It’s 2022, and there’s a new battle in the digital realm. The adoption of cloud computing is a driving force for Canadian businesses, including the world’s largest tech hubs. Among AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, what is the best Cloud Service in Canada?

AWS 

The market has been dominated by Amazon Web Services (AWS) since day one. In 2021, Amazon led the $180-billion Cloud Market by 33%, exceeding the combined market share of its two largest competitors, Microsoft and Google.

AWS has 25 geographic regions with 81 availability zones. 218+ edge locations, and 12 Regional Edge Caches. It offers the most services, from networking to robotics. It is the most mature and recognized as the gold standard in Cloud reliability and security. Moreover, it has more compute capacity than Azure & GCP. All major software vendors make their programs available on AWS.

AWS Offers Many Cloud Computing Options

Every business is different, so AWS offers many Cloud Computing options. When choosing a cloud strategy, a company must consider required cloud application components, preferred resource management tools, and any legacy IT infrastructure requirements.

The three cloud computing deployment models are cloud-based, on-premises, and hybrid.

Cloud-based Deployment

• Run all parts of the application in the cloud.
• Migrate existing applications to the cloud.
• Design and build new applications in the cloud.

On-premises Deployment

• Deploy resources by using virtualization and resource management tools. 
• Increase resource utilization by using application management and virtualization technologies.

Hybrid Deployment

• Connect cloud-based resources to on-premises infrastructure.
• Integrate cloud-based resources with legacy IT applications.

AWS Cons

• Dev/Enterprise support requires purchase
• Can overwhelm newcomers with the sheer number of services and options
• Comparatively limited options for hybrid cloud

Azure

Microsoft Azure is the second most popular cloud platform, with a 21% market share. It runs 60+ regions with a minimum of three availability zones in each region with more than 116 edge locations (Points of Presence).

Most, if not all, subscribers are attracted to its smooth integration with Microsoft Teams, the leading digital collaboration app employed by over 330,000 companies worldwide.

Microsoft Teams and Azure present immense potential for collaboration. 

With Microsoft Teams:

• Everything is on chat — calls, video calls, Microsoft Office file sharing, meetings, and OneNote. 
• Get fewer emails and share quick exchanges on chat. 
• Meeting preparations, scheduling, and file sharing are in one place. 
• Microsoft Teams Houses the All-star Apps — Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. 
• It also works great on mobile.

Azure also offers many services, including best-in-class AI, ML, and analytics services. It is relatively more affordable for most services versus AWS & GCP. Finally, it has reliable support for hybrid cloud strategies.

Azure Cons

• Fewer service offerings versus AWS
• Bias towards enterprise customers

Google Cloud

Google Cloud Platform(GPC) has 27 cloud regions with 82 zones and 146 edge locations.

Google Cloud works best with other Google services and products, including everyone’s favorite Gmail and Google Docs, the most convenient app for composing, sharing, and co-editing written content on mobile. 

GPC has excellent support for containerized workloads and has a global fiber network. It only holds 10% of the Cloud Market share, but the game is about to change.

BigLake Engine

Earlier this month, Google introduced BigLake Engine, which will make data analysis in storage lakes faster and smoother. BigLake takes Google’s experience with running BigQuery data warehouse then applies it to data lakes on Google Cloud Storage. It synergizes data lakes and warehouses into a single service.

This data could sit in BigQuery, AWS S3, or Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2.

Moreover, Google will be introducing an open ecosystem model. Data Cloud Alliance will allow the free flow of open data formats across different barriers. However, the Silicon Valley giant will need to maintain connections with several cloud vendors.

Google Cloud Cons

• Limited services versus AWS & Azure
• Limited support for enterprise use cases

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