“If you double the number of experiments you do per year you’re going to double your inventiveness” – Jeff Bezos
Cloud Computing is one of the modern technologies that is growing fast. With the growing importance of this technology, public cloud services is in huge demand these days and it has opened the doors of more growth and opportunities for Cloud Service Providers.
Now that numerous organizations across different sectors, are adopting Cloud Computing technologies to run their business, this particular industry is responsible for generating billions of dollars in revenue every year with thousands of job opportunities for IT professionals across the world.
Looking at this huge job opportunity provided by this industry, many IT professionals are now considering to enter in this field and build their career in the cloud computing world.
So to help such aspired professionals to effectively enhance their cloud computing skills, many large enterprises are now offering role-based certifications that are specifically designed according to the market requirements and different job roles.
Although the list of cloud certifications providers is very large but these three enterprise: AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) stand out proudly as top three among all.
At intervals, choosing one certification among these top three becomes very difficult task for professionals. So this blog has been presented here to help them make right decision in this regard. Check out the menu below to know the topics that we are discussing in this blog. But before you proceed further we recommend you to read this blog to get detailed information about all the certification exams provided by Amazon.
Topics covered in the blog are as follows
- What is Cloud Computing?
- What is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
- What is Microsoft Azure?
- What is Google Cloud Platform (GCP)?
- Difference Between Azure VS Google Cloud VS Google Cloud Platform
- AWS V/S Microsoft Azure V/S Google Cloud: Which Certifications Is Good For Your Career Growth?
- AWS V/S Microsoft Azure V/S Google Cloud: Availability zones
- AWS V/S Microsoft Azure V/S Google Cloud: Who uses them?
- AWS VS Microsoft Azure VS Google Cloud: Different services
- AWS Vs Microsoft Azure Vs Google Cloud Platform: Pricing
- Top 10 companies providing Cloud Computing services
- Cloud Market Share: AWS VS Azure VS Google – Who’s Winning?
- AWS Vs Microsoft Azure Vs Google Cloud: Key Takeaways
Now let us discuss each of the above topics in detail.
What is Cloud Computing?
To describe it in simple terms, Cloud Computing is the on-demand delivery of IT resources including compute, databases and storage over Internet with the Pay-As-You-Go pricing.
Organizations instead of buying, owning and maintaining physical data centers and servers, they can access a wide range technology services like computing powers, storage and databases on an as-needed basis from any of the Cloud Computing service providers.
“The global cloud computing market size was valued at USD 266.0 billion in 2019 is expected at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.9% from 2020 to 2027 – Source”
The exact benefit of using Cloud Computing technology is that organizations can avoid upfront cost and complexity associated with owning and maintaining their own IT infrastructure as they can pay only for the amount of service they use. It means now organizations need not to buy servers, update applications, decommissioning or disposing of hardware or software when they are out of date as all such tasks will be taken care by the Cloud Service providers itself.
Some of the advantages of Cloud Computing services are:
- Reduced costs
- Increased Storage
- Flexibility
- Easily scalable.
Different deployment models of Cloud Computing are as follows:
- Private Cloud: It functions for single organizations on a private network and it is secure.
- Public Cloud: This model is owned by Cloud Service provider. Example of this model in Gmail
- Hybrid Cloud: This model is combination of both Private and Public version of Cloud.
The popularity of Cloud Computing technology is increasing everyday and gradually many organizations including both startups as well as MNC’s have realized the importance of Cloud Computing services and have started implementing this technology to scale up their business.
What Is Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
Amazon is the one most comprehensive and widely accepted Cloud service provider. Its countless features to offer its clients make it to stand ahead from its competitors. Some of key features it offers are as follows:
- Mobile-friendly Access
- Serverless Cloud Functions
- Storage
- Databases.
Amazon Web Services launched in the year 2006. It has came up with some services such as Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Simple Storage Service (S3), etc. Later in the year 2009, Elastic Block Store (EBS) was made public and then some other services such as Amazon CloudFront, Content Delivery Network (CDN) have also formally joined the AWS Cloud Computing Service offerings.
Did You Know? AWS has 5 times more deployed cloud infrastructure as their next 14 competitors have in aggregate.
AWS initial launched with a view to effectively handle its growing retail operations. It is credited to be the first company to introduce the Pay-As-You-Go model.
How much do AWS professionals earn?
Since AWS professionals are in huge demand they are also supposed to get high salary. As per the recent salary survey from Global Knowledge, the average salary of AWS certified professionals is about $113,932/year.
