Cloud Computing Fundamentals Assignment

Cloud computing is combination of new and existing technologies which distributing computing services through connected computers and virtualized machine using internet resulting unified computing resources can be provided [1]. Cloud computing technology using virtualization technology to enable the usage hardware and software resources such as CPU, RAM, and bandwidth in virtual environment [1]. Cloud computing provides advantages such as saving costs and high mobility resulting the usage of cloud computing becoming popular in the recent years. The examples of cloud services are Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.

Amazon EC2 is an IaaS. App Engine is Google Cloud's PaaS. With the App Engine, Google takes a large part in managing resources for user necessary. While Microsoft Azure is a PaaS which is like Google App Engine and an IaaS that helps and offers the development of compute, application, and storage services [2].

Microsoft Azure offers enhanced security, integrated support for Microsoft software, and hybrid cloud capabilities. It has variety of instances including GPU and high-performance compute options, optimization for machine learning like AWS. Google's Compute Engine also offers one f1-micro instance [4].

AWS uses a version of Linux which is adapted to CentOS/RHEL and has minor adjustments to local requirements. As for Azure, it is not a single operating system, but consists of several different OS working together [11]. While Google Cloud has a Debian 10+ OS.

Amazon has Fortinet which provides security features to Virtual Private Cloud in zones at will. As for Microsoft Azure, Fortinet provides optimized security and removes security outputs during migration. FortiGate provides security and firewalls for Google Cloud Platform [7].

AWS and Azure offer pay per minute billing while Google Cloud offers pay-per-second billing models. Google also offers discounts in certain condition.

The Lambda service of AWS supports programming language with its Runtime API, which integrates with dozens of AWS services, or with other tools via AWS Lambda Extensions [9].

One of the advantages of the Amazon EC2 is its ease of use as it provides user-friendly interface. It also provides speed and agility. Amazon EC2 can offer hiring of server in a few minutes only. It can greatly reduce the time taken to complete tasks with tools such as Auto Scaling, AWS Tools and Elastic Load Balancing. Its disadvantage is its networking is not flexible enough compared to other cloud platform resulting cross-region communication difficult to setup.

For Microsoft Azure, it provides high data security make it becomes the leader in IaaS security. It allows companies to launch their clients’ application in the cloud to save infrastructure and maintenance costs. The cons of this platform are it needs experts to fully utilize the platform. Experts are required to ensure all functions work correctly. Many mistakes will occur, and costs will be wasted if no expert managing the platform.

Meanwhile, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) provides faster networking speed compared to other cloud platforms as its network using fiber optic cable. GCP costs less as pay-per-second billing model provided, and it also offers discounts to their clients. Unfortunately, GCP still has its limitation at compute services provided and only has Compute engine and Kubernetes engine.

Amazon EC2 is preferred because it is the leading platform in cloud services and provides variety of services tool such as management, web designing and mobile application tools. These tools increase efficiency in software development due to ease of using and greatly reduce the time required. Although Amazon EC2 costs more than the other two, it is still preferred to ensure the quality of software even it costs more.

This paper evaluates the comparisons between three major cloud services, Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. These three services have their own advantages and disadvantages over each other, making them preferred by users. However, Amazon EC2 is the best for software development due to its superior quality and efficiency.