This article helps you understand how Microsoft Azure services compare to Google Cloud. (Note that Google Cloud used to be called the Google Cloud Platform (GCP).) Whether you are planning a multi-cloud solution with Azure and Google Cloud, or migrating to Azure, you can compare the IT capabilities of Azure and Google Cloud services in all the technology categories.
This article compares services that are roughly comparable. Not every Google Cloud service or Azure service is listed, and not every matched service has exact feature-for-feature parity.
Azure SQL family of SQL Server database engine products in the cloudAzure SQL Database is a fully managed platform as a service (PaaS) database engine Azure SQL Managed Instance is the intelligent, scalable cloud database service that combines the broadest SQL Server database engine compatibility with all the benefits of a fully managed and evergreen platform as a service SQL Server IaaS deployed on Azure Windows or Linux VM Azure SQL Edge is an optimized relational database engine geared for IoT and edge deployments
A globally-distributed database system that limitlessly scales horizontally. Is multi-modal -- key-value, graph, and document data). Supports multiple APIs: SQL, JavaScript, Gremlin, MongoDB, and Azure Table storage. Compute and storage can be scaled independently
Azure Database for PostgreSQL is a fully managed database-as-a-service based on the open-source Postgres relational database engine. The Hyperscale (Citus) deployment option scales queries across multiple machines using sharding, to serve applications that require greater scale and performance
A highly scalable NoSQL key-value store for rapid development using massive semi-structured datasets. Store semi-structured data that's highly available. Supporting flexible data schema and OData-based queries
Change feed in Azure Cosmos DB is a persistent record of changes to a container in the order they occur. Change feed works by listening to an Azure Cosmos DB container for any changes. It then outputs the sorted list of documents that were changed in the order in which they were modified. The persisted changes can be processed asynchronously and incrementally, and the output can be distributed across one or more consumers for parallel processing
A secure data cache and messaging broker that provides high throughput and low-latency access to data for applications
Database architectures
Elastically scale your database to accommodate unpredictable bursts of traffic and deliver low-latency multi-player experiences on a global scale.
Oracle DB migrations can be accomplished in multiple ways. This architecture covers one of these options wherein Oracle Active Data Guard is used to migrate the Database.
Build secure and scalable e-commerce solutions that meet the demands of both customers and business using Azure Database for MySQL.
Cloud-based Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) that uses Massively Parallel Processing (MPP) to quickly run complex queries across petabytes of data.
Allow you to deploy scalable clusters of SQL Server, Spark, and HDFS containers running on Kubernetes. These components are running side by side to enable you to read, write, and process big data from Transact-SQL or Spark, allowing you to easily combine and analyze your high-value relational data with high-volume big data.
Data warehouse architectures
Explore a cloud data warehouse that uses big data. Modern data warehouse brings together all your data and scales easily as your data grows.
Automate an extract, load, and transform (ELT) workflow in Azure using Azure Data Factory with Azure Synapse Analytics.
Processes and moves data between different compute and storage services, as well as on-premises data sources at specified intervals. Create, schedule, orchestrate, and manage data pipelines.
Use Azure services to ingest, process, store, serve, and visualize data from different sources.
This solution demonstrates how to build and deploy a machine learning model with Microsoft R Server on Azure HDInsight Spark clusters to recommend actions to maximize the purchase rate of leads targeted by a campaign. This solution enables efficient handling of big data on Spark with Microsoft R Server.
Big Data Analytics with Azure Data Explorer demonstrates Azure Data Explorer's abilities to cater to volume, velocity, and variety of data, the three V's of big data.
Provides a serverless non-cloud interactive query service that uses standard SQL for analyzing databases.
Analytics architectures
Get near real-time data analytics on streaming services. This big data architecture allows you to combine any data at any scale with custom machine learning.
Automate an extract, load, and transform (ELT) workflow in Azure using Azure Data Factory with Azure Synapse Analytics.