Getting an AWS certification will help professional to get a better job and also increase the job opportunities for them.
However the salary of these professionals varies depends upon various factors such as the candidate’s experience, work location, type of organization, project they are involved in etc.
Different AWS Certified Professionals and their average salary is as follows:
| Sl.No | Professionals | Salary |
| 1 | Cloud Architects | $140,000/year |
| 2 | Platform Architects | $150,000/year |
| 3 | Cloud Developer | $95,000/year |
| 4 | Senior Technology Architect | $12,000/year |
| 5 | Senior Information Technology Architect | $135,000/year |
Required Basic qualifications:
- A Bachelor’s degree, Masters/MBA/Ph.D. degree preferred
- Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including group leadership and executive presentations
- Hands-on knowledge of programming languages such as React, Node JS, Python, Java, Go, etc.
- Strong problem-solving program management skills
- Experience with build tools, CI/CD, DevOps, and Agile principles.
Preferred qualifications:
- Experience in Managed Service provider – managing IT environments on behalf of customers
- Experience and Certification in ITIL and DevOps
- AWS Solutions Architect Certificates: Associate, Developer, Professional.
Top AWS Certifications:
Amazon offers various certification exam for job aspired candidates that help them learn all the technical skills that are required to get their dream job. These certificates provide a platform for them showcase their skill and knowledge and hence get their dream job.
The time and effort invested in becoming a certified professional will help you to get higher pay check. Some of companies prefer to hire the candidates who are obtained an AWS certification then who don’t have it.
“Get Certified; a certificate easily moves you at least thousands rows ahead of other job candidates, with similar knowledge” – Wasay Syed
At present AWS offers 12 different IT certifications that are categorized into 4 types. They are as follows:
1. A foundational certification
- AWS Certified Developer – Associate
- AWS Certified SysOps Administrators – Associate
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate
3. Professional-level certifications
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
- AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
4. Specialty-level certifications
- AWS Certified Advanced Networking – Specialty
- AWS Certified Security – Specialty
- AWS Certified Machine Learning – Specialty
- AWS Certified Database – Specialty
- AWS Certified Data Analytics – Specialty
- AWS Certified Big Data – Specialty
The above is the list of all the 12 different AWS certifications provided by AWS.
Any professional who are willing to become a certified AWS professional then we recommend you read this blog Top 12 AWS Certifications | Right AWS Certification Path that discusses in detail about these 12 certification exam.
What is Microsoft Azure?
Microsoft Azure is second most leading Cloud service provider in Cloud Computing market. This platform provides the ability to deploy and manage virtual machines. Like other Cloud service providers Microsoft Azure also provide the flexibility to increase or decrease your computation power as per the need within just a few minutes.
Microsoft Azure is considered as one of the strong contender for Amazon. It offers number of Cloud services such as analytics, storage, computing and many more. It has 3 models of services like SaaS, PaaS and IaaS. They all can be used by developers and software employees to create, deploy and manage services and application through the cloud.
Did You Know? Azure was announced in October 2008 and released on 1 February 2010 as Windows Azure, before being renamed to Microsoft Azure on 25 March 2014
Some of the services offered by Microsoft Azure are as follows:
- Compute services
- Networking
- Storage Services
- Database Services
- Container Services
- Internet Of Things.
How Much Does Microsoft Azure Professionals Earn?
As per the report given ZipRecruiter, the average salary of Azure Developer is about $131,838/year and average salary of Azure Architect is $144,866/year. However, the salary of these employees varies depends upon several factors such as their educational qualifications, experience they have, organization for which they are working for, project they are involved in, work location and many more.
Different Microsoft Azure Certified Professionals and their average salary is as follows:
| Azure Administrators | ||
| Junior (0-3 years) | Mid (4-7 years) | Senior (8+ years) |
| $80,000 | $100,000 | $125,000 |
| Azure Developer | ||
| Junior (0-3 years) | Mid (4-7 years) | Senior (8+ years) |
| $115,000 | $150,000 | $175,000 |
| Azure Solution Architect | ||
| Junior (0-3 years) | Mid (4-7 years) | Senior (8+ years) |
| $130,000 | $160,000 | $190,000 |
| Azure DevOps Engineer | ||
| Junior (0-3 years) | Mid (4-7 years) | Senior (8+ years) |
| $125,000 | $140,000 | $185,000 |
| Azure Security Engineer | ||
| Junior (0-3 years) | Mid (4-7 years) | Senior (8+ years) |
| $120,000 | $170,000 | $225,000 |
Top Microsoft Azure Certifications
Microsoft provides Azure certifications that are divided into three types such as:
- Fundamental level certifications
- Associate level certifications
- Expert level certifications.
