNov 4, 2019

Cloud Computing is one of the technologies that are slowly but surely revolutionizing how enterprises run. When one thinks of Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is often the first company that comes to mind, and although they are the most mature and arguably well-known, there are other platforms from leading companies that are clear rivals.

This article will look at the top platforms, what sets them apart and how they compare with each other. Notably, we’ll look at AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and a newer player to the game, Huawei Cloud.

According to a 2018 report, Synergy Research Group noted:

“AWS worldwide market share has held steady at around 33% for twelve quarters now, even as the market has almost tripled in size.”

Platform Pros & Cons

Experts suggest that enterprises evaluate their public cloud needs on a case-by-case basis and match specific applications with the vendor that offers the solution to fit their needs best. Each vendor has their own strengths and weaknesses.

AWS
Amazon is clearly the largest cloud computing platform when it comes to market share. Gartner noted that AWS has been the leader of the industry of cloud IaaS for over 10 years. They have arguably the most comprehensive array of available services, in addition to having the most comprehensive network of worldwide data centres.

The biggest struggle for enterprises attempting to use AWS is the complex and difficult to manage cost structure which can often result in unnecessary extra costs. This problem is exacerbated when an enterprise is running a high volume of workloads on the service.

This issue appears to not be a strong enough detriment to stop enterprises from using AWS as they still hold the strongest market share.

Azure

Microsoft’s strength lies in it’s compatibility and expertise in software solutions. Due to the fact that so many enterprises are already utilizing other Microsoft software. Azure is very closely developed with these softwares in mind, making it a logical decision for enterprises who already employ Microsoft software to also use Azure. In addition to this, Microsoft offers significant discounts to users who are already an enterprise customer.

The main issue Azure sees is reflected in customers feeling like their product is not completely enterprise ready. Customers have cited issues with technical support, documentation, training, and breadth of the ISV partner ecosystem.

Google

Google has a clear specialty when it comes to high compute offerings like Big Data, Analytics, and Machine Learning. The platform also boasts well balanced scaling and loading.

Its market share is clearly behind the AWS and Azure, possibly due to a smaller range of products offered and data centers around the globe.

Huawei

Huawei is clearly the latest player to this game but is unique when compared with other cloud services as they are one of the only enterprises to provide an end-to-end cloud solution to clients. By providing end-to-end cloud solution, it means Huawei is leveraging on its “cloud-pipe-device” strategy to offer single vendor cloud solution that enables deployment of customer solution in cloud, at edge and/or at terminal, offering highly flexible deployment models to address different and complex business scenarios.

Huawei operates in more than 170 countries with strong local support and global access, bring global best practices, new leading technologies such as 5G and AI to help the local customers on digital transformation.

The largest challenge facing this platform is building up an international market share. Although extremely well-known in China, Huawei has been working to improve their brand awareness around the world.

Revenue, Market Share & Adoption

It is clear that AWS and Azure are the market leaders and will continue to do so for some time to come. What is not immediately clear from the above image, is the fact that many enterprises utilize a multi-cloud strategy. In other words, although there are almost 20% of companies who use Google in 2018, many of these enterprises may also still use AWS as their strategic cloud platform, and only use Google as their secondary solution.

It also appears that AWS may be losing some of its market share. As some of the competitors, who are currently backup or secondary solutions, develop into more complete products for enterprises, customers may switch to other platforms as their primary solution.

Almost 1 in 3 enterprises mentioned that their greatest challenge with cloud management came down to cost management, which is also a key issue for AWS. This could indicate further the decrease in market share that AWS will see in the near future.

Amazon has long held the golden sceptre for Cloud Computing Platforms, but the rise of Azure challenges their rule and other players like Google Cloud and Huawei Cloud help to spread the market share wider.

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