The Clash of the Clouds – Google Cloud Platform (GCP) vs Amazon Web Services (AWS)

All too often, startups and SMEs baffle themselves over options for cloud platforms. In this data-driven world of technologies, scalability is one of the most important factors for businesses, especially for startups and SMEs hoping to take their current business to the next level. However, finding the best cloud solution is always easier said than done. With so much information about platforms out there, it can be quite challenging and confusing, especially if you are new to cloud technology.

WHAT IS THE BEST CLOUD SOLUTIONS FOR STARTUPS?

 

Choosing a cloud platform is a decision you have to get right, and getting the right one will certainly help achieve maximum velocity and efficiency necessary to address today’s rapid pace of business. However, not all cloud platforms are the same. Let’s take a look at the different options:

PUBLIC CLOUD

Public cloud refers to cloud services that are operated at a large scale such as GCP and AWS. These are cloud services which are running on a global scale. It is by no means ‘public’ in any way as there are various security settings that need to be set up. Most public cloud infrastructure providers like Amazon and Google charge on a consumption basis.

PRIVATE CLOUD

Private cloud refers to companies that prefer to build their own “cloud” infrastructure within their own controlled environments instead of using the services available on the public clouds such as from Azure, Google or Amazon. Generally, companies which are highly sensitive about where their data is stored or have data residency regulations choose to go the way of the private cloud. Such companies usually have very demanding mission-critical workloads and typically they are in the finance, government or military industries. The drawback of using private clouds is that capacity elasticity is not easy to achieve and companies need to make very large capital and operational investments to run their private clouds. Increasingly, companies are shifting more of their workloads towards the public clouds and only keeping certain workloads on their private cloud infrastructure.

HYBRID CLOUD

Increasingly, companies that meet the constraints of running private clouds are looking towards adopting a hybrid cloud model that combines private and public cloud services. Usually, large MNCs that have already adopted a private cloud infrastructure are looking at public cloud services to augment their capacity. They can shift workloads between the two as their business demand changes. Sensitive data can be stored and accessed in an on-premise private cloud while less sensitive materials can be found and retrieved through a public cloud.

GOOGLE CLOUD PLATFORM (GCP) VS AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS)

The latest consensus is that Google Cloud Platform is the biggest and the strongest competitor of to AWS. This is due to the fact that GCP is more competitive for in term of its pricing and products. In addition, when it comes to its overall speed of I/O and instance startup performance, Google continues to shine as the leader in innovation.

One of the most significant differences between the two platforms is the services provided. Amazon offers broad and wide services such as specific tools for media transcoding and streaming, a managed Directory Service, 4 different relational and NoSQL databases.

Although Google’s toolset is smaller, it is very strong in Big Data. Google Cloud’s BigQuery is an example of how companies could stream into BigQuery to enable real-time analysis of the data. Here are some of the factors why Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is the best cloud solution for startups:

 

Live Migration

Google Compute Engine’s instances can be moved to nearby hosts while active—even when it’s under extreme load— complete with their working SSD storage (up to 1.5 TB). Since users’ VMs do not need to be rebooted for host software updates or other standard operational tasks, there is no downtime. This ensures predictable performance across all the different parts of your application.

Pricing Innovation and Discounts

Google has re-invented the way users pay for cloud. Innovations like per-minute-billing, sustained-use discounts that offer optimal pricing without locking users into potentially obsolescent gear, custom machine types and special pricing for particular use cases combine to give users the best price-performance available from any cloud computing providers. Users can use Google’s detailed pricing calculator to model their savings in switching to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).

Custom Machine Types

Google Cloud Platform let users configure the right combination of memory & virtual CPU for their workload thus overprovision to fit vendor’s rate card is no longer needed. This also means more savings to users, with potentially up to 50% more price/performance efficient depending on workload.

Sub-second Archive Restore

Google Cloud Storage Nearline delivers sub-second data availability and provides high throughput for prompt restoration of data. In fact, it’s fast enough that many customers simply use it as their only storage tier. Competing systems take 4-5 hours to do the same data archiving tasks, offer substantially lower throughput, and often charge confusing and expensive fees for restore. Our fees are simple: 1 penny per GB/month to store, 1 penny per GB to restore.

Faster Boot Times

Compute Engine instances boot in the range of 40-50 seconds, roughly 1/5 of the time required by competing clouds. This means customers can grow their application’s serving capacity rapidly in response to incoming traffic, just like how Google does their own applications.

Google Grade Security

Deploy on an infrastructure protected by more than 500 top experts in information, application, and network security. The Google security model is an end-to-end process, built on over 15 years of experience focused on keeping users safe on Google applications like Gmail and Google Apps. With Cloud Platform your applications and data take advantage of the same pervasive security model.

Global Network of Data Centers

The same infrastructure that runs Google apps is available to you on Cloud Platform. Google’s global network footprint, with over 75 points-of-presence across more than 33 countries; ensuring users receive the same low latency and responsiveness customers expect from Google’s own services. Recognized as some of the most energy efficient and secure in the world, Google’s decade of data center innovation is immediately available to users just by a single click purchase.

Google Cloud Solutions partner in Singapore

As one of the Google’s leading Cloud solutions partner in Singapore, our mandate is to help our clients take advantage of the benefits provided by the Google Cloud Platform. PointStar has one of the largest team of Google Cloud experts in this region who can assist our clients in structuring their journey onto the Google Cloud Platform in the most effective way possible.

We take great pride in assisting startups to jump-start their growth and achieve greater responsiveness in ever-shifting markets. Our team is certified as a Practising Management Consultant (PMC) and works with numerous Singapore Government agencies such as SPRING, IE Singapore and IMDA amongst others to help ‘digitally transform’ Singapore based business to be more ready for the future through the cloud platform. Save your time, commit to your business and dedicate your efforts to build faster, cheaper, and smarter while our cloud experts and specialists take care of your cloud optimization for you.