Introduction

Today we will compare the 4 major players in the cloud industry. These are Azure, Amazon, Google, and Heroku. We will go through the pros and cons of each contender along with their relevant use cases.  The purpose of this analysis is that your selection should match your business, financial, and technical needs. This article provides an in-depth look at top cloud vendors for migration, offering insights into their services and capabilities. After reading this article, your journey to cloud migration will be simplified. Let’s start with strengths and weaknesses of each of these options. 

Amazon Web Services

Strengths

The strengths of AWS include:

• High availability: AWS guarantees 99.95% uptime, or 4.5 hours per year. 
• Strong security: AWS has multiple compliance certifications and a standard security model. 
• Cost effective: AWS is cost-effective because it’s pay-as-you-go.  

Weaknesses

• Complex billing and cost management: Heavy usage can increase service costs. 
• Learning curve: Investment in expertise and training. 
• Data transfer costs: Possible AWS region data transfer costs can have an impact on your budget. 

GCP (Google Cloud Platform)

Strengths

• Highly productive: Google Cloud packages can handle tens of thousands of users without lag. 
• Fast collaboration: GCP lets multiple users collaborate quickly. 
• Strong security: Google Cloud protects your data with a secure infrastructure. 

Weaknesses

• Overwhelming infrastructure choices: Traditional businesses may be overwhelmed by infrastructure options.  

Heroku

Features 

• Git integration: Heroku’s stable and fast Git integration lets developers use their existing Git workflows for streamlined deployments. 
• Scalability: Heroku makes scaling compute power up or down easy with a click. 
• Simple interface: Heroku has an easy-to-use interface. 

Weaknesses

• Lesser control: Heroku has fewer customization options than other platforms. 
• Cost: Heroku is more expensive than other platforms, especially for larger apps. Note that Heroku does not offer free tier anymore. 

Azure

Advantages

• High availability: Like AWS, Azure guarantees 99.95% uptime. 
• Strong Security: Azure has multiple compliance certifications and uses DADSC security.
• Scalability: Azure scales well and has numerous scalability options like load balancers, AKS, etc.

Weaknesses

• Complexity: New cloud users may find Azure intimidating. 
• Cost: Unmanaged costs can add up due to the confusing pricing structure.
• Integration with non-Microsoft products: Microsoft products integrate well with Azure, but non-Microsoft products may not. 

AWS Use Cases

Every type of business use case is catered to by the vast array of cloud services offered by AWS. Among its main advantages are as follows:

• AWS provides large-scale big data storage, analysis, and visualization services.
• AWS offers a full range of machine learning services for developing, training, and using AI models.
• AWS offers many storage options for data backups and retrievals.
• From enterprise resource planning (ERP) to business process management (BPM) solutions, AWS supports a wide range of commercial applications.

Azure Use Cases

Azure is often chosen by organizations that are already using Microsoft products as the integration of Microsoft products with Azure cloud is very easy and strong. Below are some of the situations where you should prefer Azure over others:

• Azure integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products, making it an attractive choice for businesses that use a lot of Microsoft software.
• Azure offers a range of services tailored to the needs of enterprise IT, including virtual machines, databases, and AI services.
• Azure provides a range of tools and services that support the development and testing of applications.
• Azure offers a range of services for big data analytics, including Azure Synapse Analytics and Azure Databricks.

GCP Use Cases

We all know that Google has probably one of the best services for machine learning and data analytics. Here is a brief list of use cases where you should go for GCP instead of other cloud vendors:

• GCP offers a range of services for data analytics, including BigQuery for data warehousing and Dataflow for stream and batch processing.
• GCP provides AI Platform for end-to-end machine learning workflows and pre-trained AI services through Google Cloud AI.
• GCP’s Firebase platform offers a range of services for developing web and mobile applications, including real-time databases, authentication, and hosting.
• GCP’s Kubernetes Engine offers a managed environment for deploying, managing, and scaling containerized applications.

Heroku Use Cases

Heroku is very well suited to small and medium-sized projects, and if prototyping is your main goal. It is a platform as a service that takes care of a lot of things on its own. Below are some of its significant features:

• Heroku’s platform-as-a-service (PaaS) model makes it easy to deploy and scale web applications.
• Heroku’s easy-to-use platform and wide range of add-ons make it a good choice for quickly prototyping new ideas.
• Heroku’s focus on developer experience and productivity allows developers to focus on writing code, not managing servers.
• Heroku seamlessly integrates with Salesforce, making it a good choice for businesses that use Salesforce for customer relationship management (CRM).

Heroku vs AWS – Source: https://sumatosoft.medium.com/heroku-vs-aws-which-cloud-hosting-to-choose-in-2022-a9f2f1959aeb

Choosing the Right Cloud Vendors for Migration

Here is a brief summary table of the comparison between AWS, Azure, GCP, and Heroku. 

Category	AWS	Azure	GCP	Heroku
Compute	EC2, Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk	Virtual Machines, Azure Functions, App Service	Compute Engine, App Engine, Cloud Functions	Dynos (PaaS)
Storage	S3, EBS, Glacier	Blob Storage, Disk Storage, Archive Storage	Cloud Storage, Persistent Disk, Nearline/Coldline	AWS S3, Ephemeral filesystem (resets every 24 hours or on Dyno restart)
Database	RDS, DynamoDB, Redshift	Azure SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Azure Synapse	Cloud SQL, Spanner, BigQuery, Firestore, Bigtable	Heroku Postgres, Heroku Redis, MongoDB (through add-ons)
AI/ML	SageMaker, comprehensive machine learning services	Azure Machine Learning, Cognitive Services	AI Platform, Google Cloud AI	Integrates with AWS, Azure, GCP services through add-ons
Serverless	Lambda	Azure Functions	Cloud Functions	One-off Dynos
Kubernetes	Amazon EKS	Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)	Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)	Supports Docker containers; no native Kubernetes support
Security	Inspector, GuardDuty, Security Hub, Macie	Active Directory, Sentinel, Information Protection, Key Vault	Security Command Center, Data Loss Prevention API, Identity-Aware Proxy, Cloud Armor	Automated Certificate Management, SSL, fully encrypted Heroku Postgres and Redis
Use Cases	Wide range, including web hosting, big data analytics, machine learning	Favored by organizations using Microsoft services	Strong in data analytics, machine learning	Suitable for small to medium projects, rapid prototyping
Costing	Pay-as-you-go, complex pricing due to service variety	Variety of purchasing options, including commitments and reserved instances	Competitive pricing for compute-intensive workloads	Straightforward but potentially expensive as scale increases

Conclusion

Evaluating top cloud vendors for migration is crucial for ensuring a smooth and efficient transition to the cloud. As we have seen, each cloud platform AWS, Azure, GCP, and Heroku offers unique strengths and capabilities that are suited to different use cases. Good news is, Vizzon is here to simplify your cloud migration journey. Whether you are considering moving to AWS for its broad range of services, Azure for seamless integration with Microsoft products, GCP for its powerful data analytics and machine learning tools, or Heroku for its developer-friendly environment, our expert team at Vizzon can guide you through every step. Don’t let the complexities of cloud migration slow you down. Contact Vizzon today to utilize the full potential of cloud technology tailored to your business and technical needs. Let us help you make a smooth and successful transition to the cloud.