Will computing become a necessary part of data backup? The answer is yes, almost certainly, because that is simply the way it is going. If you are not using it now, you probably will be quite soon.
The bigger question is, which cloud computing option should you choose? There are endless options, which might seem overwhelming to the uninformed.
Narrowing your options down, the main three are AWS, Azure, and Google cloud. But which one should you choose? We did the grunt work for you and tested each service. Let's take a look at how that plays out.
Which One Is The Best? AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud
Overview
Bio: AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon that was launched in 2006. The world’s most comprehensive cloud platform offers over 227 fully featured services like servers, data storage, databases, software, and networking, among other tools and applications.
AWS has all the resources to assist startups in solving technical challenges and providing them with sustainable growth and development.
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AWS Products For Startups
AWS Credits For Startups
Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits are like coupons that can help self-funded and bootstrapped startups take off and scale.
They provide $100k in credits which they can use to gain access to AWS services with no initial cost. The credits are applied to your cloud account until they are exhausted or expired.
A few things to keep in find while utilizing the credits are,
AWS Activate is the most widely used by startups to get AWS credits with two main tiers,
- AWS Activate Portfolio: Provides up to $100,000 in AWS credits to startups that are associated with accelerators, venture capital firms, or incubators. To be eligible for this, startups can be funded or unfunded, have an active AWS account, LinkedIn page, and company website, must not exceed $100,000 in AWS credits from AWS Activate and must be less than 10 years of age.
- Activate Founders: It provides startups with $1,000 in AWS credits. To be awarded, you have to be new to AWS Activate Founders have no previous credit records, have a company website, must be less than 10 years of age, and have an active AWS account.
Pros
Cons
Conclusion
AWS is the market leader in cloud computing platforms, leading with 50% of the world’s IaaS cloud market. It is known for its wide array of features, with new ones coming from time to time, making it the ideal platform for businesses of all sizes.
Product Rating Summary
While AWS has a steep learning curve, its great customer support and numerous features make it an ideal platform for businesses of all sizes.
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Overview
Bio: Azure is a cloud division and just one small section of one of the largest technology companies in the world, Microsoft. It is available in 140 countries and 54 regions, making it the number one cloud hosting provider that covers more areas than others.
Microsoft has one of the best management, serverless computing, and analytics services.
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Microsoft Azure For Startups
Microsoft launched Startups Founders Hub, a platform that eliminates traditional barriers founders face when getting started, such as third-party validation or venture capital requirements.
The Founders Hub gives startup owners free access to Microsoft Cloud and GitHub and connects them with industry veterans, startup-centric training, and expert technical guidance.
It has partnered up with innovative companies like OpenAI providing startups with exclusive discounts and benefits such as giving access to the top AI systems such as GPT-3 and Codex.
Microsoft Azure Credits For Startups
The Startups Founders Hub provides startup cloud credits to build without restrictive timelines. There are four levels to which a startup is assigned to based on their company’s stage. The four stages are
- Ideate: A startup in the ideate stage is given provided with $1,000 worth of Azure credit that lasts up to one year. Once the credits at this stage are used up, a startup can request ‘Develop’ credits.
- Develop: A founder in this stage can get credits worth $5,000 with an expiry of one year.
- Grow: Startups get access to $25k in Azure credits.
- Scale: Microsoft Azure offers $150,000 in credits to startups who are focused on scaling up their company.
The eligibility requirements for Microsoft Azure credits, a startup must
Pros
Cons
Conclusion
Azure is the only cloud that automatically applies the latest updates and patches. It also offers Site Recovery, Import Export, and Azure Backup. It has been experiencing exponential growth and continues to develop new features and services.
Product Rating Summary
Microsoft Azure comes in second to AWC among cloud providers. It is an ever-expanding set of cloud-based computing services available to developers, businesses, agencies, or anyone who wants to run an enterprise or build an app without managing hardware.
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Overview
Bio: Google Cloud is an IaaS provider that enables you to use the same infrastructure that Google uses for its end-user applications, like Gmail and Google Workspace. It includes various key cloud tools that help businesses make intelligent deployment and operational structure decisions.
Top Features
Google Cloud For Startups
Google Cloud Credits For Startups
Supporting innovative startups is a part of Google’s DNA. Earlier in January 2022, Google started offering its support to startups by giving them up to $100,000 each year in credits to cover their Google Cloud and Firebase usage.
For your startup to be eligible for Google Cloud credits, you must ensure
Pros
Cons
Conclusion
Although GCP is not quite as robust as AWS yet, it’s grown into a decent cloud-computing platform. Its growing number of services is closing the gap with AWS, which seemed unbeatable not so long ago.
Product Rating Summary
Google Cloud stands out the most because of its innovative tools and services, as one of the top cloud providers in the IT industry. Software developers can access their services, as it provides a highly scalable and reliable infrastructure to build, test, and deploy their applications.
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What Is Cloud Computing?
Cloud Computing is a network of remote servers hosted on the internet for storing and retrieving data. The cloud provides a number of IT services, such as servers, databases, software, virtual storage, and networking, among others.
Companies offering such kinds of cloud computing services are called cloud providers and typically charge for cloud computing services based on usage.
