To make the choice between three market giants (Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud) clearer, we’ve conducted research on the pricing plans for DevOps services.
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. Cloud computing has rapidly become a strong driving factor for companies worldwide, as software is transferred out of in-house data centers in an effort to modernize, reduce costs, and boost agility. Businesses more and more use it as an all-in-one solution, a model in which a third-party supplier comprises and manages a customer’s fundamental infrastructure. Among the most used and popular DevOps services, namely Amazon Web Services, Azure DevOps services, and Google Cloud services, there is a battle going on in the market. Based on Statista analytics, Amazon Web Services, the most prominent provider in the cloud computing industry, held 32% of the total market in the 3rd quarter of 2021. Microsoft Azure comes in 2nd place with a 21% market share, followed by Google Cloud with an 8%. Therefore, in the 3rd quarter of 2021, these three cloud suppliers are undoubtedly leading within the statistics. Since all three solutions are actively used by the public and are in demand, when developing a software, you might be overwhelmed by the choice you are facing. Every DevOps services have their pricing plans, estimation of which depends on the type of application, the features it requires, and many other factors. Fortunately, all the DevOps services providers have a pricing calculator, which facilitates the search of products. [Find it here: Amazon Web Services, Azure DevOps services, and Google Cloud services]. So, to make it clearer for you, we conducted research, highlighting the most needed DevOps services for MVP development. Such a set can be called a basis of any application, basically a specific minimum you might need for your future software launch. This «basic package» includes storage service, compute cloud, database, cache, hosting, and content delivery service. Each and every listed service remains on all three cloud computing platforms in different formats, with different names. That is why we selected the most similar technologies by functional abilities and characteristics, in order to compare their pricing in each service category. Besides, to gratify major businesses, we determined the main targeted locations: US West (North Virginia), US East (California), UK (London), to show the variation depending on location. Hence, let’s start! Note: All the estimated prices are approximate, because of the difference between services’ possibilities. We tried to output prices considering the same measures, but the uncertainty might exist. The most standard storage service that is quite popular within Amazon Web Services is S3 (Simple Storage Service) for object archiving. An equivalent to it is Cloud Storage on Google Cloud, and Block Blob Storage on Azure. Such storage would be enough for simple app development. A little bit about each service: For the price estimation, we defined the minimum characteristics necessary for MVP running. With mentioned amounts, we calculated the minimum sum, that you will need to pay per month for your MVP. For S3 the price in different regions varies, while remaining somewhere around $5.5: UK – $5.47, US East – $5.20, US West – $5.87. Using Cloud Storage costs equally for all outlined locations $4.65 per month. The situation with Block Blob Storage, a part of Azure DevOps services, stays the same for US West and East – $3.79, while for the UK this amount is a little bit higher: $3.97. As we can see from the comparison above, Azure with its Block Blob Storage provides the cheapest solution among other market giants. Cloud computing has seen a significant rise in the tech market sector, with leading brands such as AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google offering a variety of Virtual Machines. This implies that the VM instances might be viewed as a real machine with its CPU, storage, connection, backup, and so on. Cloud computing is the first to be paid for, during the development, so this is a crucial part of the process. Azure’s service is called Virtual Machines, not to confuse anyone seeking such a solution on their website. On Amazon Web Services there is EC2, and on Google Cloud, Compute Engine. Let’s take a glance at their functionalities. The Azure VM delivers virtualization adaptability without any need to maintain the actual hardware that runs it. However, it must be maintained by completing operations such as customizing, debugging, and setting up software. Azure VM enables to build a PC with the particular specifications required to write and test an application. EC2 service is primarily intended to make web-scale cloud computing easy for developers. This also allows you to purchase and customize capacity with minimum effort, as well as have complete control over your computer resources. Furthermore, EC2 offers a range of processing units, memory, networking, operating system, and purchasing model options. Compute Engine is a safe and customizable compute solution that allows you to create and run virtual machines on Google’s infrastructure.
