What could be the finest choice among Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform for your enterprise?
Not only comparing prices is not enough when it comes to choosing your cloud vendor, but it is complicated too. Cloud vendors offer a variety of cloud models and separate discounting schemes. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform lay out various offers with regards to the different use cases.
The A-Z of cost-cutting:
Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) gives you an edge as the resources can be rearranged according to the needs of an organization. However, on-demand payments for availing cloud services often come about as exorbitant. Long-term commitments prove to be good a cost-cutting solution in this regard. AWS allows you to pay through Reserved Instances (RIs), which offer large discounts when long-term commitments (of one year or three years) are made. The discounts add up if the amount is paid up-front.
Google Cloud Platform, on the other hand, grants Sustained Usage Discounts (SUD) to encourage more and more cloud usage. The SUD increases with the use of an instance and is applied to the monthly bill. The main objective of SUD is to offer the best deal on a VM without having to pay any additional or up-front cost.
Microsoft offers Enterprise Agreements (EA) that are not available to the public. EAs are consulted over by individual customers. Noticeable discounts are provided by Microsoft to the customers who promise long-term usage.
Other Factors:
Apart from pricing, it is important to consider other features too. For instance, our geographical location may affect your costs as running domestic operations is often cheaper than going international. Cost becomes insignificant when variables such as developer’s choice of a platform and availability of specific cloud management platforms come into play for better functioning. Furthermore, the simplicity of a cloud platform should be considered as a confusing user experience might become overwhelming for new users.
Other factors like automation become a defining point of a cloud platform. It plays a huge role in distinguishing one cloud from another.
Your Next Step Forward:
One can unleash the possibilities and realize the true potential of your cloud with a cloud management platform; which sits atop your cloud infrastructure to give you in-depth visibility and help you save on the recurring cloud spends.