Head-to-head: Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform

Computing Delta surveyed more than 180 end users of different cloud platforms. In this article we compare answers to find the winner from two of the major market leaders: Microsoft vs Google

The UK cloud market was already mature before the coronavirus pandemic hit in early 2020, but the remote work revolution has galvanised the space at a rate never seen before: nearly half of our respondents were new to public cloud within the last three years.

While the market has grown, it hasn't necessarily changed much, and the big three players - Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - still dominate the infrastructure- and platform-as-a-service (IaaS and PaaS) fields. Even other tech giants like Oracle, Salesforce and IBM don't come close to the top of the heap overall, and smaller vendors now need specialist areas of expertise to attract customers.

AWS is the largest global cloud provider according to research by Synergy, with about a third of the market. Microsoft Azure comes next at 21 per cent, and Google Cloud in third at 10 per cent. However, Azure is rapidly closing the gap between itself and the market leader and in some markets, has even overtaken Amazon. The UK has historically shown a strong preference for Azure.

Each year, Computing Delta checks the take-up and opinions of IT leaders on public cloud providers, through a mix of online surveys and interviews. Here we present our comparison of Azure and Google Cloud Platform from research undertaken in December and January, amongst more than 180 senior IT professionals in the UK, to help you answer the question:

Which public cloud solution should I choose?

In the interest of comparing like with like, we do not cover SaaS offerings such as Google Workspace and O365 in this article - even though Google and Microsoft include SaaS sales when reporting their cloud earnings.

What's the difference between Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform?

• Approach: Microsoft Azure offers robust IaaS and PaaS features, and is generally considered to be the natural choice for users with a Microsoft tech stack. Google Cloud Platform is particularly notable for its hybrid and multi-cloud support and data products.
• Services: Microsoft offers a huge range of services, with nearly two-thirds of respondents satisfied that Azure offers everything they need: more than double the amount happy with Google's features.
• Pricing: Cloud pricing is extremely complex and dependent on the services used, but respondents mostly felt that Google's pricing was more competitive than Microsoft's.
• Adoption: Microsoft Azure is far more popular than Google Cloud Platform, with roughly two-thirds of respondents trialling the service and/or taking it to production, versus less than a fifth adopting GCP.

Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform: the background

At a high level, Azure and Google's respective market shares in the UK mimic their global positions: Azure is far more likely to be taken into production. However, that doesn't tell the full story: among our respondents it also led over AWS. Sixty-three per cent of respondents said they had taken Azure into production, versus just 10 per cent using Google Cloud.

Which of these IaaS/PaaS services have you taken into production?

Microsoft's strong UK presence helped to buoy the company in our results. It is also worth noting that a significant proportion of our respondents, more than a third, came from 'large' or 'enterprise-scale' firms with more than 2,500 employees, which tend to show a preference for Microsoft products and tend to have an ongoing relationship with the Windows vendor.

"It's Microsoft and almost everything we do is Microsoft," said one respondent from a mid-sized technology firm. "Costs are mostly reasonable, service has been moderately reliable - but setup is complex."

An enterprise architect from a large tech company noted that Azure is "continually improving, with good tools, support and documentation." However, they added, "one negative is that continually improving means dealing with a high rate of change; the infrastructure has a few oddities."

Other quotes from respondents using Azure were:

• "Key to Microsoft's future strategy, but can be expensive if improperly used."
• "Massive provider, though a bit of training required."
• "Reputation and experience are both pros."
• "Easy to use and reliable."
• "Best value for money and excellent support; easy integration."

Microsoft produces the most widely used business software in the world, Windows, the smooth integration of which into Azure is key for many users. Google has no such installed software base, and its Workspace (formerly G-Suite) SaaS offering is much less popular than Office 365. The effect is that GCP's integrations with Google tools simply cannot offer the same draw as Microsoft's.

What Google does offer is great analytics capability and comparatively lower prices versus Azure, as well as a more user-friendly experience overall. Its service offerings may be narrower, but what it does, it does well. For example, GCP has strong support for containers and Kubernetes deployments, plus a smoother learning curve than its rivals.

Google was slower to reach the public cloud market than its competitors, and this reflects in perception around the product; one of the most common points against Google Cloud Platform is that it is not enterprise-ready or is seen as more of a consumer product. While most IT leaders we talked to had at least trialled Azure, comparatively few had tested GCP.

A manager in a small tech firm felt Google was "not as familiar a name in this space as Microsoft and Amazon, but a reliable and scalable alternative to both." Another user, a systems architect in a large leisure sector business, said GCP had "strong Kubernetes and data platform offerings."

Others users said:

• "Massive provider, great support, retraining required."
• "Great technology and platform, but often not appreciated or understood. Has more of a fan base from academia."
• "Slow to market but it's Google, they'll get there!"
• "Not as well integrated with on-prem infrastructure."
• "Immature compared to AWS and Azure but still 'works'."
• "Simple to set up but worried about longevity of the product."

