By Alex 
Cloud computing has revolutionized how businesses deploy and manage their IT infrastructure. The three major cloud service providers—Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud—offer similar services with different names and implementations. This article provides a comprehensive comparison of equivalent services across these platforms.
Analytics services process and analyze large volumes of data in real-time or batch processing to derive insights.
- Azure: Azure Stream Analytics – A real-time analytics service designed for mission-critical workloads with complex event processing
- AWS: Amazon Kinesis – Platform for streaming data on AWS, offering powerful services to make it easy to load and analyze streaming data
- Google Cloud: Cloud Dataflow – Unified stream and batch data processing that’s serverless, fast, and cost-effective
These services provide platforms for deploying and hosting web applications without managing the underlying infrastructure.
- Azure: Azure Cloud Services – Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering designed to support applications that are scalable, reliable, and inexpensive to operate
- AWS: Amazon Elastic Beanstalk – An easy-to-use service for deploying and scaling web applications developed in popular programming languages
- Google Cloud: Google App Engine – A fully managed, serverless platform for developing and hosting web applications at scale
Automation services help streamline repetitive tasks and orchestrate complex workflows across cloud environments.
- Azure: Azure Automation – A cloud-based automation and configuration service supporting consistent management across Azure and non-Azure environments
- AWS: AWS OpsWorks – Configuration management service that provides managed instances of Chef and Puppet
- Google Cloud: Compute Engine Management – Tools for automating and managing Google Cloud Compute resources
Block storage services provide high-performance, durable block storage volumes for use with cloud compute instances.
- Azure: Azure Managed Storage – Persistent, secure disk storage for virtual machines with high performance and durability
- AWS: Amazon Elastic Block Storage – Provides block-level storage volumes for use with EC2 instances
- Google Cloud: Persistent Disk – Durable network storage devices that virtual machines can access like physical disks
These services help organizations meet regulatory compliance requirements and implement security best practices.
- Azure: Azure Trust Center – Central hub for security, privacy, compliance, and transparency information
- AWS: AWS Cloud HSM – Dedicated Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliances within the AWS cloud for cryptographic operations
- Google Cloud: Google Cloud Platform Security – Comprehensive security tools and features to protect cloud resources
Core computing services provide virtual machines and compute capacity for running applications.
- Azure: Virtual Machines – Provision Windows and Linux virtual machines in seconds with full control
- AWS: Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) – Resizable compute capacity in the cloud
- Google Cloud: Compute Engine – Secure and customizable compute instances to run workloads on Google’s infrastructure
These services facilitate deployment, management, and scaling of containerized applications using cloud provider-specific solutions.
- Azure: Azure Container Service – Simplified container-based application deployment and management
- AWS: EC2 Container Service – Highly scalable, high-performance container management service
- Google Cloud: Container Engine – Secured and managed Kubernetes service with auto-scaling
These services provide managed Kubernetes platforms for container orchestration with cloud-agnostic compatibility.
- Azure: Azure AKS – Managed Kubernetes service that simplifies deployment, management, and operations
- AWS: Amazon EKS – Managed Kubernetes service to run Kubernetes without installing or maintaining a Kubernetes control plane
- Google Cloud: GKE – Google Kubernetes Engine for managing containerized applications
CDN services distribute content to geographically dispersed servers to improve delivery speed and reduce latency.
- Azure: Azure CDN – Global content delivery network solution for providing high-bandwidth content
- AWS: Amazon CloudFront – Fast, highly secure and programmable content delivery network
- Google Cloud: Cloud CDN – Content delivery using Google’s global edge network to accelerate websites and applications
DNS services provide domain name resolution and traffic routing capabilities for internet applications.
- Azure: Azure Traffic Manager – DNS-based traffic load balancer that distributes traffic across global Azure regions
- AWS: AWS Route 53 – Highly available and scalable cloud Domain Name System (DNS) web service
- Google Cloud: Cloud DNS – Scalable, reliable, and managed authoritative DNS service
These services control access to cloud resources through identity verification and permissions management.
- Azure: Azure Active Directory – Identity and access management solution for cloud applications
- AWS: AWS Identity and Access Management – Securely control access to AWS services and resources
- Google Cloud: Cloud Identity Access Management – Fine-grained access control and visibility for centralized management of resources
Key management services secure cryptographic keys and manage secrets used by cloud applications and services.