Create a pipeline for ingesting and analyzing text, images, sentiment, and other data from RSS news feeds using only Azure services, including Azure Cosmos DB and Azure Cognitive Services.
Fully managed, low latency, and distributed big data analytics platform that runs complex queries across petabytes of data. Highly optimized for log and time series data.
Open and scalable end-to-end IoT analytics service. Collect, process, store, query, and visualize data at Internet of Things (IoT) scale--data that's highly contextualized and optimized for time series.
Time series architectures
IoT Telemetry Analytics with Azure Data Explorer demonstrates near real-time analytics over fast flowing, high volume, wide variety of streaming data from IoT devices.
Interactive Analytics with Azure Data Explorer focuses on its integration with the rest of the data platform ecosystem.
Use visual data processing to label content, from objects to concepts, extract printed and handwritten text, recognize familiar subjects like brands and landmarks, and moderate content. No machine learning expertise is required.
Cloud-based services that provides advanced natural language processing over raw text, and includes four main functions: sentiment analysis, key phrase extraction, language detection, and named entity recognition.
A machine learning-based service to build natural language understanding into apps, bots, and IoT devices. Quickly create enterprise-ready, custom models that continuously improve.
Swiftly convert audio into text from a variety of sources. Customize models to overcome common speech recognition barriers, such as unique vocabularies, speaking styles, or background noise.
Empower professional and non-professional data scientists to build machine learning models rapidly. Automate time-consuming and iterative tasks of model development using breakthrough research-and accelerate time to market. Available in Azure Machine learning, Power BI, ML.NET & Visual Studio.
ML.NET Model Builder provides an easy to understand visual interface to build, train, and deploy custom machine learning models. Prior machine learning expertise is not required. Model Builder supports AutoML, which automatically explores different machine learning algorithms and settings to help you find the one that best suits your scenario.
Customize and embed state-of-the-art computer vision for specific domains. Build frictionless customer experiences, optimize manufacturing processes, accelerate digital marketing campaigns-and more. No machine learning expertise is required.
Build, train and publish a sophisticated bot using FAQ pages, support websites, product manuals, SharePoint documents or editorial content through an easy-to-use UI or via REST APIs.
Graphical processing units (GPUs) are often used for compute-intensive workloads such as graphics and visualization workloads. AKS supports the creation of GPU-enabled node pools to run these compute-intensive workloads in Kubernetes.
A central place to create, manage, and monitor labeling projects (public preview). Use it to coordinate data, labels, and team members to efficiently manage labeling tasks. Machine Learning supports image classification, either multi-label or multi-class, and object identification with bounded boxes.
Designated compute resource/environment where you run your training script or host your service deployment. This location may be your local machine or a cloud-based compute resource. Using compute targets make it easy for you to later change your compute environment without having to change your code.
Deploy your machine learning model as a web service in the Azure cloud or to Azure IoT Edge devices. Leverage serverless Azure Functions for model inference for dynamic scale.
Monitor for data drift between the training dataset and inference data of a deployed model. In the context of machine learning, trained machine learning models may experience degraded prediction performance because of drift. With Azure Machine Learning, you can monitor data drift and the service can send an email alert to you when drift is detected.
FPGAs contain an array of programmable logic blocks, and a hierarchy of reconfigurable interconnects. The interconnects allow these blocks to be configured in various ways after manufacturing. Compared to other chips, FPGAs provide a combination of programmability and performance.
MLOps, or DevOps for machine learning, enables data science and IT teams to collaborate and increase the pace of model development and deployment via monitoring, validation, and governance of machine learning models.
Build and connect intelligent bots that interact with your users using text/SMS, Skype, Teams, Slack, Microsoft 365 mail, Twitter, and other popular services.
AI and machine learning architectures
Learn how to build image processing into your applications by using Azure services such as the Computer Vision API and Azure Functions.
Use machine learning to automate content-based personalization for customers.
