Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of system resources remotely, especially data storage and computing power, without direct interactions with system resources. Cloud computing is evolving for best performance and manageability with less maintenance. We have a lot of players in cloud computing, and AWS & Azure is leading the market capita. Now it is time for Google to bring in their specialty services in cloud computing to a wide range of customer base in the form of Google Cloud.
Google cloud is a suite of computing resources provided by Google. It is hosted publicly and contains resources like Compute, storage, networking, application development etc. The services can leverage by a human prodigy with minimal technical knowledge. Currently, Google leading cloud computing providers in building, testing, and deploying the applications in real-time environment. In April 2008, Google introduced App service as part of Google infra as a platform.
Key Features – Google Cloud Platform
OnDemand services
Automated environment with web-based tools
No manual interventions
Broad Network access
Anywhere access
Resource pooling
On demand availability of shared resources
Rapid elasticity
More and less resources availability based on need
Measured services
Pay as you consume
Easy to pay feature
Google Cloud Platform Services
We have below categories of service offerings from Google Cloud. There are other existing offerings from Google cloud platform, however below most used ones.
Let’s walk through over GCP service in comparison with AWS and Azure equivalent resources to make it familiar.
Compute Services
Service Type
Features
AWS
Azure
Google App Engine
PaaS
Deploy PHP, Java, and other softwareAutomatic scaling – automatically allocates more resources
AWS Elastic Beanstalk
Azure App Service
Compute Engine
IaaS
Virtual Machines
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Azure Virtual Machines
Kubernetes Engine
PaaS like orchestration engine
Automatic DeploymentSupports Docker
Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Networking
Service Type
Features
AWS
Azure
Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Network security
Secure networkRoutingFirewall policies
AWS Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Azure Virtual Private Network (VPN)
Cloud Load Balancing
Load balancer
Workload distributionCost reductionMinimize and maximize availability of resources
AWS Elastic Load Balancing
Azure Load Balancing
Content Delivery Network
CDN
Geographically distributeProxy servers and Data centersPerformance centric
Amazon CloudFront
Azure CDN
Storage Services
Service Type
Features
AWS
Azure
Cloud Storage
Object storage
Online data storageAny data type storage is allowed
AWS Simple Storage Service (S3)
Azure Blob Storage
Cloud SQL
RDBMS
Relational databaseMaintain and protects data
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Aurora
Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Cloud Bigtable
NoSQL: Key-value
No SQL DbFast performanceHigh manageableScalableAs low as 1TB to Hundreds of PB
Amazon DynamoDB
Azure Cosmos DB
Big Data
Service Type
Features
AWS
Azure
BigQuery
Data Warehouse
Data Analysis serviceAnalyze big dataPerform ad-hoc queries and share data insights across web
Amazon Athena, Amazon Redshift
Azure Synapse Analytics
Cloud DataStore
NoSQL: Indexed
Data store serviceFully managed, schema-less, and non-relationalRich set of queriesAutomatic scaling
Amazon DynamoDB
Azure Cosmos DB
Cloud Dataproc
Open-source processing
Easy and fast to use big data serviceManage Hadoop and Spark services
Manage sensitive dataCredit & Debit cards, passport numbersClassification of sensitive data
Amazon Macie
Azure Information Protection
Cloud IAM
Identity
Cloud Identity and Access Management Rules and policiesValidates authentication
AWS Identity Services
Azure Active Directory
Management tools
Service Type
Features
AWS
Azure
Cloud Stack driver
Reporting
displaying the overall performance and diagnostics information Insights of data monitoring, tracing, logging, and error reportingAlert notification to the public cloud users
Stack driver
Azure Monitor
Cloud Console App
Reporting
Native mobile application Manage the core feature from their mobileAnytime & AnywhereAlerting, monitoring, and performing critical actions on resources
NA
NA
Cloud AI
Service Type
Features
AWS
Azure
Cloud Natural Language AI
Language processing
Derive insights from unstructured text using Google machine learning.
Amazon Comprehend
Azure Text Analytics
Cloud AutoML
ML Platform
Quality trained data setsFollows Google’s transfer learning and Neural Architecture Search method
Amazon SageMaker Autopilot
Azure Cognitive Services
Internet of things (IoT)
Service Type
Features
AWS
Azure
Cloud IoT Core
IOT Platform
Fully managed core serviceAnalyze, process data
AWS IoT Core
Azure IoT Hub
Benefits
Pricing
Cheapest rates
Pay-as-you-go option
Work from Anywhere
Access from different systems and different locations
Web based application hosted and remotely accessed
Private Network
Own network
Smooth performance and increased efficiency over the network
Scalable
More scalable over private network
Uses fiber-optic cables to extend its network range – More scalable
Scale its network
Security
Best in class algorithms that encrypts all the data
Secure data from unauthorized calls
Redundant Backup
Adds data integrity, reliability, and durability
Until force delete, user’s data copy will be recovered
Backup in multiple locations
Disadvantages
Hoping GCP will overcome below aspects.
Limited choice of application programming acceptance