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Google Compute Engine vs Microsoft Azure comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

Google Compute Engine
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
10th
Average Rating
8.8
Number of Reviews
15
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Microsoft Azure
Ranking in Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
1st
Average Rating
8.4
Number of Reviews
312
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) category, the mindshare of Google Compute Engine is 0.5%, up from 0.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Microsoft Azure is 19.7%, up from 19.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS)
 

Featured Reviews

Ivy W. - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 31, 2023
A cost-effective and quite an elastic solution
I would say that Google Compute Engine is easy to use for skilled people and people with a tech background. For regular users who do not have experience with the cloud platform, it is not very user-friendly. If you wish to use Compute Engine, you must know a lot of technical terms such as availability, instance, and scalability. You also need to choose the proper instance for you. In my experience, there is a standard option, an advanced option, and a customized option for Google Compute Engine. You can choose the Compute Engine with high speed or with memory speed. All of this is too much for a person who is not tech-savvy. I am not sure whether they designed it like that on purpose or if they plan on improving it. I cannot think of any features that need to be upgraded.
Nicolas Chabrier - PeerSpot reviewer
Feb 26, 2024
Promotes clear, logical structures preventing impractical configurations and offers seamless integration
The only thing is regarding the management of multi-cloud environments. That's not really possible. So basically, it's wonderful if you manage Microsoft clearly and if you manage Microsoft Azure, but if you need to consume external services and have a global overview of all your consumption, it's not the case. Google, for instance, has tools that help you manage multiple environments, which makes sense because Google is really the cloud provider. So that's why they need to be compliant with the others. But for sure, Microsoft's approach is different, and it's wonderful when you're one hundred percent on Azure. But if you'd like to have something more of a multi-cloud strategy, that's a bit of a gap where they could improve.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"From a feature perspective, I find API integration, automation capabilities, and features like preemptive and Spot instances valuable. Migration tools have also been useful."
"It's the most engineer-friendly product compared to Amazon AWS or Azure."
"Google is managing all hardware. You don't need to provision or pre-provision your computer engine."
"The support for ephemeral instances has been particularly valuable for me. It allows me to significantly reduce costs for temporary virtual machines by automatically destroying them once they are no longer needed, which can result in cost savings of up to 90 percent. Additionally, the solution is easy to use."
"Everything is simple and useful. The initial setup is not challenging."
"The solution helps to direct SSH into the machine at the click of a button. It also helps to deploy container images right from the UI. There is no need to manage the containers on the machine. I also like the tool’s Spot provision model."
"The main motive for choosing Google Compute Engine is pricing."
"One of GCE's best features is the managed instance groups."
"Azure is a good networking solution from a WAN perspective."
"The product has been very stable for us so far."
"Microsoft offers free courses and an exam on their products. Many of my colleagues who use Microsoft Azure take advantage of those free courses to help them learn about the solution in depth."
"Reduces work for our IT teams and saves us a lot of time."
"We didn't have any problems setting it up."
"I know there have been a lot of improvements and a lot of new services lately. I'm really not aware of all of them."
"We use the solution to manage and secure my users' email for the Active Directory."
"The tool has proven to be valuable for our organization by enhancing the availability and reliability of services. Our website and several applications hosted on it now benefit from improved availability features and increased reliability."
 