Azure Purview is a unified data governance service that helps you manage and govern your on-premises, multi-cloud, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) data.
Virtual servers allow users to deploy, manage, and maintain OS and server software. Instance types provide combinations of CPU/RAM. Users pay for what they use with the flexibility to change sizes.
Allows you to automatically change the number of VM instances. You set defined metric and thresholds that determine if the platform adds or removes instances.
GPU-optimized VM sizes are specialized virtual machines that are available with single, multiple, or fractional GPUs. The sizes are designed for compute-intensive, graphics-intensive, and visualization workloads.
Redeploy and extend your VMware-based enterprise workloads to Azure with Azure VMware Solution. Seamlessly move VMware-based workloads from your datacenter to Azure and integrate your VMware environment with Azure. Keep managing your existing environments with the same VMware tools that you already know, while you modernize your applications with Azure native services. Azure VMware Solution is a Microsoft service that is verified by VMware, and it runs on Azure infrastructure.
Azure Container Apps is the fastest and simplest way to run a container in Azure, without having to provision any virtual machines or adopt a higher-level orchestration service.
Deploy orchestrated containerized applications with Kubernetes. Simplify cluster management and monitoring through automatic upgrades and a built-in operations console. See AKS solution journey.
Azure Monitor container insights is a feature designed to monitor the performance of container workloads deployed to: Managed Kubernetes clusters hosted on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS); Self-managed Kubernetes clusters hosted on Azure using AKS Engine; Azure Container Instances, Self-managed Kubernetes clusters hosted on Azure Stack or on-premises; or Azure Red Hat OpenShift.
It is a lightweight and extensible cloud native service mesh. OSM takes a simple approach for users to uniformly manage, secure, and get out-of-the box observability features for highly dynamic microservice environments
Container architectures
Here are some architectures that use AKS as the orchestrator.
Deploy a baseline infrastructure that deploys an AKS cluster with focus on security.
Deploy a microservices architecture on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Build a DevOps pipeline for a Node.js web app with Jenkins, Azure Container Registry, Azure Kubernetes Service, Azure Cosmos DB, and Grafana.
Integrate systems and run backend processes in response to events or schedules without provisioning or managing servers.
Serverless architectures
View a detailed, step-by-step diagram depicting the build process and implementation of the mobile client app architecture that offers social image sharing with a companion web app and authentication abilities, even while offline.
Manage HIPAA and HITRUST compliant health data and medical records with the highest level of built-in security.
Learn how to improve cross cloud scalability with solution architecture that includes Azure Stack. A step-by-step flowchart details instructions for implementation.
Maximizes the availability and performance of your applications and services by delivering a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identifies issues affecting them and the resources on which they depend.
Maximizes the availability and performance of your applications and services by delivering a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identifies issues affecting them and the resources on which they depend.
Maximizes the availability and performance of your applications and services by delivering a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identifies issues affecting them and the resources on which they depend.
Maximizes the availability and performance of your applications and services by delivering a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. It helps you understand how your applications are performing and proactively identifies issues affecting them and the resources on which they depend.
Add fully integrated package management to your continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines with a single click. Create and share Maven, npm, NuGet, and Python package feeds from public and private sources with teams of any size.
The Azure command-line interface (Azure CLI) is a set of commands used to create and manage Azure resources. The Azure CLI is available across Azure services and is designed to get you working quickly with Azure, with an emphasis on automation.
Azure Cloud Shell is an interactive, authenticated, browser-accessible shell for managing Azure resources. It provides the flexibility of choosing the shell experience that best suits the way you work, either Bash or PowerShell.
Azure PowerShell is a set of cmdlets for managing Azure resources directly from the PowerShell command line. Azure PowerShell is designed to make it easy to learn and get started with, but provides powerful features for automation. Written in .NET Standard, Azure PowerShell works with PowerShell 5.1 on Windows, and PowerShell 6.x and higher on all platforms.
