Cloud providers short overview
To setup our project within the cloud infrastructure the following providers were choosen for comparsison: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Yandex Cloud.
| Provider | Strength | Weaknesses | Free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS | AWS has the largest market share in IaaS and PaaS, and is a leader in the majority of cloud products provided worldwide. Large enterprises deploy business-critical workloads to Amazon more often than to any other cloud provider. The company has a strong managed service provider network, with 67 premier consulting partners worldwide. | Despite proclaimed price reductions, the price for some services, like the AWS computer service, has not become cheaper since 2014. AWS optimizes their best cloud services, and if the customer is tied to the Amazon products, it may not be easy to switch to another service provider. | The company provides a set of database, developer and mobile tools and services that are always free. In addition, AWS offers a 1-year trial for certain products and short free trial services for ML, analytics, compute, security and compliance. |
| Microsoft Azure | The use cases of Microsoft Azure are diverse and manifold, thanks to the number of service offerings the company provides. Azure has partnerships with Oracle, VMware and SAP, further extending its capabilities. Microsoft Azure has a strong managed service provider network with 32 partners on its list. | On top of that, Azure doesn’t provide any form of guaranteed capacity to its customers, and even pre-paid contracts and reserved instances are not capacity guarantees. | Microsoft Azure offers a $200 credit for 30 days to new users. |
| Google Cloud | Google Cloud stands out in big data, machine learning and data science capabilities with it’s products like TensorFlow, ML Kit and Google Datasets. | Google has challenges with positioning itself as an enterprise-class IaaS solution. Its offerings have not yet reached the level of enterprise maturity | Google Cloud provides $300 in free credits for 90 days to new customers that start running cloud workflows with them. Also, Google Cloud has a special program for startups and they can get a minimum of $2,000 in initial startup credits to use. |
| Yandex Cloud | Yandex Cloud is a Russian provider, so data center location does not limit local laws. Also Yandex offers much cheaper solutions in comparison to other providers. | The set of services is not that big but suitable for most solutions. There aren't that much possibilities in avalaibility and scaling compared to other providers. | Yandex cloud offers usage limits for set of its services every month. |
For tesing and setting up initial service we have chossen an AWS platform, as it is offering long frie tier period and great amount of services. However Yandex Cloud is a good alternative, due to its cost.
