My Personal Take on AWS vs Azure vs GCP

My colleagues and me are huge fans of analogies. In our job where there are so much complexities and technicalities, it is far more friendly to break down ‘chim’ terms so that everyone can be on the same page quickly.

The three cloud platforms, three extremely good products, have rose to prominence in the last decade. But to many who are not in the IT field, it may still be slightly unheard of and foreign. Well, they are indeed foreign, all of them are US firms LOL. But today, I just want to draw parallel to something most of us are aware and have came across before, the Singapore supermarket chains!

To avoid any political/governmental love and hatred, I will not use NTUC Fairprice in this comparison. I’m cloud-agnostic just as I am supermarket-agnostic!

First candidate, AWS~

AWS is like Cold Storage, been here a long time, sells a wide range of excellent products, and try to cater to as many people as possible. Their whole roasted chicken is only $4.99, compared to NTUC Fairprice’s $6.99. AWS’ managed database like DynamoDB is an excellent no SQL database at a good price.

Second candidate, Azure~

Azure is slightly late to the game, but did a very good job at playing catch up and now is comparable to Sheng Siong. Besides the seldom hiccups, overall they have a good product and have a strong suite in terms of their Active Directory and licensing ease.

Sheng Siong plays to its strong suite of good customer recognition in The Sheng Siong Show (缤纷万千在昇菘) and provides a good range of products to customers.

Finally, GCP!

I was quite split between Shine Korea Supermart and Don Don Donki, but let’s be realistic, GCP is still some distance away to offer the extensive suite of services especially managed services and Shine Korea is a good representation, although in 10 years time I will definitely put them as a Don Don Donki.

Shine Korea offers almost entirely Korean products similar to GCP which is very much Google based offerings. Nothing wrong with that and in fact the products and services are fantastic, though to developers it can be quite a stretch to learn the Google way of doing things. Just like in this supermart, where you step in to buy something but you really hate Korean food?

Disclaimer: all these are my personal thoughts and I welcome your feedback and criticisms! Let me know if you think of them differently!