These certifications aims at enhancing skills of professionals related to job roles. These certifications enable the professionals to stay ahead of competitors when they applying for jobs.
The below list shows the different Microsoft Azure certifications.
| Exam level | Certification Name |
| Fundamental level | Microsoft Azure Fundamentals |
| Associative level | Microsoft Azure Administrator |
| Associative level | Microsoft Azure Developer |
| Associative level | Microsoft Azure Security Engineer |
| Associative level | Microsoft Azure AI Engineer |
| Associative level | Microsoft Azure Data Scientist |
| Associative level | Microsoft Azure Data Engineer |
| Expert level | Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect |
| Expert level | Microsoft Azure DevOps Engineer |
What is Google Cloud Platform (GCP)?
Now that you have understood what is AWS and Microsoft Azure, in similar line Google Cloud Platform is also one of the premier Cloud Service providers. Even though it is newest of top three Cloud service providers, Google’s cloud storage options, compute capabilities and growing number of services are enabling it move fast in the race of becoming the number one Cloud service provider of world.
Google Cloud Platform offers a wide range of services to its customers. Some of them are as follows:
- Compute
- Networking
- Big Data
- Machine Learning
- Storage & Database
- Management & Developer Tools.
How Much Does Google Cloud Platform Professionals Earn?
The below table shows the average salaries of different Google Cloud Platform professionals. However, the salaries of employees vary across individuals depending upon several factors such as their educational qualifications, experience, work locations and many more.
| Job Role | Average Salaries |
| Google Certified Associate Cloud Engineer | $1,09,415/year |
| Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect | $2,22,000/year |
| Google Certified Professional Data Engineer | $1,32,900/year |
| Google certified Professional cloud developer | $130,909 |
| Google Certified Professional cloud network engineer | $106,100 |
| Google Certified Professional Cloud Security Engineer | $136,485 |
| Google Certified Professional collaboration engineer | $76,340 |
Top Google Cloud Platform Certifications
Google provides several certifications that enable you to learn in depth understanding of GCP services. These certifications are a way to demonstrate one’s skills on particular GCP job roles or technology.
As more and more companies are relying GCP, there has been an increased demand for professionals who have obtained Google Cloud Platform certifications.
Below is the list of some of certifications Google offered by Google Cloud Platform.
- Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer
- Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect
- Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer
- Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Developer
- Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Network Engineer
- Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Security Engineer
- Google Cloud Certified Professional Collaboration Engineer
- G suite
Difference Between Azure VS Google Cloud VS Google Cloud Platform
Now that you have understood in detail about AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, so now it becomes very important for candidates to look into the key differences between all these service providers before you make a decision as which of these certifications can be right career choice for you.
The below table provides the key differences between these 3 Cloud Service Providers.
| Cloud Service Providers | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Microsoft Azure | Google Cloud Platform (GCP) |
| Establishment | 2006 | 2010 | 2011 |
| Content Delivery | CloudFront | CDN | Cloud CDN |
| Maximum Processors in VM | 128 | 128 | 96 |
| Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) | Elastic Beanstalk | Cloud Services | Google App Engine |
| Object Storage | Amazon S3 | Azure Blob Storage | Google Cloud Storage |
| Marketplace | AWS Marketplace | Azure Marketplace | G Suite Marketplace |
| Maximum Memory in VM | 3904GiB | 3800GiB | 1433GiB |
| Virtual Network | Amazon VPC | Virtual Networks | Virtual Private Cloud |
AWS V/S Microsoft Azure V/S Google Cloud: Which Certifications Is Good For Your Career Growth?
AWS, Azure and GCP are the top 3 Cloud Service providers in the market is the fact that we have understood now. But the questions for many young professionals pursuing which among these certifications can become a better for their career growth?
The fact that which certificate is better for your career is subjective to what or how you are planning to use these Cloud platforms. Moreover, each of these Cloud Certifications providers have something similar and different advantages to offer for professionals.
