The Differences Between Microsoft Azure, AWS and GCP

The Differences Between the "big 3" cloud providers (Microsoft, Amazon and Google).

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Azure for the women, the mostly out of
your focus cloud author, rockyby the Silver Shit.
Sit back, relax, grab a groupand talk to the cloud.
All right.
Hello.
Welcome to the yet to be named.
How's your podcasts with bluesilver shift?

(00:24):
Uh, we have your host andmoderator, you're Mark Wilson
and I have my colleagues of thefounders of the organization,
uh, credit slack and I, JohnDawson had to do, uh, so why
don't we do just a little bit ofan Intro, a credit, one of you
tell us a little bit aboutyourself and what you do around
here at DSS.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Sure.
I'm the managing partner forblue silver shift or an Azure
specialist consulting firmfocusing, uh, on, uh, Microsoft
Azure or we do a bit about thethree 65 myself.
I've been in the IT industry forover 20 years, uh, in western
Canada.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
Awesome.
John,

Speaker 2 (01:01):
John Dobson and I've been a, uh, architect for a
while and I'm Craig's businesspartner in blue, silver shift
and a right.
He get cold here,

Speaker 1 (01:10):
right?
And again, I am Martha and butwe call executive that be
assessable and been around for alittle while.
But I'm gonna try to keep theseguys in line as we do this
podcast.
We'll see off how you're and catsuddenly hit a challenge can be
a shot.
Um, so you know, the purpose ofthe podcasts, you know, we're
really just one to spreadawareness on Microsoft Azures
cloud offering as well as beable to share our expertise and

(01:32):
uh, two people that areinterested across the industry
and on other verticals as wellas far as what you can expect
them.
A little bit about our style,who we want to keep this lights.
Uh, interesting.
You know, we may fight with eachother who made a legal fight
with outside opinions, but forthe most part we're just trying
to get good ideas out there.
Um, and uh, we'll put them infront of people that may not be

(01:54):
aware of them.
So again, trying to keep itpretty late.
Um, some examples we might coverthe future, you know, some, some
technical topics.
You know, we're, we're prettypassionate about things like
file governance, uh, and, andthere's definitely going to be
some technical aspects of the,of the podcasts, but then we
might cover some other, um, youknow, lighter, maybe even a bit
more controversial topics,things like, you know, as the

(02:16):
cloud going to get you fired ifyou're an it professional and
how can you rather avoid thatpitfall or learn from it and
grow from that as well.
So, um, lots of cool stuffcoming up in the future before
we get started.
Uh, it's the end of the day onFriday, so let's, let's pour
ourselves a drink.
So, uh, credit, what are you,why don't you start, what are we
got going here for you and I forsure.

(02:37):
Well,

Speaker 2 (02:38):
um, you decided you wanted to join me in a scotch,
so I appreciate that because Iam a scotch man.
Uh, today we've got a, a lowlyhere, you know, just intro
Internet, but at Glenfarclas 12year old, um, so it's a very,
uh, mellow scotch from the spacesign area and uh, and um, in the
highlands.

(02:58):
And I'm gonna turn it over toJohn to talk about what he's
drinking or, uh, you know, ornot.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I just have the right code.
Second to be a fee.
It's a Canadian a sense.
Well, cheers guys.
Cheers.
[inaudible] everybody.
All right, so the first topicwe're going to have for this
week's podcast, uh, just as anintroduction, we're gonna be

(03:26):
talking about the differencesbetween Microsoft Azure, AWS and
GCP, Google, Google cloudplatform.
Um, so on that note, I'll letyou guys take away.
Why don't we start withcracking, sir?
Well, as we mentioned from the,in the

Speaker 2 (03:43):
beginning, we're obviously on the Azure side of
things, but, uh, we, we are wellversed on everything else that's
going on in their cloud.
We're trying to keep up on boththe AWS and GCP, uh, uh, new
things that are coming onto the,on the stream.
Um, and really, well, why do youwant to start with this topic is
because it's one of the veryfirst questions that we get

(04:03):
asked by customers.
So we get into an engagementcustomer knows from, you know,
they can see on our websitewhere Azure focus.
So they assume that we're goingto be biased towards Azure.
And there they might ask us whywe might even say it, we're
going to AWS or we're going GCP.
Um, why should we talk to youguys?

