DevOps, AI/ML, HPC, and blockchain. It also offers to do lift and shift on-premise apps, executing on IBM platforms [18].
Cisco Cloud Center: Cisco is popular for private cloud that also offers hybrid solutions via its partner. Cisco Cloud Center is more secured to manage and deploy the applications in different data centers in both private and public cloud environments. Cisco’s partner networks are Google, CDW, Accenture, and AT&T. Google is the biggest partner among them. It offers the hybrid connectivity and their solutions [18].
VMware vCloud Suite: VMware provides vendor for virtualized services. It is relatively new than that of other service providers. VMware has the vSphere hypervisor. Customers can run in some known public clouds or their own data centers or cloud provider partners. These cloud providers are able to run vSphere on-premise that creates a stable hybrid cloud infrastructure [19].
1.3.1 Cloud Storage and Backup Benefits
Protection of the confidential data is very difficult. Automatic backup of cloud storage is flexible. It also provides data security.
Microsoft Azure is very effective in SaaS. Whereas, Google Cloud is strong in AI [18]. Table 1.1 gives a comparison among them.
1.3.2 Pros and Cons of Different Service Providers
All the cloud service providers have their own pros and cons. Their make themselves a suitable choice for different purposes. Here, the advantages and disadvantages are described for all the providers. Table 1.2 provides a comparative study on this.
Table 1.1 Comparison between AWS Outpost, Microsoft Azure Stack, and Google Cloud Anthos.
| AWS Outpost | Microsoft Azure Stack | Google Cloud Anthos |
|---|---|---|
| Amazon has a huge tool set and that too is rapidly growing. No service providers can match with it. But the pricing is bit puzzling. Though providing service for hybrid or public cloud is not amazon’s primary focus thus incorporation of cloud services with on-premise data is not in top priority [20]. They primarily focus on public cloud. | The customer can run in their own data center. Azure tries to incorporate with that. It provides the facility of hybrid cloud [19]. A customer can replicate his environment in Azure Stack. This is very useful in case of backup disaster and for cutting cost. | Google has come to the cloud market later. So, it does not have that much level of focus to incorporate the customers. But the strength is its technical efficiency. Some of its efficient tools are applicable in data analytics, machine learning, and deep learning. |
Table 1.2 Pros and cons between AWS Outpost, Microsoft Azure Stack, and Google Cloud Anthos.
| Vendor | Strength | Weakness |
|---|---|---|
| AWS Outpost | Dominant market positionExtensive, mature offeringsEffective use in large organizations | Managing costVery difficult for usingOptions are overwhelming |
| Microsoft Azure Stack | Second largest service providerCoupling with Microsoft softwareSet of features is vastProvides Hybrid cloudOpen source supported | Poor documentationManagement tooling is incomplete |
| Google Cloud Anthos | Designed to serve for cloud-native enterprisesProvides portability and allows open sourceHuge discounts and suitable contractsExpertise in DevOps | Enters late in IaaS marketLess services and featuresNot focused for enterprise |
1.3.2.1 AWS Outpost
The strongest strength of Amazon is its effectiveness in public cloud. They provide services through the world for its public cloud infrastructure. This cloud provider is very popular because of its varieties operational scope. AWS provides different kind of services. It also has a large network for worldwide data centers. The “Gartner” reported that this provider is the most mature and enterprise-ready. It also has capabilities to govern a large amount of resources and customers. But the weakness is its cost. Customers face difficulty to understand its cost structure. It is also difficult to manage the costs while running a large volume of workloads.
1.3.2.2 Microsoft Azure Stack
Microsoft provides on-premises software—SQL Server, Windows Server, SharePoint, Office, .Net, Dynamics Active Directory, etc. The reason of its success is most of the enterprises uses Windows and its related software. As Azure is tightly coupled with its other software applications, the enterprises, that use many Microsoft software, they find Azure as a suitable platform. This is how it builds good relationship with their existing customers. They also provide a remarkable discount on variety of services to their existing customer. But, Gartner also reported some faults in their some of the platforms [21].
1.3.2.3 Google Cloud Anthos
AWS and Azure offer the Kubernetes standard which is developed by Google. GCP is expert in machine learning and Big Data analytics. It provides huge offers on that. It also provides offers in load balancing and considerable scale. Google is also efficient knowledge about different data centers and quick response time. Google stands in third in the field of market share [21]. But, it is rapidly increasing its offers. As per Gartner, clients choose GCP as a secondary provider than that of primary provider.
1.3.3 Review on Storage of the Providers
1.3.3.1 AWS Outpost Storage
SSS to EFS: The storage services of AWS include its Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Simple Storage Service (S3), and Elastic File System (EFS) for persistent block storage, object storage, and file storage, respectively. It also provides some new innovative products for storage that includes the Snowball and Storage Gateway. Snowball is a physical hardware device, whereas Storage Gateway creates a hybrid storage environment.
Database and archiving: Aurora is a compatible database of SQL by Amazon. It consists of different services like DynamoDB NoSQL database, Relational Database Service (RDS), Redshift data warehouse, ElastiCache in-memory data store, Neptune graph database, and Database Migration Service. Amazon also offers long term storage known as Glacier. It is having very low charges [20].
Storage services: The storage services of Microsoft Azure include Queue Storage, Blob Storage, File and Disk Storage for large-volume workloads, and REST-based object storage of unstructured data respectively. Data Lake Store is another storage that is used for big data applications.
Extensive database: This extensive database provides three SQL-based options. They are Database for MySQL, SQL Database, and Database for PostgreSQL. Data Warehouse service is also provided as well. The services are Table Storage for NoSQL and Cosmos DB. Its in-memory service is Redis Cache and the hybrid storage service