Delivers a cloud-based automation and configuration service that supports consistent management across your Azure and non-Azure environments. It comprises process automation, configuration management, update management, shared capabilities, and heterogeneous features. Automation gives you complete control during deployment, operations, and decommissioning of workloads and resources.
Provides a way for users to automate the manual, long-running, error-prone, and frequently repeated IT tasks.
DevOps architectures
Containers make it easy for you to continuously build and deploy applications. By orchestrating the deployment of those containers using Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), you can achieve replicable, manageable clusters of containers.
Recommended architecture that shows how to deploy and operate a scalable, enterprise-grade Jenkins server on Azure secured with single sign-on (SSO).
The tools provided in Azure allow for the implementation of a DevOps strategy that capably manages both cloud and on-premises environments in tandem.
Deploy cloud intelligence directly on IoT devices to run in on-premises scenarios.
IoT architectures
Learn about our recommended IoT application architecture that supports hybrid cloud and edge computing. A flowchart details how the subsystems function within the IoT application.
Recommended architecture for IoT applications on Azure using PaaS (platform-as-a-service) components
This example builds a real-time data ingestion/processing pipeline to ingest and process messages from IoT devices into a big data analytic platform in Azure.
Azure Cost Management helps you understand your Azure invoice, manage your billing account and subscriptions, control Azure spending, and optimize resource use.
A real-time data ingestion and microbatching service used to build dynamic data pipelines and integrates with other Azure services.
Messaging architectures
Learn more about Anomaly Detector with a step-by-step flowchart that details the process. See how anomaly detection models are selected with time-series data.
Use the proven practices in this reference architecture to improve scalability and performance in an Azure App Service web application..
Recommended architecture for implementing an enterprise integration pattern with Azure Logic Apps, Azure API Management, Azure Service Bus, and Azure Event Grid.
Event Grid allows you to speed automation and simplify policy enforcement. For example, Event Grid can notify Azure Automation when a virtual machine is created, or a SQL Database is spun up. These events can be used to automatically check that service configurations are compliant, put metadata into operations tools, tag virtual machines, or file work items.
Provides an isolated, private environment in the cloud. Users have control over their virtual networking environment, including selection of their own IP address range, adding/updating address ranges, creation of subnets, and configuration of route tables and network gateways.
Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based load balancer that enables you to distribute traffic optimally to services across global Azure regions, while providing high availability and responsiveness.
Manages and resolves domain names in the virtual network, without the need to configure a custom DNS solution, and it provides a naming resolution for virtual machines (VMs) within a virtual network and any connected virtual networks.
Connects Azure virtual networks to other Azure virtual networks, or customer on-premises networks (site-to-site). Allows end users to connect to Azure services through VPN tunneling (point-to-site).
Application Gateway is a layer 7 load balancer. IT takes backends with any IP that is reachable. It supports SSL termination, cookie-based session affinity, and round robin for load-balancing traffic.
Azure Traffic Manager is a DNS-based load balancer that enables you to distribute traffic optimally to services across global Azure regions, while providing high availability and responsiveness.
Azure Firewall is a managed, cloud-based network security service that protects your Azure Virtual Network resources. It's a fully stateful firewall as a service with built-in high availability and unrestricted cloud scalability.
Azure Private Link enables you to access Azure PaaS Services and Azure hosted customer-owned/partner services over a private endpoint in your virtual network.
Network security group (NSG) flow logs are a feature of Network Watcher that allows you to view information about ingress and egress IP traffic through an NSG.
Network security group (NSG) flow logs are a feature of Network Watcher that allows you to view information about ingress and egress IP traffic through an NSG.
Azure Monitor delivers a comprehensive solution for collecting, analyzing, and acting on telemetry from your cloud and on-premises environments. Log queries help you maximize the value of the data collected in Azure Monitor Logs.
Point to Site lets you create a secure connection to your virtual network from an individual client computer. Site to Site is a connection between two or more networks, such as a corporate network and a branch office network.