(04:24):
And we come in with an unbiasedview in terms of showing, let
the numbers speak forthemselves.
So we've done for multiplecustomers, uh, economic
assessments of what it wouldcost to move their workloads to
AWS, GCP, or is your, and letthe customer make the decision.

(04:44):
And in every single scenariothat we've done that for, if the
customer is running a Microsoftstack application or a windows
bay, whether it's windows or.netor sequel server or SQL
databases, what have you, ifit's a Microsoft stack
application because of thelicensing, um, it's going to be

(05:04):
cheaper hands down on Azure.
And there's many reasons forthat, which we can get into
later.
Uh, but you know, that is thatthe numbers don't lie.
And there's a lot of, um, youknow, find out their fear,
uncertainty and doubt aroundwhat, what it costs to run on
cloud or on Amazon or Azureversus Google.

(05:26):
If you just go to the pricingcalculators right off the bat,
um, compare Azure, AWS and GCP,GCP looks cheaper and I get told
that all the time where we knowit's going to be cheaper to run
on GCP.
So that's why we're going thatway and we get them to show us,
well, how do you come to thatconclusion?
And it's because with Google,they bake in discounts, right?

(05:50):
The based on how long you runyour, your, uh, compute.
If we're talking to compute onyou, there's lots of other
facets of the public cloud.
But if we talk compute the, uh,the pricing for a GCP gets
reduced.
So if you're having a computermachine running 24, seven, and
you're going to get the maximumdiscount, whereas if you turn it

(06:12):
off every night and you're onlyrunning at one third of the
time, maybe you get no discount.
Like, I don't know the exactnumbers, but the discounts are
baked in.
So you compare that to thepricing calculator in Azure and
AWS, which were very similar.
They, um, those, to get thosesame discounts, you actually

(06:32):
have to pre buy what's called areserve instance.
So it's not an apples to applescomparison.
And that's the one thing that,um, you know, I'll kind of stop
there and let John Talk that weactually see is the
misinformation that's out thereand a misunderstanding of how to
interpret all this information.
And that's what I think we canbring as a partner and a trusted
advisor to our customers.

(06:53):
Um, is kind of getting cuttingthrough all of that five and
getting to the real message.
And what's, what's gonna be thereal value for you as a
customer?
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (07:04):
no, someone new to the space.
I'll say those proxy talk later.
She knew a little bit tricky.
Um, for sure.
So I've been for abuse is veryhelpful.
I want to see, before I throwover to John, I learned
something new today and not asflood.
What is the fear?
Uncertainty and no, yes, we'regoing to pull that one off in
the future.
Sorry, John[inaudible].

Speaker 3 (07:23):
Uh, anyhow, uh, grid points credit all around.
Uh, I think it's differentstrokes for different folks as
well.
Um, Amazon is, um, was, wasthere first in the cloud as a,
as a tentative tumble, uh, cloudpublic cloud platform and um,
there the giant that's out thereand I was surprised actually see

(07:45):
Microsoft catch up so their CEOenergize the company to actually
allow them to catch up.
And then a lot of ways they'resupersede any both in the
technology in the footprint.
Amazon is right.
Um, Google suite.

Speaker 2 (07:59):
I'm just going to play off of that.
Sorry, just before you changetopic because I was speaking to
somebody just yesterday, one ofour software partners that they
said just in the last ninemonths, prior to nine months
ago, they were seeing um, vote50% of the deals, or sorry, 80%
of the dealers are going to AWSand 20%, we're going to do in
between Azure and GCP, maybemost of the Azure.