So before you decide on any particular certificate to opt it is recommended for everyone you to carefully examine several factors from all these certifications. Some of them are as follows:
- Features each of these certifications are offering
- Pros and Cons they have
- Different services they provide
- Their establishment year (How old they are in the market)
- Their availability zones
- Pricing structure they have to offer
- Different Certifications they provide for students
- Skills required to pass these certifications exams
- Cost of these certificate exams
- Job opportunities in the market after pursuing these certifications
- List of companies that are hire Certified professionals
- Roles and responsibilities involved in the job
- Which certified professionals get better salary
In overall what we can say is that by analyzing and comparing all these factors from each of certifications candidates will get a clear picture as which is the right choice for their career growth.
In addition, before you jump into any certification track, access your ability to learn the technology. If you are a new entrant to this world of Cloud Computing, then at first go through basic concepts of Cloud Computing, AWS, Azure and GCP.
Now try to practice hands-on and see how flexibility you are on a specific technology. This will help you to choose the right certification path.
In case if you are working in an organization then align with their requirements and understand your organizational requirements and also check what kind of certified professionals they are hiring for ex: if your organization prefers to hire professionals who have obtained AWS certifications then you can consider to purse AWS certifications.
Hope this information is useful to analyse which one of the certification is right for you.
AWS V/S Microsoft Azure V/S Google Cloud: Who uses them?
Cloud Computing has shown a huge impact on the way the companies run their business. Now it is no longer a question of whether the companies opts for Cloud services or not, but rather the question is which Cloud service they choose.
As all the three Cloud service providers AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google have their pros and cons and each of them have their strength and weakness. Based upon requirements different companies choose different cloud service provider that matches their needs.
Below is the list of few companies that have opted different platforms as their Cloud Computing partner.
Amazon Web Services:
As AWS is the oldest players of the Cloud market, it has a large set of clients. With veriety of features AWS is growing exponentially. Some of the notable companies that opts for AWS are:
- Netflix
- Airbnb
- Unilever
- BMW
- Samsung.
Microsoft Azure:
Microsoft Azure is slowly gaining the market. It is one of close competitor to AWS with an exponentially capable cloud infrastructure. Some of the companies that prefer to choose Azure as their Cloud Computing partner are as follows:
- Johnson Controls
- Polycom
- Fujifilm
- Honeywell
- Apple.
Google Cloud Platform:
Even though Google Cloud Platform is new to Cloud Computing world in comparison to Amazon and Microsoft but still within a span of time it has acquired good amount of market share. Some of the major clients of GCP are as follows:
- HSBC
- PayPal
- 20th Century Fox
- Bloomberg
- Dominos.
AWS VS Microsoft Azure VS Google Cloud: Different services
The top three brands that dominate Cloud market will be compared on the basis of the most common Cloud services such as follow:
- Compute Services
- Database Services
- Storage Services
- Networking Services.
Let us discuss each of these services in detail.
Compute Services
Compute is one of the most fundamental roles. It contains many services that are related to compute workloads. An effective Cloud service must possess the capabilities to scale thousands of nodes in just a few minutes. On the basis of computing some of the top comparisons are as follows:
| Compute Service | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Microsoft Azure | Google Cloud Platform (GCP) |
| Maintaining & Managing Virtual Servers | EC2 | VM & VM scale sets | Compute Engine |
| Container register | EC2 registry | Container registry | Container registry |
| Running backend & system integration | Lambda | Event Grid & Web Jobs | Cloud Beta Functions |
| Virtual Private Sectors Made Easy | Lightsail | Virtual Machine Image | – |
| Serverless Functions | AWS Lambda | Azure Functions | Google Cloud Functions |
Database Services
A database provides are related to database workloads. The below table provides the information about the comparison of the database domain.