Microsoft Azure versus Google Cloud Platform: at a glance

Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform: Global reach

The big cloud providers define infrastructure metrics such as availability zones and geographic regions differently, so direct comparisons are not particularly helpful. Both Azure and GCP are available in many parts of the industrialised world.

Both Microsoft and Google have seven availability zones (separate data centres within the same latency region) in Europe. Google plans to add five more soon, in Paris, Milan, Madrid, Turin and Berlin.

Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform: Pricing

Comparing the prices of large cloud vendors' services is extremely difficult. Their pricing permutations and combinations are carefully optimised to maximise profits while keeping customers on the right side of walking away, and are full of loss leaders, special deals, opaque terms and hidden extras. That makes comparing like-for-like very difficult.

Focusing on virtual server list prices in the UK, on-demand prices for a low-end Azure Bs-Series B1LS VM running Ubuntu Linux with 1 vCPU, 0.5 gibibytes (GiB) RAM and 4GiB temporary storage costs £0.039 per hour. An equivalent Windows VM is £0.08/hour. Savings of around 42 per cent and 62 per cent respectively are available on one-year and three-year reserved options (reserved instances, or RIs). These prices go all the way up to £25.11 an hour for an M128M instance with 3,800 GiB RAM and 14 TB storage, although savings of 90 per cent are possible through spot pricing.

Google provides a huge variety of virtual machine types through its Compute Engine, from general purpose to those optimised for memory, compute, accelerator and more. Although it has standard offerings with between two and 32 virtual CPUs, custom machines are also available. Pricing for a general purpose VM, with 2 vCPUs and 8 GB memory, is £0.063/hour, while a more robust 32 vCPU VM with 128 GB memory would be £0.79/hour. Savings are available through the on-demand and committed use pricing options. Google also offers a 'spot price' option; these are dynamic and can change every 30 days, but offer a 60-91 per cent saving over the on-demand price.

The difference, of course, is very much in the detail and there is a stunning level of granularity available, from types of VM to workloads and functions running on them - as well as the inevitable (and costly) extras.

Google Cloud Platform comes out on top when it comes to pricing, with respondents calling it "cheap and cheerful" and "well-priced," but they did note a lack of services compared to Azure. However, although Azure was praised for its breadth of services many IT leaders picked out its complex licensing models. A network manager in the education sector said, "It can be difficult to calculate what a service will cost before actually using it," and the head of technology at a mid-sized professional services firm commented, "Pricing can be unclear and difficult to estimate."

Egress

The increasing popularity of the multi-cloud model has formed a battleground around egress costs: the fees charged when moving data out of the cloud. These fees can generally be minimised by keeping data transfers within the same region (Europe, for example), but they remain a substantial 'hidden cost' of doing business in the cloud.

Considering the high costs associated with data egress for any sort of normal business use, cloud operators who offer reasonable and transparent prices are in high demand. Both Microsoft and Google scored nearly identically on this metric in our survey, with 16 per cent of Azure users and 14 per cent of GCP users agreeing that egress costs were 'inexpensive'. However, nearly 40 per cent of GCP customers agreed that their data was easily portable to another cloud service, versus just 19 per cent of Azure users.

Microsoft Azure

• "We have price and lock-in concerns"
• "Well-known but difficult to control cost."

Google Cloud Platform

• "Pros: Good data analytics, easy collaboration. Cons: Difficulties moving to another vendor."
• "Difficult transition away from the platform to another provider."

Free tier

Free tiers are the way cloud vendors lure individuals and small-time users, in the hope they will become big-time paying users. Some free services are perpetual, others are limited to a year and restricted in their terms of use. Both Azure and Google offer respectable free tiers: Azure has more services, but Google's is not time-restricted.

The Azure free account lasts for 12 months. It covers around 40 services, includes a $200 credit, and is available to all new customers who haven't previously had an Azure free account. Linux and Windows B1 VMS are free for up to 750 hours per month, there's 5 GiB of locally redundant storage (LRS) file storage, 250 GiB S0 instance with 10 database transaction units… and so on.

The Google Cloud Platform Free Programme, unlike Azure's, is available to both new and existing users and has no time limit. The major offer is the GCP Free Tier, which includes more than 25 free services, subject to monthly usage limits (usage above these limits is billed at the standard rate). For example, users will be able to use a free E2-micro (2 vCPUs, 1 GB memory) instance in the US up to 'the number of hours in the current month', which could be anywhere from 672 to 744. Google also offers a 90-day free trial of Google Cloud and Google Maps platform, which includes $300 in Cloud Billing Credits.

Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform: Support

Cloud hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google tend to take a hands-off approach, relying heavily on MSPs and resellers for customer interactions. That said, Google Cloud Platform scored higher on most support-related metrics, especially local support and availability of human support. Both offer human support during business hours on the basic paid support plans, but Azure limits this to email only, unlike GCP.

Unlike previous editions of our cloud IaaS/PaaS research, both companies received some praise for their support; possibly because the mass cloud migration of the last two years has meant more need for technical help. For example, one Azure customer said, "The support is amazing compared to the other two big three," while several GCP users said the support is "great".

Azure's paid support plans start at $29 per month, rising to a maximum of $1,000. Google support begins at the same level of $29/month but also includes three per cent of monthly charges, rising to as much as $12,500/month (plus four per cent of monthly charges) for the top-level Premium Support.

Which of the following terms describe your experience with your IaaS/PaaS?

Which of the following terms describe your experience with your cloud provider?

Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform: Complexity

Both platforms are seen as overly complex to use. They do what they need to do and do it well, but management is a perennial concern. Azure boasts excellent integrations and performs especially well in hybrid cloud set-ups, but its licensing and pricing models are opaque. Google Cloud Platform, on the other hand, has few integrations but a shallow learning curve; the onboarding experience is said to be straightforward.

Although both platforms performed poorly in complexity metrics, Azure was slightly ahead of GCP. It is seen as easier to use, manage and integrate with legacy apps and other clouds.

Complexity is an important issue, because it means that mastering the services requires skills and experience. When similar services have different names and different ways of working between platforms, this is another way that organisations can find themselves locked in. Cross-cloud skills are rare and expensive.

Azure

• "Easy to use and reliable."
• "Easy integration with MS operating system. Needs to be managed by experts."
• "Hard to migrate existing licences."
• "PRO: Good integration, particularly in hybrid. CON: Because of legacy integration some aspects are not as agile."
• "Can be complex to manage billing, some services expensive, good MS stack."

Google Cloud Platform

• "Massive provider, great support, retraining required."
• "Very easy to get started with and not as bewildering as AWS on first acquittance. New products being added all the time and documentation and support we get is great."
• "Easy to use, easy to manage (Google Cloud Shell)."
• "More proprietary [than competitors], more complex porting legacy systems."
• "Quite complex, less MS-stack friendly."
• "Less integration with on-prem systems. Would be preferred only after AWS and Azure."

Microsoft Azure vs Google Cloud Platform: Roadmap

Google is constantly rolling out new cloud services and its roadmap is transparent - but its piecemeal approach to support means customers have trouble trusting the long-term support for any new product. There is a feeling that if a new service isn't a success quickly, it will be abandoned. Customers said, "I'd be worried that Google will drop support for their products," and, "Simple to set up but worried about longevity of the product."

Google pays close attention to public perceptions, and several of its most recent announcements focus on sustainability initiatives like Active Assist (although the company was still only middle-of-the-road at best on its green practices in our recent research - watch Computing for an in-depth analysis of how each major cloud provider is doing, coming soon). However, some respondents actually cited perception issues as a strike against Google, specifically relating to data privacy and trustworthiness.

Google's next cloud event will be in April 2022, where the firm will discuss its data analytics roadmap.

While just 25 per cent of respondents felt that Google had a clear roadmap, that number nearly doubled for Azure, to 42 per cent. Azure announcements from Microsoft's Ignite event in September included expanded security features in Azure AD, updates to various AI services, industry specific features for Azure Synapse Analytics, developer tool improvements and chaos engineering tools, AKS (Kubernetes) solutions for Oracle WebLogic Server and IBM WebSphere Liberty and updated migration tools.

Conclusion

Azure and Google are two of the world's most popular cloud providers, but despite superficial similarities are actually very different. Google - a latecomer to the cloud game - is focused on growth; it continually adds new services and takes a 'Throw everything at the wall and see what sticks' approach, while Microsoft is so focused on integrating its existing services that it can be hard to differentiate between IaaS, PaaS and SaaS.

Our respondents, who are exclusively UK-based IT leaders, showed a marked preference for Azure over any other company, with nearly two-thirds taking it into a production environment. This continues a trend we have been seeing for at least the last five years, where Azure - increasingly seen as 'the enterprise cloud' - has widened the gap with AWS. On the other hand, users are more likely to say that GCP is not ready for enterprise use.

Google is seen as an innovative platform, with reasonable prices and a lower barrier to entry than Azure. Support was praised and it has notable strengths, particularly when it comes to containers, microservices and data analytics. Users also welcomed GCP as competition for other hyperscale cloud providers. However, media reports about antitrust practices and data privacy issues have somewhat spoiled Google's public perception: a black mark that Microsoft has somehow managed to avoid (despite certainly misbehaving in its own way).

In 2022, Azure is the clear winner when it comes to cloud IaaS/PaaS providers.