(08:22):
Now, whether they're seeing as50% of the customers are going
on as you're 40% or 30 to 40%are AWS.
And then the other is GCP andthis is the Canadian market us
as much different, but it's,it's, that's a nine months.
That's a significant change in ashort period.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Right?
And I think it's got to do withthe adoption curve and in
particular the size of theenterprises in the adoption
curve and the reasons they wantto go for that.
So let's start with the Amazon.
They're first to the market.
Um, they awesome.
They're sweet spot is forstartups and people with no
legacy.
If you are an enterprise andyou've moved into Amazon, what

(09:01):
happens is is, is, uh, you stillhave to pay for the operating
system licensing.
There's no capability toactually buy the operative
system licensing within the VM,et cetera.
But most importantly, you willget deals like sequel, etc.
On the, on the license side.
Um, but Amazon was first andthere they're there to the
market.
Um, in my opinion, uh, Microsofthas got some compelling

(09:24):
advantages for corporateAmerica.
That's not startups with nolegacy.
It's corporate America that'sgotten lots of legacy.
Number one is is that they'vegot active directory and active
directory is sold I say as astaff service within, which is a
software as a service worldwide,regionally independent solution

(09:46):
that integrates with your officethree 65, 10 and disclose your
own premises, active directorythat you know and love that has
been going through everything orare or has been providing the
security if edificationframework for years.
That's number one.
Number two is ammos are uh,Microsoft has, um, office,
meaning that Microsoft owns theoffice platform and office three

(10:09):
65 corporate America again isaddicted to that and they only
have one pharmacist exchangeservers.
All their meals in there, youknow, office three 65, they also
have a software licensing that'sall integrated throughout it.
So the integration there is withAzure is already compelled it.

(10:30):
Um, on top of that they have,Microsoft also has sequel server
and sequel server licensing.
We've read certain thingsrecently.
Prego, correct me where I'mwrong here.
That CQL server is a five timesmore expensive to run an Amazon
in iis or the pads equivalent,um, in, in Amazon than it is in

(10:51):
Microsoft.
And it's because Microsoft ownsthe five four.
So if you've, you're integratingan APP that's from a on
premises, uh, and, and you don'twant to go lift and shift, I
asked with that safe, what youcan do is actually just go into
like, Microsoft becomes a muchmore compelling argument cause
you can buy that sequel inliterally criminals.

(11:13):
Uh, the other thing is, is theenterprise license it.
So Microsoft has, um, uh,enterprise licensing and they
can cut deals.
What is the on premises, uh,eight hub?

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Well the is there have reduced benefit.
Yeah.
So they've got that[inaudible]explain it briefly did for in
quick summary.
If you own an operating systemlicense or SQL server license on
problem, um, and you've paidsoftware assurance on that, you
can actually carry that forwardto the cloud.
Um, we've actually spoken tosome customers that are under

(11:45):
the misconception that ifthey're paying software
assurance on it, they can carryit to AWS or GCP that is
actually incorrect.
And if you talk to Microsoft,they'll tell you that you're
invalidating your Microsoftlicense by doing that.
So it's only under Microsoftthat that applies.
Um, but having said that, thosesame customers that make that
mistake of thinking that theycan carry their software

(12:07):
assurance to a AWS or GCP, whatthey don't realize is they're
paying for that license thesecond time, w because it's
built into the per second or perhour, the compute costs.
So on AWS and GCP cause theyhave to pay Microsoft.
Yes.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
Basically that would be shown to the up to the, to
the end user or the consumer.
Not easily, not easily.
These systems are so confusingnow and for a customer to
untangle the technology and thento go on untangle the licensing,
oftentimes it's cheaper to paydouble or you don't know your
bank or you don't know you'repaying double, which is ecourse.
Hmm.
Yeah.
So, um, on that thread though,um, uh, the Microsoft also is

(12:50):
Nav the largest open source avendor in the world.
So you could run Linux vms, youcan run a lot of different open
source technologies to doclusters, et cetera inside of
Microsoft Azure.
I mean it used to be just onlyan Amazon that you were doing
that.
Um, Microsoft also has a uniquepolicy governance framework that
is extensible and it's, and it'sactually something that's

(13:12):
growing that court, Matt, ifthey're throwing lots of updates
into it.
And when I say it's extensible,meaning that you can configure
it in multiple ways for multipleneeds.
So if you're a customer and youneed different subscriptions,
you can actually carve, right?
And your subscriptions in,adhere them all at the same
policy.
One policy to rule them all theysay.
And, uh, within that policy youwould have common elements and