| Database Service | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Microsoft Azure | Google Cloud Platform (GCP) |
| Database migration | Database migration services | Database migration services | – |
| Indexed NoSQL | DynamoDB | Cosmos DB | Datastore, Big table |
| NoSQL (Key-value) | DynamoDB Simple DB | Table Storage | Cloud Datastore |
| Manage Data Warehouse | Redshift | SQL Data Warehouse | – |
| Catching | ElastiCache | RedisCache | CloudCDN |
| RDBMS | Amazon Relational Database Service | SQL Database | Google Cloud SQL |
Storage Services
Storage services are one of the important functions of Cloud services. The services that are offered by storage domain are related to data storage. The below table provides information about storage services provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
| Storage Service | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Microsoft Azure | Google Cloud Platform (GCP) |
| Hybrid Storage | Storage gateway | StorSimple | Egnyte Sync |
| Bulk data transfers | Snowball edge, Import/Export disk & Snow Mobile | Data Box & Import/Export | Storage transfer service |
| Persistent Disk Storage | Amazon EBS | Azure Managed Disks (HDD/SSD) | Persistent Disk (HDD/SSD) |
| File Storage | Amazon EFS | Azure Files | Google Cloud Filestore |
| Cold Storage | Amazon Glacier | Azure Long-Term Storage | Nearline & Coldline |
| Data Transfer | Amazon Snowball | Azure Import/Export Service | Storage Transfer Service |
Networking Services
The below table shows the information about Networking services provided by the 3 Cloud Services: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
| Networking Services | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Microsoft Azure | Google Cloud Platform (GCP) |
| Virtual Network | Amazon VPC | Virtual Networks | Virtual Private Cloud |
| DNS | Amazon Route 53 | Azure DNS | Google Cloud DNS |
| Peering | Direct Connect | ExpressRoute | Google Cloud interconnect |
AWS Vs Microsoft Azure Vs Google Cloud Platform: Pricing
Pricing plays a very important role when any of the organizations choose to move their business into the Cloud. Since the competition is very high among the Cloud Service providers there has been a continued downward trend on prices for some time.
Did You Know? AWS has decreased prices of its services at least as many as 60 times ever since its launch
However, it is a difficult task to draw a clear comparison among these Cloud services, as each of them offer slightly different pricing models, discounts and make frequent price cuts.
The below table shows the pricing comparison between AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
| Type of Machine | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Microsoft Azure | Google Cloud Platform (GCP) |
| Smallest Instance | 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM will cost around $69/month. | 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM will cost around $70/month. | 2 virtual CPUs and 8 GB of RAM will cost around $52/month. |
| Largest Instance | 3.84 TB of RAM and 128 vCPUs will cost around $3.97/hour. | 3.89 TB of RAM and 128 vCPUs will cost around $6.79/hour. | 3.75 TB of RAM and 160 vCPUs will cost around $5.32/hour. |
You can use these pricing calculators Amazon price calculator, Microsoft price calculator, and Google price calculator to configure a cost estimate that fits their unique business.
Top 10 companies providing Cloud Computing services
List of Cloud Computing service providers is vast. These Cloud service providers companies provides comes with various features through which the business can increase their business. Customers who are in need of Cloud services can choose any of service providers which is most suitable for their business as per their requirements.
Below is the list of top 10 Cloud Computing Service providers:
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
- Microsoft Azure
- Google Cloud Platform
- IBM Cloud Services
- Adobe Creative Cloud
- Kamatera
- Dropbox
- VMware
- Salesforce
- Red Hat
Cloud Market Share: AWS VS Azure VS Google – Who’s Winning?
Most of the Cloud Computing market is already captured by three major companies AWS, Azure and GCP. Both AWS and Azure have been dominating this market and meanwhile GCP has making its present felt with its new features.
Source: Synergy Research Group
Now in the present Cloud market Amazon Web Services is ahead of all its competitors. As per the report of Synergy Research Group, Amazon’s market share in the worldwide cloud infrastructure market amounted to 33% in fourth quarter of 2019. It is more than the combined market share of its three largest competitors.
Microsoft Azure Cloud service is generally brought by new-gen and small-to-medium-size organizations while developers working on enterprise applications prefer to use GCP whereas AWS is being used by everybody else (about one-third in the market).
AWS Vs Microsoft Azure Vs Google Cloud: Key Takeaways
It is very difficult to conclude which among the three is best Cloud Service provider. As we have seen each of these Cloud service providers offer their own services and have pros and cons. So before making a decision to pursue any of the Cloud Certificate, it is recommended to consider all the major factors discussed above.
Let us discuss some of the key takeaways from AWS Vs Microsoft Azure Vs Google Cloud Platform.
Top Companies: AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform are the top 3 Cloud Service providers.
Establishment: AWS was launched much before the other two. It launched in 2006 and is the clear winner here.
Market share: AWS has captured around 34% of Cloud Market share, so the winner here is AWS.
Conclusion: This has been a guide to help our readers to provide a detailed comparison about top 3 Cloud service providers AWS, Azure and GCP. Here we have described comparison in terms of different services they offer, their pricing structure, market share etc.
In addition we have also discussed, which of these certification is leading the Cloud Computing market, various certification exams provided them and also about which certification can be good for your career growth. We hope that all this information is helpful for you.
Now with all the information we would like to introduce you to online courses provided by Simpliv that we believe can be of great helpful to you.
If you have any questions related to above discussed topic then please share your feedback in the comment section.
Thanks for reading!