Networking architectures
Learn how to deploy network virtual appliances for high availability in Azure. This article includes example architectures for ingress, egress, and both.
Learn how to implement a hub-spoke topology in Azure, where the hub is a virtual network and the spokes are virtual networks that peer with the hub.
See a secure hybrid network that extends an on-premises network to Azure with a perimeter network between the on-premises network and an Azure virtual network.
The Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) enterprise identity service provides single sign-on and multi-factor authentication, which enable the central management of users/groups and external identities federation.
A highly available and global identity management service for consumer-facing applications, which scales to hundreds of millions of identities. Manage customer, consumer, and citizen access to your business-to-consumer (B2C) applications.
Azure role-based access control (Azure RBAC) helps you manage who has access to Azure resources, what they can do with those resources, and what areas they have access to.
Azure attribute-based access control (Azure ABAC) is an authorization system that defines access, based on attributes that are associated with security principals, resources, and environment.
Provides a management layer that enables you to create, update, and delete resources in your Azure account, like access control, locks, and tags, to secure and organize your resources after deployment.
Provides a security solution and works with other services by allowing you to manage, create, and control encryption keys that are stored in hardware security modules (HSM).
Azure service that provides cryptographic key storage in Azure, to host encryption keys and perform cryptographic operations in a high-availabilty service of FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certified hardware security modules (HSMs).
Azure Information Protection (AIP) is a cloud-based solution that enables organizations to discover, classify, and protect documents and emails by applying labels to content.
An automated security assessment service that improves the security and compliance of applications. Automatically assess applications for vulnerabilities or deviations from best practices.
A cloud-native security information and event manager (SIEM) platform that uses built-in AI to help analyze large volumes of data from all sources, including users, applications, servers, and devices that are running on-premises or in any cloud.
A managed, private Docker registry service that's based on the open-source Docker Registry 2.0. Create and maintain Azure container registries to store and manage your private Docker container images and related artifacts that allow you to only deploy trusted containers.
Perform vulnerability scans on all container images when they're pushed to the registry, imported into the registry, or pulled within the last 30 days.
Security architectures
Detect fraudulent activity in real-time using Azure Event Hubs and Stream Analytics.
Learn about deploying secure applications using the Azure App Service Environment, the Azure Application Gateway service, and Web Application Firewall.
Import threat indicators, view logs, create rules to generate security alerts and incidents, and visualize threat intelligence data with Azure Sentinel.
Object storage service, for use cases including cloud applications, content distribution, backup, archiving, disaster recovery, and big data analytics.
Cloud storage and file sharing solution for businesses to store, access, and share files anytime and anywhere.
Storage architectures
Manage HIPAA and HITRUST compliant health data and medical records with the highest level of built-in security.
Optimize the media rendering process with a step-by-step HPC solution architecture from Azure that combines Azure CycleCloud and HPC Cache.
Store healthcare data effectively and affordably with cloud-based solutions from Azure. Manage medical records with the highest level of built-in security.
A turnkey solution for publishing APIs to external and internal consumers.
Web architectures
The e-commerce website includes simple order processing workflows with the help of Azure services. Using Azure Functions and Web Apps, developers can focus on building personalized experiences and let Azure take care of the infrastructure.
Deploy an application on Azure virtual machines in multiple regions for high availability and resiliency.
This reference architecture shows a serverless web application, which serves static content from Azure Blob Storage and implements an API using Azure Functions.
Serverless technology for connecting apps, data and devices anywhere, whether on-premises or in the cloud for large ecosystems of SaaS and cloud-based connectors.
For customers who want to simplify complex and distributed environments across on-premises, edge and multi-cloud, Azure Arc enables deployment of Azure services anywhere and extends Azure management to any infrastructure.
It helps pinpoint potential problems blocking migration. It identifies unsupported features, new features that can benefit you after migration, and the right path for database migration.