(13:34):
then you would have everythingelse underneath.
And you're also able to furtherbuying that with not just
management groups, but toexclude certain resource groups
where it comes out of theexception.
So, um, Microsoft is also infront with, um, the number of
feature updates and the cadenceof the releases of those updates

(13:55):
is greater than what I've seenfrom Amazon or Google.
And it just means that there'sthis much development machine
that's listening from uservoice.
It's a platform on Microsoft andit's listening to customers and
they're putting that data backin to the customers.
They're, they're eating theirown dog food essentially of what
they want you to do for yourdeployments to get your cloud

(14:17):
enablement.
And all of these feature updatesare coming up all the time.
So just surprised, you know, tosee 60 updates and a quarter.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
The pace has been incredible.
And I think, you know, there's alot of stuff in the media about
crediting massage in a Dolla,changing the entire Microsoft
culture and in a very shortperiod of time, and it's, it's
evident.
So John and I, many of ourlisteners wouldn't know this.
We had a previous company beforeblue silver shift, uh, started

(14:46):
it in 2010, uh, built a buildinga software, uh, software is a
service SAS solution.
Um, and we, we were looking atin 2010 in cloud is still
relatively new, but we knew wedidn't want to buy a server, put
it in Iraq and host itsomewhere.
So we started looking at, um, atthe time between AWS and Azure

(15:09):
and AWS of course created thispublic cloud market, uh, or at
least the whole concept behindit.
And uh, but we evaluated betweenAWS and Azure, which platform
you wanted to load on.
We were developing and wind andMicrosoft, there was going to be
windows BMS.
We knew it was going to beMicrosoft stack, but Azure, it

(15:29):
was just not gonna work for us.
We couldn't, couldn't make itcould make, could have made it
work, but it just would've beeneither cost prohibitive or
painful technically or other.
There was a whole bunch of wholeslew of reasons.
And so we made the decision togo AWS.
And I interestingly, about threeyears later, I had the same sort
of opportunity with a client toevaluate what platform there

(15:51):
are.
They an on premises application,monolithic application and they
wanted, they were moving intothe cloud and they had to
evaluate and I ran thatevaluation.
We looked at AWS and Azure arevery closely and admittedly ate
up Azure, have made some inroadsin games on what AWS had done.
Technically from a technicalstandpoint, they had changed the

(16:13):
whole um, uh, environment.
I think the underlying is yourstack at that point was, was
rewritten.
Um, but still it was lagging ina certain number of areas.
You know, the network stack ora, you know, all the firewall,
everything.
It just wasn't there.
But you know, in the last threeyears, three or four years,

(16:33):
totally different plots.
Completely pleasure isenterprise grade and it's, it's,
it's in our opinion, the, theenterprise, it's one of the most
rent loss public cloud offeringsout there.

Speaker 3 (16:45):
Yeah.
So with all of you do, this wasoverseeing, you're talking about
the velocity being soimpressive.

Speaker 1 (16:50):
Where do we see the differences between the
platforms in five years fromnow?
How do you see thosetrajectories veering off from
each other?
And if you could take a guess,what do you think is gonna be
the main difference between thethree different offerings in
five years time?

Speaker 3 (17:05):
That's a very good question.
Yeah, that's very good question.
Um, I think more and more peopleare dropping off Amazon for
those reasons that we've beentalking about where they'll get
the licensing advantages andthey'll get some more of the
management features, uh, in, in,uh, uh, Azure.
But um, as you're is going tocontinue to still throwing up
the, uh, data centers, butAmazon's, its own worst enemy

(17:29):
with the success.
Meaning that Walmart I think wasthe first major retailer that
had all their stuff in Amazonthat said, hey, we're going to
take it out of there and move itover because they don't want to
empower their competitor bygiving them money.
Okay.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
Because Amazon bought whole foods.
Yeah, of course.
So yeah, just brick and mortar.
And that's happening in a lot ofretail.
We have a number of retailcustomers.
They're like, we can't go on AWSfor that reason.
Cause they are in debt not onlybecause of the whole foods, but
it all started because Amazon isa competitor of placing a lot of
brick and mortar retailers aresold.
There were a few, should we goon Amazon because they just see

