Rapid increase in services
In terms of the number of services offered, a huge development can be seen in the hyperscalers. A comparison of the number of services with those of about 4 years ago (fall 2018) shows a rapid increase. This is due to the proactive development of services, especially from the US market, in addition to the increasing use and therefore demand for Cloud services. In the years before, many of these services or applications were still developed individually or already served by others on the market. On the one hand, the cloud providers want to offer the lowest possible vendor lock-in effect, but on the other hand they clearly also want to present themselves to the companies as a comprehensive platform that includes all the necessary services or can at least connect them. It has become clear in recent years that it is no longer a question of who offers the services at the lowest cost, but rather who can offer the better services on their platform.
Comparison in the individual categories
If we look at the hyperscalers’ offerings, broken down by service categories, we see that, with a few exceptions, these are already sufficiently covered by all three providers. However, going deeper into the individual categories, it becomes apparent that there are definitely differences in the offerings. The table below compares the availability of services in the categories.
| Service category | General availability | AWS | Azure | Google Cloud |
| Container | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| Computing | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Storage | 5 | 5 | 5 | 4 |
| Database | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| Managed Network Services (SDN) | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Migration | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 |
| Monitoring & Management | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
| Development | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Security & Identity | 4 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
| Analytics & Big Data | 4 | 4 | 4 | 5 |
| AI & ML | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| IoT | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 |
1= low availability
5= high availability
However, the number of available services says nothing about the functionalities of the individual services. Often providers offer the same or similar functionalities, but the services are bundled differently. For example, some providers offer a comprehensive service with many functionalities, while others cover the same functionalities through several individual services. Depending on the category, AWS tends to offer many individual, specific services.
In the Security and Identity category, the Azure Active Directory service represents a fitting example. In order to cover the functionality of this service (to some extent), a large number of different services are necessary at AWS and Google. A similar situation can be seen with Azure Migrate in the Migration category. However, not only Azure offers such consolidated services, the other two also have them. For example, at Google Cloud, the BigQuery service in the Big Data category is very comprehensive and can only be covered by several services from the other providers. At AWS, such services can be found in the Machine Learning category with Amazon Rekognition or Sagemaker, for example.
It is also noticeable that AWS offers a large number of different services in terms of monitoring, management and cost management. Azure and Google Cloud do not offer such a large number, but also rather consolidated services. This is particularly evident in the area of cost management.
In addition, an enormous development in the area of AI/ML can be seen in recent years. The number of services in this category has increased significantly for all providers. This is hardly surprising due to the great progress of AI and ML.
Probably the biggest difference between the services of the three hyperscalers can be seen in the Internet of Things (IoT) category. Here, AWS and Azure clearly dominate ahead of Google. While Google only offers two services related to IoT, AWS (14) and Azure (13) offer a large number of different services with various functions.
Looking at the range of hyperscalers on offer, it is clear that there are currently more services available on the market than an average company actually needs. Companies should initially focus on the basic services (compute, databases, storage, monitoring, security), which they need to know about in detail and evaluate their use. Nevertheless, companies must always keep an eye on new developments and opportunities on the market so as not to miss out on decisive trends and potential.
An examination of the services offered by the hyperscalers shows that, although the offerings appear quite similar at first glance, a closer look reveals significant differences. The analysis of the offerings provides valuable insights, but it is difficult to derive statements about the quality of the services from this. This requires a deeper analysis of the individual services.
Conclusion
The rapid development of the three hypescalers means that competition between them will become increasingly fierce in the future. In the meantime, all of them can already offer a similar range, at least in terms of the number of services. This may mean that the lead that AWS has gained in the market will become smaller and smaller in the future, since Azure in particular, but also Google, now have similar service offerings. This development is already evident in the current Cloud Native study in the DACH region, where according to the study AWS has lost its lead and Azure’s services are already being used much more frequently.
But what does this mean for other Cloud providers who are (more or less) competing with the hyperscalers? These providers will have a hard time catching up to the extensive offering of the hyperscalers. They will have to focus on other aspects and try to serve niches. There is great potential especially in the areas of security and compliance. Regional cloud providers in particular could take advantage of this, as companies are often reluctant to hand over their confidential data to providers overseas.
IT service providers are required to keep abreast of the latest developments and to keep abreast of the ever-growing range of hyperscalers and evaluate their benefits. Only then can they advise their customers on the use of these services or support them in their introduction.
For companies that use hyperscaler services, the ongoing development means that they can make use of a wide range of different services and can usually choose from a large number of different alternatives. They do not necessarily have to focus on a single provider, but can combine the services of different providers and thus optimally adapt their IT landscape to their business needs. Nevertheless, there are also companies for which a single Cloud approach makes more sense. Especially for those that are still in the early stages of cloud transformation, use only a small number of services and the majority (still) run on-prem, this approach is more suitable. This is because for these companies, there are hardly any cost or performance benefits to be gained from using different cloud providers. A single-cloud approach is also easier to handle for companies that are confronted with strict compliance requirements. The same applies to companies that predominantly use proprietary services instead of open source.
In general, the analysis shows that a wide range of different services are already available to companies. These are no longer limited to basic services for the IT infrastructure, but also offer a variety of value-added functions such as AI/ML or IoT. The choice of the right provider depends on many different factors and can look different for each company. It is important that the choice of provider(s) is not based on individual use cases, but rather on a strategic level. Only in this way can a company be prepared for current and future requirements and challenges.