How To Reduce Your Cloud Computing Costs?
Organizations face many challenges: one of the most prevalent issues is managing cloud computing spending. According to enterprise owners, 30% of their cloud budget goes to waste.
While startups can reap many benefits from hosting their workloads on the cloud, if you can’t keep your cloud bills under control, then there’s no use for this infrastructure model. To help you manage and reduce your cloud spending, here are a few cost-effective tips,
1. Rightsize Your Compute Resources
One of the best methods to save money when it comes to cloud costs is to monitor your startup’s computing resources' utilization proactively. Cloud computing platforms offer over a dozen resources and instances, each suited for different workloads.
Such a vast selection can be overwhelming, even for cloud architect experts.
When spinning up cloud instances, organizations often end up paying for unused capacity. The IT managers need to ensure enough capacity to handle unexpected load fluctuations and traffic spikes but not so much that the resources go to waste.
2. Maximize Software Licensing Spend
Software licensing fees holds a large part in the operating cost. It can be difficult to manage licenses manually, and that’s why many organizations and enterprises spend significant amounts on unused or untracked licenses.
3. Examine Your Cloud Computing Bill
Keep track of your cloud computing bills closely and identify which services cost you the most in a month. Then look at whether they have any alternative services that can have lower costs when used.
For example, if you find out you’re spending alot on your database service, you can shift to an object storage service like AWS S3, thereby reducing your costs.
4. Find Idle Resources
Another method of controlling your cloud costs is to find and shut your unused recourses. You can try doing this manually by sorting through the lists of running resources and deciding whether they are of use. The cloud providers mentioned in our article all provide the tools to automate this process.
5. Limit Data Transfer Fees
Moving data to and from a public cloud can be quite expensive. Cloud providers charge fees when you’re moving data between their regions or even away from platforms.
You can reduce this cost by avoiding unnecessary data transfers, and evaluating the fees of different data transfer modes.
For example, you can compare the costs of Azure ExpressRoute or AWS Direct Connect to the costs of physical transfer devices such as Azure Data Box or AWS Snowball.
Controlling your cloud spending can help you overcome many budgeting challenges. Startups that holistically and proactively manage their cloud environments get the most out of them and ensure cost-effective and ongoing cloud operations.
Top 3 Experts To Cut Your Cloud Bills
Companies experience sticker shock when they receive their cloud bills, which only becomes worse when it comes to the complications of how that bill was produced. Cloud bills can be cloud-friendly but not necessarily business-friendly.
Many companies set aside extra cash to pay for unexpected cloud bill prices.
To predict the cost of cloud bills, one needs to consider multiple variables and solve complex mathematical equations. Luckily, there are many cloud-billing companies in the United States that can minimize your cloud costs and still help you reap maximum benefits.
Here’s a list of the top three US-based cloud expert companies whose services can help your startup control its cloud bills.
Datadog is a cloud-based monitoring and analytics platform for IT infrastructure, applications, and logs. It provides real-time visibility into the performance, health, and key metrics of applications, networks, servers and processes running on various environments such as, cloud, on-premise, hybrid. It also provides an ability to correlate the data from multiple sources to gain insights and troubleshoot issues.
Datadog also offers a range of integrations with other tools and technologies, such as Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, and more, to make it easy to collect, monitor, and analyze data from various systems and applications.
Chronosphere is the revolutionary solution for modern businesses struggling to contend with ever-growing data and cloud complexity. With backing from top venture capital firms like Greylock, Lux Capital, General Atlantic, Addition and Founders Fund - as well as major hubs in New York City, Seattle and Vilnius - Chronosphere puts business owners back in control of their own success by providing much needed peace of mind.
New Relic is a software analytics company that provides performance management solutions for web and mobile applications. Their platform allows developers and operations teams to monitor the performance of their applications in real-time, and provides tools for identifying and troubleshooting issues.
New Relic also provides a range of additional features such as error tracking and distributed tracing, which can be used to gain a deeper understanding of application performance and identify root causes of performance issues.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Azure has a pay-as-you-go whereas, the Google Cloud Platform provides a pay-per-minute payment model, and AWS offers a pay-as-you-go approach. All three providers offer discounts if you commit to using them for at least one year. It’s called Reserved Savings in Azure, Reserved Instances/Savings Plans in AWS, and Commitment Price in Google Cloud.
AWS has become one of the most popular cloud companies, with more community support and users. Prominent users include Netflix, Airbnb, Unilever, BMW, and Samsung.
Microsoft Azure currently serves nearly 75 % of Fortune 500 businesses. Typical customers of Microsoft Azure include Johnson Controls, Fujifilm, Honeywell, Apple & others. Google's cloud infrastructure is similar to Google search and YouTube, so many companies put their trust in Google Cloud.
Conclusion
Cloud computing is a technology that provides computing power through the internet by providing apps, storage, and processing services to users in a single location or device.
All three cloud platforms offer a wide range of cloud solutions used by some very notable, word-famous companies such as Airbnb, Netflix, and others.
Whether you are a small startup or a large established business, you should now have a clear understanding of each service's features, benefits, and suitability