(18:06):
it as basically feeding theircompetition.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Whereas Microsoft is far moreagnostic within that space
except against maybe otherpeople that compete against
Microsoft there when you go toAmazon or Google.
So that's a good question aroundwhere do we see it in five
years, in five years is alifetime only, again to go back

(18:27):
to one of slides that I recentlysaw from Microsoft is that 95%
of on premises servers will bein a public cloud.
So when we 5% when remainbehind, whether that's a print
server or or some type of um,uh, Scada system except for a
historian, everything else isgoing to be in Azure.
So you're going to see Microsoftlike their stock, like their

(18:50):
earnings increasing even morethan five years.
And[inaudible] futureperformance does not[inaudible].
So you're going to see them riseup and actually do something
pretty important overall, uh,with what they're doing and you

(19:10):
just going to see a massmovement over to it.
But that the cloud brings acouple of advantages.
One is time to market andanother one is the ability to
empower developers to quicklysolve business problems.
And that was really prohibitivebefore.
So when you see the, the morebusiness problems you see

(19:32):
developers solving, the moredisruption you'll see in the
more competitive, morecompetition between competitive
whores actually happening.
So that's where the cloud isgoing to be in five years.
Yeah.
So public cloud is really, froman infrastructure perspective,
is as a commodity.
So it's a race to the bottom.
The, the company that likewhether it's Amazon, Microsoft,

(19:56):
Google, the company that canserve up that infrastructure for
the lowest marginal cost isgoing to win or there'll be able
to sell it, sell it for the, thelowest and developed the most
features while the cost is beingdriven down.
Right.
We'll attract more people and,and Amazon's not developing
enough features in comparison toAzure.
Not at the same pace where Ithink an both Amazon and Google

(20:20):
cloud platform have a, a strongpresence is in open source, uh,
companies that are heavily usingopen source.
Um, there's definitely somegreat, uh, advances in machine
learning on Google inparticular.
Um, and so there's going to bethese niche offerings that I

(20:40):
think both AWS and GCP are goingto shine in and there's nothing
looked precluding you fromchoosing a best of breed public
cloud for the differentapplications.
So he

Speaker 3 (20:52):
except for one point and that's an egress.
All of them charge on egresstraffic.
So traffic coming out of thecloud.
Yeah, that's great.
You'd asked that a lot of timeswith customers we have multi
cloud strategy, which is kind ofum, it's kind of diminishing
returns.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
But yeah, there's lots of factors to consider.
But at my, where I was goingwas, I think the open source
side of things is where AWS andGCP are strong today and will
continue to be strong wherethey're going to see either, um,
presence eroded is in theMicrosoft windows, whether,
whether it be, you know, hostingwindows vms or platform as a

(21:31):
service, a web servers.
Um, but yeah, I mean Microsoftis, as John said, the biggest
open source provider, partlybecause they bought getting up.
But um, they still doesn'tmatter I numbers number.
Yeah,

Speaker 3 (21:48):
exactly.
Everybody has a spin on it, butthey're viewed to be anti open
source or Auntie.

Speaker 2 (21:54):
But they've changed that.
Absolutely.
They're coming.
Right.
You're tributing a lot to theopen source community.
You know, they're, they'reopening stuff up as our AWS and
Google for that matter.
And COOBERNETTI's wouldn't existif it wasn't for good.

