Cloud service has become like a digital demigod in today’s data-driven world.
Its power to provide digital solutions is increasing day by day. Companies, business organizations, and
enterprises are using cloud services more than ever. Whether it is B2B or B2C, cloud is solving
everyone’s problem at the most affordable cost.
For developers, cloud provides a plethora of storage and processing power to run the applications they build.
For enterprises, cloud gives high flexibility in computing and application management at lower costs without the need for buying any assets, e.g. servers, workstations, hardware storage.
For end-users, cloud offers diverse advantages. A person can use a web application wherever and whenever on any mobile or computer device.
Is there anyone who can travel with you wherever you go and keep your all asset safe and give you quickly as it is whenever you want?
This is the power of cloud and therefore, it would not be wrong to call Google, AWS, Azure, Firebase, and Heroku digital demigods.
But as we all know, most business organizations and companies are often confused in choosing between AWS vs Azure vs Google Cloud vs Heroku vs Firebase, the question which is the best cloud service for business remains popular among most decision makers.
Interestingly, the question is wrong. It’s not about which is the best but which suits best to your business requirements and budget.
Every cloud service has its own advantages and features. You should choose a cloud not based on popular assumptions but according to your actual requirements.
And here in this blog post, eSearch Logix will guide you on how to choose the right cloud service provider for your business. If you are a developer, business owner, startup, enterprise, or company in the middle of availing of a cloud service, this guide will help you make the right decision.
To determine which cloud platform is good for your business, you first need to have some basic understanding of cloud computing.
What is a Cloud Service Provider?
A Cloud service provider is a third-party organization or company which owns public clouds, manages private clouds, or provides cloud-based services like Software-as-a-Service(SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service, or data storage services.
Just like a homeowner pays for the utility services such as electricity or gas, companies or users of the cloud platforms have to pay for the cloud services they use.
Types of Cloud Computing Services
1. Public Cloud:
It is the most common type of cloud computing which is fully owned and managed by a third-party company over the Internet, not by the end-user. Alibaba, Amazon Web Services IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure are the best examples of public cloud.
2. Private Cloud:
It is an exclusive cloud that offers cloud computing services to a single user on a private network because both the software and hardware are dedicated to end user’s organization. VMware, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Dell, Oracle, IBM/Red Hat, Cisco, AWS are the best private cloud service providers.
3. Hybrid Cloud:
Hybrid cloud computing provides the combination of both private as well as the public for a more flexible approach. It is basically a single IT environment developed from several environments connected through LANs, WANs VPNs, APIs, Microsoft Azure, AWS, VMware.
There are more three types of cloud services:
Software as a Service (SaaS): It offers B2B or B2C software or web application (E.g. Salesforce, BigCommerce, ZenDesk, Dropbox, Slack).
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): It provides databases, storage, personal digital server and other on-demand support services (E.g. DigitalOcean, AWS, Cisco Metcloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Engine).
Platform as a Service (PaaS): It is centralized on a network and only accessible on a deployed system (E.g. Heroku, SAP AWS Lambda, Google App Engine, IBM Cloud Foundry, Oracle Cloud Platform).
Now you have got the idea of what cloud is. It’s time to know what are
Key Factors to Consider While Choosing a Cloud Service Provider:
1. Your business requirements and goals:
You are investing in a cloud service to upgrade your business. Therefore, the important aspect here is to understand your business requirements, goals, virtues, and shortcomings of your company.
Cloud providers will offer you a wide range of services. In this context, you should create a list of the functionality or technological solutions that your business needs and then match which provider offering the best.
2. Cloud service pricing:
This is something important. Depending on your company budget and resources, you should specify the exact amount of money your company is capable or ready to spend on a cloud platform. For clear understanding, you can compare between AWS pricing, Google Cloud Pricing, Azure Pricing, etc.
3. Data Security:
You should check that cloud service provider has a robust security infrastructure for all levels and kinds of cloud services. They should follow up-to-date data security policies and procedures in place to control the access of end-user accounts.
Ensure their data centers should have high-standard environmental safeguards to protect equipment and data from disruptive events.
4. Technical Capabilities:
Make sure the cloud provider has a modern mechanism to make it easier for you to deploy, manage and your software and business applications. They must use secure APIs and data transforms so your company can connect to the cloud without any hassle.
