As my background in math and statistics has led me to pursue a career in Data Engineering, I’ve found the nitty gritty of cloud computing to be fascinating – though I wandered into my studies of it quite by accident. Coursera is my go-to for building structure into my largely self-designed course flow. Using their “become a Data Engineer” pathway as a guide, I studied Python programming more in-depth, algorithms and data structures, data ethics, and cloud computing. This last topic consists of three main players: Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure.
Through financial aid on Coursera, I have been studying GCP consistently on a data engineering-specific pathway and plan to attempt the Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer exam after my teaching job ends in May. However, I also received a scholarship for a one-year membership through Women Who Code to unlimited coursework on A Cloud Guru, which has significantly more offerings that pertain to AWS. For the time-being, I am working my way up through levels of coursework on ACG toward the AWS Certified Big Data – Specialty course. Time and financial restrictions (GCP’s data engineer exam is $200 and the two AWS exams that lead to big data certification sum to $450) may force me to choose which certification(s) to ultimately commit to, but for now I am more than happy to take concurrent coursework on the two platforms.
As a result, I plan to compare these two giants in a series of comparison posts. Each will have “Cloud Compare” as both a tag and a title. My goal will be to document my preferences when I have them to aid in my eventual decision, but I also hope to be able to recommend these products strategically and appropriately to a wide variety of use case scenarios for future clients. Feel free to use my observations when they benefit your product decision needs. And with that, I bring you my first observation:
Comparative Documentation
I’m not yet sure which platform offers the better value, but both seem to offer comparable capabilities and services. To that end, Google Cloud Platform offers a resource that maps AWS products to their GCP offerings. (They also show how the Microsoft Azure platform maps to GCP products.) Amazon did not appear to provide such documentation, even when “GCP” and “Google Cloud Platform” were entered as terms in the AWS search page. From a business perspective, I could see this as being intentional. However, as a consumer I prefer transparency. Point: Google.
AWS: 0 GCP: 1