Cons

"The high availability features in Google are only available in Google Compute Engine in different regions. If I have another server outside Google, the high availability features in Google cannot synchronize with such a server."
"There have been instances when a customer has tried to deploy a certain number of VMs inside a project, and they come across quota issues."
"I would like to improve the solution’s UI while deploying a container. It is sometimes hard to figure out the container’s details and format that you want to deploy. The tool does not give you a guide to find out the error and why the container is not starting up which could be because you have configured it wrong. This is always a hit on the setup."
"It has some limitations. For example, you don't get through layer two connectivity. So I've had some difficulty deploying custom VMs. For example, you can't deploy a KVM file to file directly on GCP."
"Google Compute Engine does not have many options at a lower tier level. If they had more options it will be better. For example, Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure, have more options and different types of instances, of VMs we can select."
"Google Compute Engine needs to have multi-region support. It would also be nice to have a tracking mechanism."
"The licensing process is not a very straightforward process."
"The biggest problem is that it's got a very archaean and complex security environment that has to be very carefully set up and is easy to break."
"We had issues with the Mobile Service ORM and the Azure SQL Database (cloud version of SQL Server). At times, the queries that are created automatically from the ORM mapping are not very well optimized for this database and that can lead to performance and stability issues. On occasion, the connection manager from the ORM does not handle the database connections very well."
"It would be beneficial if Microsoft could enhance the free version to allow for more exploration and development. That's my only suggestion regarding Azure."
"Improving transparency in billing is crucial for us. Understanding how billing works only becomes clear once we start using the services. A more accurate billing calculator would help us anticipate costs associated with using specific services."
"It can be cheaper, which might simplify things a bit."
"It could be more flexible. If you look at all Mircosoft products, they are not up to the mark. For example, Azure Ready doesn't provide the same kind of access a domain administrator has and the kind of flexibility that they have when using Active Directory. Microsoft support could be better. Their service could also be better. For example, specific policies for templates suddenly become unavailable. When I checked, they said that certain things might be withdrawn based on customer feedback. This happened once or twice, and it wasn't available at all for five days, it just went down."
"Ideally, Microsoft Azure should be compatible with the applications that we are using in my environment."
"The local support is fair but it is sometimes limited, the service could be better."
"It is impossible to sell a cloud-based model here in Venezuela because we have strong inflation and most of our clients are immigrating to on-premises solutions."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"In terms of improvement, one is definitely the licensing piece. So there is a feature, the BYOL (Bring Your Own License) licensing piece, to bring your own license. It is not that straightforward. It requires some support from Google to get it sorted, access those licenses, and configure those licenses."
"Google Compute Engine's pricing is flexible and the best of all other alternatives."
"It's $60,000 to $70,000 a month to replace about $10,000 a month in data center costs."
"Google Compute Engine is not the least expensive solution. Microsoft Azure, and Microsoft One, are offering a less expensive solution. The price is based on usage. Whenever we use it, we have to pay for only usage. It is a pay-as-you-go model."
"I rate GCE's pricing a five out of ten since it's affordable."
"Google is providing money for learning Google Compute Engine. They offer a $300 free trial to new customers. Any beginner can easily get started."
"The tool is reasonably priced, considering its scalability features. If we want to extend the server's capacity, we can do it, and I think it's reasonable."
"The pricing is very competitive."
"Make use of Azure pricing calculator and you will find out that Azure Is still more reasonable that the competition and do your research, when unclear speak with your MS support."
"With adequate knowledge, I think you can come up with a good model where the pricing won't be a constraint."
"Price-wise, it is comparable to other solutions for the features that we are using."
"We pay our bill in a monthly or 6 monthly billing cycle. The cost depends on how much you use during the period."
"Their licensing costs might be a little bit lower, compared to AWS, but I'm not sure. I think we get licenses, especially on long-term projects, on a yearly basis. It could be cheaper."
"The pricing model is subscription-based and it's not an expensive solution."
"The pricing of Microsoft Azure is not very flexible."
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Comparison Review

it_user8586 - PeerSpot reviewer
Aug 14, 2013
Amazon vs Rackspace vs Microsoft vs Google: Cloud Hosting Services Comparison
Amazon Web Services, Rackspace OpenStack, Microsoft Windows Azure and Google are the major cloud hosting and storage service providers. Athough Amazon is top of them and is oldest in cloud market, Rackspace, Microsoft and Google are giving tough competition to each other and to Amazon also for…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
University
17%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Healthcare Company
9%
Educational Organization
42%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Google Compute Engine?
Everything is simple and useful. The initial setup is not challenging.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Google Compute Engine?
Google resources are cheaper compared to AWS and Microsoft Azure. Among the three, Google is the cheapest option.
What needs improvement with Google Compute Engine?
Google has a lack of focus on their products. They have many products in various areas of the market, but they do not productize or appeal to the market effectively. They should concentrate on prod...
Which is preferable - IBM Public Cloud or Microsoft Azure?
IBM Public Cloud is IBM’s Platform-as-a-Service. It aims to provide organizations with a secure cloud environment to manage data and applications. One of the features we like is the cloud activity ...
Which is better - SAP Cloud Platform or Microsoft Azure?
One of the best features of SAP Cloud Platform is that it is web-based and you can log in from anywhere in the world. SAP Cloud Platform is suitable for companies of any size; it works well with bo...
How does Microsoft Azure compare to Google Firebase?
I would recommend Google Firebase instead of Microsoft Azure, simply for the array of features that it has to offer. In particular, the Firebase library grants you access to a shared data structure...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Windows Azure, Azure, MS Azure
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Allthecooks, BetterCloud, Bluecore, Cosentry, Evite, Ezakus, HTC, Infectious Media, iStreamPlanet, Mendelics, SageMathCloud, Sedex, Treeptik, Wibigoo, Wix, zulily, Zync
BMW, Toyota, easyJet, NBC Sports, HarperCollins, Aviva, TalkTalk Business, Avanade, and Telenor.
Find out what your peers are saying about Google Compute Engine vs. Microsoft Azure and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,763 professionals have used our research since 2012.