The provider should have a strong system for event management which is integrated with its internal management, and or monitoring mechanism. Check which is advanced in modern technical and operational capabilities.
5. Administrative Support:
Cloud is software and works through the Internet. You can’t go to the provider directly to meet them face-to-face if any technical issue arises. Hence, consider a cloud provider who offers 24×7 administrative or customer support.
Check whether they offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) to promise you for the essential service that you need every time. There must have tracking and monitoring controls over your services to find if any change is being made into their cloud platform.
6. Trust:
Big brands never put their brand image at risk that is why they never compromise in providing high-quality services to their customers. Not all cloud providers are big brands like AWS, Google, Microsoft. You should check what is the company’s brand value and principles. Check their brand reputation and see who are their partners and premium clients.
These are the critical factors that determine the quality, security, and future reliability of the cloud service provider. Let us move what are the top cloud providers in the market and their features so that you specifically analyze their utility and other technical aspects that meet your business requirements.
Top Cloud Providers
1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Amazon Web Services popularly known as ‘AWS’ is a robust cloud computing platform for enterprises. It is the world’s leading and widely adopted cloud platform. It provides a comprehensive range of cloud services that includes SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.
The most famous divisions of AWS are its servers, storage, networking, remote computing, SaaS application development, mobile app development, and data security. Some of the featured services of AWS are:
- EC2
- Simple Storage Service (S3)
- Aurora
- DynamoDB
- Amazon RDS
- AWS Lambda
- Amazon VPC
- Lightsail
- Amazon SageMaker
2. Microsoft Azure
Azure is a robust, integrated cloud platform for companies who already using Windows-based applications. Microsoft Azure enables companies of all sizes to manage site-to-site replication and data recovery.
This cloud provides zone redundant storage (ZRS) or data storage redundancy across several data center regions. Azure has diverse networking capabilities and support for different site connections to virtual networks. It allows developers to write, test, and deploy algorithms using the Azure Machine Learning Studio.
3. Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
Google Cloud offers a variety of resources for developing, deploying, and operating applications on the web. Google Cloud Services are mainly used for developing web applications.
It offers various off-the-shelf APIs pertaining to computer vision, NLP (Natural Language Processing), and translation. AI & ML developers can create models using open-source TensorFlow deep learning library of Google’s Cloud Machine Learning Engine.
4. Heroku
Heroku is a recently emerged cloud platform that enables companies to develop, deliver track, and monitor applications. The best advantage of Heroku is that it allows app developers to focus on code instead of infrastructure.
Its cloud app development productivity is better than other cloud companies. Heroku supports many programming languages such as Java, Python, PHP, Node.js, and Go, which are used as web application deployment models.
5. Firebase
Firebase is a Backend-as-a-Service (BaaS) owned by Google that offers better functionalities to help in backend development for Android, iOS, and web.
It is designed to make the app development process easier for developers. Firebase removes various challenges of mixing segregation, authentication, and synchronization by juggling multiple versions and ensures the correct bits are consistent throughout the system.
Here is the below comparison table of the cloud service providers that will assist you to analyze the right cloud side-by-side:
[ninja_table_builder id=”6447″]
Now it’s time for the final decision, steps to choose the cloud service.
Step1: Review the contract model of the cloud service provider.
Step 2: Analyze the final cost and total investments to their service model.
Step 3: Maintain standard with the model.
Step 4: Check their model’s troubleshooting.
Step 5: Check the performance of the model.
Step 6: Understand their privacy and controls of the model.
Step 7: Ensure the model is equipped with risk management.
Step 8: Ensure the model has network dependency.
Step 9: Match with your business requirements.
Conclusion
It’s done. By considering the above information of cloud services and following the essential steps you can easily decide the right cloud service for your business. Most organizations generally use hybrid cloud because it offers capabilities of both private and public clouds.
But depending on your company size and budget, you can choose any cloud. Here, if data security is your primary concern, eSearch Logix will recommend you to first start with private cloud. Once you get an understanding of cloud computing functioning and its operations, go with hybrid cloud.
If you need more help on cloud services or you are looking for cloud experts who can proficiently lead you on how to properly use the cloud service or you want cloud solutions for your project, collaborate with eSearch Logix and make the best out of the cloud.
We have certified AWS experts, Microsoft Azure specialists, Google Cloud Platform professionals, Heroku developers, and Firebase developers who have hands-on experience in using the popular cloud platforms.
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