Speaker 3 (22:06):
Okay.
Okay.
So why don't you see thiscompetition in action and

Speaker 1 (22:15):
you want, and you're kind of thinking, okay, well
where does the competition go?
Let me get the question.
Trying to ask.
So what I'm wanting to know is,

Speaker 2 (22:22):
okay,

Speaker 1 (22:22):
between these different cloud offerings, is
this like a, is this like aHighlander situation?
Is this like there can only be

Speaker 3 (22:29):
no, you know, they go, they keep each other honest.
Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 1 (22:33):
So, so it's, it's one announces a price reduction,
true capital, the cloud Kaplanin a free market in action.
So, so we're not going to see acase where there's going to be,

Speaker 3 (22:44):
you know, one,

Speaker 1 (22:46):
one cloud provider that's going to pull the ball in
10 years, 15 years.
It's, no,

Speaker 3 (22:51):
okay.
No, because that would be onecompany at doing everyone.
So Microsoft is owned by CausePublic Company, uh, let's call
it[inaudible].
It's got majority ownership ofBill Gates as an example of,
even though I don't know if he'sactually the owner, Jeff Bezos
is the owner of Amazon, meaninghe's got majority within the

(23:11):
public company.
Those two guys are not incompetition.
I mean it's just too publicservices that are out there.
Amazon web services was createdfor the retail business because
of the retail business.
Couldn't find someone to doeverything they needed to do
within there.
And then they perfected theoffering with the amendment at

(23:33):
tenants.
Okay, well

Speaker 1 (23:36):
good to know that we already have something there for
sure on that note and theSuffolk, one last question.
Now this is a bonus question andI caught on to mind earlier, but
I think John, you sound likethis inspired, you said that
Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos alsoyour gone competition, let's say
that they were so what Holdensquashing for today?
Um, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates,Larry Page all drops on an

(23:59):
island wearing nothing but onone cloth.
Bells of the deaf.
Who Comes on a tie?
I don't know want my opinion isno, no.
Uh, nothing but their wits.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
At least this isn't the EFAP marry, kill

Speaker 1 (24:14):
[inaudible].
I don't know if you do, we'llanswer that one.
So page gates Bayzos droppedthem an island 24 hours, however
long it was.
[inaudible] who comes over?
Who is was a little survivor.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Yeah.
I don't know.
Do you have a clue all night?
I would say.
Okay,

Speaker 1 (24:31):
well James has got [inaudible]

Speaker 2 (24:34):
well, Bezos is maybe on the younger side, has got a
little more energy.

Speaker 1 (24:37):
It's usually gets pretty, you see the book before
and after picture don't becomehere.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yeah.
Well Larry Page, I think he's ahigh on the hog.
He's been there for a long timeso I think he's a Bill Gates
would probably take out Larrybetween Phil and Jeff.
Yeah.
And then a pajama will be laststanding.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
But just the pen is mightier than the sword.
I can see both gates sentencesecond of all kinds of and
traps.
Whereas[inaudible] is also justpure to shirt off screw itself.
That would be the most watchedsurvivor

Speaker 2 (25:11):
episode you ever?
Yes.
New Reality showing.
So I just will say one thing wedidn't, we kind of wrapped up
before we had a chance to talkto you about the next level,
which is platform as a service.
We talked a lot aboutinfrastructure as a service.
So I'd like to put my vote infor an upcoming episode very
quickly after this.
Then we talk about cause andcause I think that my opinion

(25:32):
that's a huge differentiator forthese cloud platforms going
forward.
Uh, between AWS, GCP, and Azure,they're all vying for different
aspects of what pads and SASofferings they can provide a,
and that's where the real valueof the public cloud comes in, is
in the PAS and Sas.
I asked, that's table stakes.

(25:52):
That's no different than ahosting in a Colo.
So let's elevate ourselves andlet's identify where, where we
can take advantage of those, um,pass and SAS offering.
So sorry to,

Speaker 1 (26:04):
and Joliet that, but good comments, breweries back on
topic.
I, yeah, I need some moderationmyself.
Um, well occur.
Gianna, thank you both for yourtime this Friday and let's,
let's, uh, drove the rest of ourevening.
Everyone listening, thank youfor taking the time, um, to, uh,
join them.
Join in on the yet to be namedas your podcasts with the blue

(26:24):
silver shift crew and we'll seeyou all next Friday.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
And cheers to our inaugural kickoff.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (26:39):
What does this one for cliff, what does this one
foreclose?
I should probably say it.
Oh, how close will need to viewthe Mike as well.
Um.