- Azure: Azure Key Vault – Safeguards cryptographic keys and secrets used by cloud applications and services
- AWS: AWS KMS – Create and control keys used to encrypt data, and use HSMs to protect key security
- Google Cloud: Google Cloud KMS – Manage encryption keys on Google Cloud Platform
Load balancing services distribute incoming network traffic across multiple servers to ensure no single server is overwhelmed.
- Azure: Load Balancing for Azure – Distributes network traffic to improve application responsiveness
- AWS: Elastic Load Balancing – Automatically distributes incoming application traffic across multiple targets
- Google Cloud: Cloud Load Balancing – High-performance, scalable load balancing on Google Cloud
These services collect, analyze, and visualize log data to provide insights into application and infrastructure performance.
- Azure: Azure Operational Insights – Collects and analyzes data generated by resources in cloud and on-premises environments
- AWS: Amazon CloudTrail – Service that enables governance, compliance, and operational risk auditing of AWS account
- Google Cloud: Cloud Logging – Fully managed service for real-time log management and analysis
NoSQL database services provide flexible, scalable database solutions for various non-relational data models.
- Azure: Azure DocumentDB – Fully managed NoSQL database service for modern app development
- AWS: AWS DynamoDB – Fast and flexible NoSQL database service for any scale
- Google Cloud: Cloud Datastore – Highly scalable NoSQL database for your applications
These services deliver push notifications to mobile devices and other endpoints from cloud applications.
- Azure: Azure Notification Hub – Send push notifications to any platform from any back-end
- AWS: Amazon Simple Notification Service – Fully managed pub/sub messaging for microservices and serverless applications
- Google Cloud: None – Google Cloud does not have a direct equivalent service
Object storage services store and retrieve large amounts of unstructured data such as documents, images, and videos.
- Azure: Azure Blob Storage – Massively scalable object storage for unstructured data
- AWS: Amazon Simple Storage (S3) – Object storage built to store and retrieve any amount of data from anywhere
- Google Cloud: Cloud Storage – Unified object storage for developers and enterprises
These services track application performance metrics to identify issues and optimize resources.
- Azure: Azure Application Insights – Application performance management service for web developers
- AWS: Amazon CloudWatch – Monitoring and observability service for AWS resources and applications
- Google Cloud: Stackdriver Monitoring – Monitoring service for applications on Google Cloud and AWS
Private connectivity services establish dedicated network connections between on-premises data centers and cloud environments.
- Azure: Azure Express Route – Establishes private connections between Azure data centers and on-premises infrastructure
- AWS: AWS Direct Connect – Dedicated network connection from on-premises to AWS
- Google Cloud: Cloud Interconnect – Connecting your infrastructure to Google’s network edge
Relational database services provide managed SQL database solutions for structured data storage.
- Azure: Azure Relational Database – Fully managed relational database with built-in intelligence
- AWS: Amazon RDS – Set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud
- Google Cloud: Cloud SQL – Fully managed relational database service for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server
Scaling services automatically adjust compute resources based on demand to maintain performance and optimize costs.
- Azure: Azure Autoscale – Dynamically scale applications to match demand and reduce operational costs
- AWS: Auto Scaling – Automatically adjust capacity to maintain steady, predictable performance at the lowest possible cost
- Google Cloud: Auto Scaler – Automatically adds or removes VM instances from managed instance groups based on load
Serverless platforms enable developers to build and run applications without managing servers.
- Azure: Azure Functions – Process-driven, serverless compute experience to accelerate development
- AWS: AWS Lambda – Run code without thinking about servers or clusters
- Google Cloud: Google Cloud Functions – Event-driven serverless compute platform for cloud services and applications
Virtual network services create isolated network environments in the cloud for secure resource deployment.
- Azure: Azure Virtual Network – Provision private networks, optionally connect to on-premises datacenters
- AWS: Amazon VPC – Provision a logically isolated section of the AWS Cloud to launch resources
- Google Cloud: Cloud Virtual Network – Provides connectivity for virtual machine instances, containers, and more
This comprehensive comparison provides a clear mapping between equivalent services across the three major cloud providers, helping organizations understand and evaluate their options when considering migration between platforms or implementing multi-cloud strategies.