Choosing a cloud provider is an investment that may last five years or more. There is no universally best cloud, only the best fit for your workloads, team and ecosystem.
Microsoft Azure
A natural choice for organizations built around AD, M365 and SQL Server. Azure is strong in hybrid scenarios through Azure Arc and Azure Stack, with Enterprise Agreement benefits for corporate customers.
Amazon Web Services
Offers a broad service portfolio and maturity, with strengths in large-scale data, ML/AI and geographically distributed projects. Licensing and pricing can be complex, making FinOps discipline essential.
Google Cloud Platform
Strong in BigQuery, Vertex AI and Kubernetes through GKE. It stands out for data-focused and AI-intensive workloads, while its enterprise sales and support ecosystem is younger than those of its two main competitors.
A practical decision guide
- A Microsoft-centered ecosystem → Azure
- Service breadth and maturity are priorities → AWS
- Data analytics and AI are central → GCP
- You want to distribute vendor lock-in risk → Multi-cloud
Keep reading