Which public cloud?

Public cloud use has steadily increased and according to Flexera, in its 2019 State of the Cloud report, public cloud adoption is now at 91% and is the top priority for 31% of enterprises.

Traditionally enterprises have run a greater proportion of workloads in the private cloud over public clouds, whereas SMEs run a greater proportion of workloads in public clouds v private, however this could be changing as confidence in the public cloud grows and vendors become more attuned to the needs of enterprises.

In terms of market share, the key cloud vendors are AWS, Azure and Google Cloud, with AWS leading the field by a large margin. Alibaba, China’s largest public cloud vendor is one to watch, rapidly taking market share and investing heavily in its global operations.

So, what are the key things firms should understand when choosing a public cloud service and are considering the big three; AWS, Azure or Google Cloud?

Pricing

IaaS services are fairly evenly priced across Google, AWS and Azure, so there isn’t much to choose from in that respect, but Google, AWS and Azure all offer new customers a range of services that are free up to a timescale or level of use, enabling them to try before committing.

AWS, Azure and Google all offer pay as you go, on demand monthly pricing models, with no upfront investment and no binding contracts. Google states that its storage prices average 21% less than AWS for online storage workloads, and even offers per second billing. AWS and Google also offer reserved or committed instance pricing, where customers receive discounted rates if they reserve capacity for vCPUs and products like EC2 and RDS for a one year, or three year term.

Likewise, Azure subscribers can sign up virtual machines for one or three year terms and receive a hefty discount.

Storage

Both AWS and Azure offer a broad range of storage solutions for unstructured data, object storage, block storage and file storage, plus Azure offers a Data Lake Store for big data applications.

Azure offers the greatest options of databases, with SQL, Cosmos, NoSQL and data warehousing, plus a hybrid solution to stretch database capacity for firms with onsite Microsoft SQL Servers. Azure provides a backup service with site recovery and long-term archive storage.

AWS databases are also comprehensive, including data warehousing, long-term, low cost archiving and backup and restore services.

Google Cloud has a smaller portfolio of storage options available offering object storage and a persistent disk option. Whilst it doesn’t have a backup and archive service it does offer different databases for different workloads.

Compute

AWS’ EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) offers a wide range of compute services, spanning different instances; GPU, bare metal, high-performance computing, auto scaling, and support for both Windows and Linux. The choice is immense. AWS also offers a range of container services with support for Docker, Kubernetes and its own automation services.

Azure offers virtual machines with support for Linux, Windows Server, SQL Server, IBM, SAP and Oracle. Azure offers a wide range of instances; GPU and high-performance computing, plus AI and machine learning. Azure also offers container services using Kubernetes and Docker and offers its own Service Fabric which has been designed specifically for micro services applications.

Google Cloud offers a smaller range of services, but firms can select predefined, or custom machine types with support for Windows and Linux. Google was heavily involved with Kubernetes so has deep container expertise and a strong offering for firms looking for microservices or containers.

Compliance

As a highly regulated sector, financial services firms using public cloud services are scrutinised not only by the financial regulators, but also by investors in ODD exercises, and in the UK by the ICO, with regards to GDPR and data governance. AWS has a range of security services to manage access, analyse data for irregular activity with machine learning capabilities, mitigate DDoS attacks, encrypt data, and send alerts whenever changes are made to AWS resources. AWS customers also have access to governance-focused, audit-friendly service features to meet security compliance regulations and audit standards, plus a broad range of guidance documents.

Microsoft has taken compliance for financial services organisations seriously, publishing a guide; Enabling Compliance: The Microsoft Approach to FCA specifically aimed at regulated firms and outlining the ways in which Azure meets the requirements set out by the FCA. Microsoft has also published a list of audit reports which provide information about compliance with data protection standards and regulatory requirements, alongside its extensive and advanced security features covering operations, applications, storage, networking, compute and identity.

Interoperability

AWS works closely with VMware and allows firms to extend on-premises VMware environments to the cloud and has developed a hybrid solution called AWS Outposts, which brings the AWS infrastructure and toolset to any data centre, but its focus on public cloud rather than hybrid cloud or private cloud means that interoperability hasn’t been a priority.

Probably because of its on premises installed base, Microsoft has taken interoperability very seriously, focusing on extending the on-premises data centre to Azure as seamlessly as possible with a range of tools to support hybrid apps, networking, access, security and management across the whole hybrid IT infrastructure.

Google has developed management tools that can provide a single viewpoint of applications and APIs across both cloud and on-premises infrastructure. For firms that are looking at migrating to the cloud in the future, the tools allow some level of management over the whole estate.

In summary

As the clear market share leader, AWS’ size, toolset and capabilities are undeniable. However, with so many options to choose from, firms can find the services and cost model opaque and confusing. Add on services and hidden costs can push up costs for customers. The State of the Cloud survey found that cost management was a big issue for many customers and AWS could lose market share in the future because of this.

Google Cloud, whilst not an obvious enterprise choice, offers firms a way of accessing deep learning, analytics, AI and machine learning tools and capabilities, which could drive a competitive edge and are becoming increasingly important. The State of the Cloud report identified a higher level of intention to use Google Cloud amongst the businesses surveyed, suggesting that it was set for even greater growth.

Azure is a strong choice for firms looking for public cloud services, because they understand the strong trend towards hybrid and multi-cloud adoption and have worked hard to ensure interoperability between clouds and on-premises infrastructure. Azure services are tightly integrated with the rest of Microsoft’s solutions, making it a good choice for Microsoft businesses. In addition, Microsoft provides watertight compliance for financial services firms around the world.

RFA is vendor agnostic and has deep expertise in designing public cloud solutions for the alternative investment sector. Contact me if you want to discuss it further.