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Top 5 Cloud Computing Platforms Of 2024

By TechDogs Editorial Team

Overall Rating

Overview

There are many reasons why one would be jealous of Tony Stark from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) - be it for his wealth, fame, popularity, confidence, sports cars, personality or obviously the sleek and powerful super-suit he gets to don whenever he wants!

He can travel wherever, whenever he wants with his Iron Man suit; lest we forget that we went to another planet with it!

However, at TechDogs, we are more envious of his AI-powered natural-language user interface systems. You know, the ones that helped him search for information and kept him company with good-humored conversations while he was flying around in the suit or working at home.

Yes, we’re talking about J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just A Rather Very Intelligent System) and F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Female Replacement Intelligent Digital Assistant Youth). They remained by his side no matter where he went or which device he was using. Essentially, they were applications running on Cloud Computing Platforms!

Businesses also use Cloud Computing Platforms for similar reasons. It helps them access, store, compute and interact with data, as well as develop, scale and effectively manage applications. These platforms help users remotely connect with business resources from anywhere - as long as users have internet connectivity – just like J.A.R.V.I.S!

So, if you’re looking for the right tool for your enterprise, read on to learn the top 5 Cloud Computing Platforms of 2024!

Of course, Tony Stark would’ve used a private Cloud Computing Platform for his personal AI assistants. However, it’s quite likely that Stark Industries used publicly available platforms, or at the very least hosted such services himself at Stark Industries.

Either way, very few businesses in fictional stories or the real world possess the kind of money to run and maintain self-owned servers. Even if they do, businesses are always on the lookout to use cost-effective methods to run their operational workloads and processes, right?

Furthermore, why spend so much time, money and effort on building and maintaining proprietary IT infrastructure when there are so many reliable, scalable and cost-effective publicly available Cloud Computing Platforms?

These platforms provide managed computation, storage and networking solutions for company data and enable businesses to plan, create, manage and scale their applications, as well as streamline the entire application development process.

Cloud Computing Platforms bring in many services and functions, spanning IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service), PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service), DBaaS (Database-as-a-Service) and more. Businesses are charged for the services based on their usage, helping businesses reduce their capital expenditure and costs.

While these platforms come with a certain level of security, businesses are encouraged to implement additional security solutions to protect their data and applications.

Last year we explored the Top 5 Cloud Computing Platforms Of 2023. Now, let’s have a look at the top 5 Cloud Computing Platforms of 2024. Ready?

Let’s go!

Top 5 Cloud Computing Platforms Of 2024

Businesses use Cloud Computing Platforms to build, scale and manage applications, while also receiving cost-effective services that allow them to store, manage, compute and access company data. This helps them streamline their application development process while cutting out the need to create their own IT infrastructure or deal with the costs of maintaining them.

So, let’s get into the list of the top 5 Cloud Computing Platforms Of 2024 - in random order.

AWS Cloud	Microsoft Azure	Google Cloud Platform
Alibaba Cloud	Oracle Cloud

Tool 1: AWS Cloud

AWS or Amazon Web Services is a product of the mighty Amazon, which was founded in 1994 in Washington, USA. Originally called Cadabra (for a year), Amazon has its headquarters in Seattle, Washington, USA, with more than 1.5 million employees spread across the globe. In 2023, Amazon was ranked No. 2 in Fortune World’s Most Admired Companies for the seventh consecutive year.

Source

Returning to our list this year is AWS Cloud, which comes with a suite of products to help businesses with their computing, database, storage, containers, web & mobile apps, serverless and machine learning needs. The platform offers a powerful, reliable, secure and scalable infrastructure with an SLA (Service Level Agreement) commitment of 99.99% availability. The platform also makes it easy to migrate and build apps with ease, while optimizing performance and reducing costs.

AWS comes with generative AI capabilities, that can be used by small and large businesses to boost productivity, build effective experiences and innovate faster. It offers users Anthropic’s superfast Claude 3 Haiku foundation model that can be used to build and scale generative AI applications. This access to industry-leading foundation models comes with enterprise-grade security and privacy that can be customized to suit company data, use cases and customers.

Feature Ratings:

Ease Of Use: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Value For Money: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Startup Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Enterprise Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Customer Support: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Tool 2: Microsoft Azure

Please welcome the biggest company by market capitalization, Microsoft! Founded in 1975, Microsoft has a workforce of more than 200,000 employees, with its headquarters in Redmond, Washington, USA. With a global customer base, Microsoft’s flagship product, Windows, dominated the operating system market with a 76%+ share in 2023. The company was even named in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems (2022).

Source

New on our list this year is Microsoft Azure, which brings users a suite of products, that includes 200+ products and services to build, deploy, scale and manage applications using artificial intelligence, machine learning, computing, containers and IoT solutions. Azure can be deployed and customized across multiple clouds, on-premises, at the edge or as a hybrid solution. The platform helps with application development, cloud migration and modernization, data and analytics, cloud infrastructure, security and governance.

Microsoft Azure comes with the option to choose from the latest state-of-the-art and open-source AI models. Azure OpenAI Service enables businesses to build their own generative AI applications and custom copilots. Azure even brings its users Mistral Large and its open and commercial models, which are further enhanced by Hugging Face, also available on Azure, to build machine learning models. It’s no wonder that 95% of Fortune 500 companies trust Azure for their cloud-based needs.

Feature Ratings:

Ease Of Use: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Value For Money: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Startup Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Enterprise Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Customer Support: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Tool 3: Google Cloud Platform

There might be a handful of people who use the internet that haven’t heard of Google. The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Mountain View, USA. Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc., own 200+ companies, which include acquired established businesses and startups. As of 2023, Google was the dominant search engine with a 92.82% market share! Don’t believe it? Just Google it!

Source

Featuring on our list again this year is Google Cloud Platform (GCP), a comprehensive Cloud Computing Platform that offers users a suite of products. This included Compute Engine (scalable, high-performance virtual machines), Cloud Storage, Big Query (data warehouse for analytics and insights), Kubernetes Engine (containerized apps), Vertex AI (ML models and generative AI) and more. Overall, GCP enables businesses to develop quickly, securely and cost-effectively using modern infrastructure that’s optimized for AI, container, traditional and high-performance workloads.

Google Cloud Platform enables all its customers to gain free hands-on experience for its popular products, spanning 20+ free products to their specified free usage limit. Additionally, the platform offers $300 in free credits for users to explore, learn and conduct assessments of the suite of products on offer as Google doesn’t charge users till they choose to upgrade. Pretty sweet deal, right?

Feature Ratings:

Ease Of Use: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Value For Money: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Startup Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Enterprise Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Customer Support: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Tool 4: Alibaba Cloud

Founded in 1999, Alibaba Group’s vision is to last for 102 years, aiming to stay in business spanning 3 centuries, making it an achievement that few companies can claim. At present, the company is headquartered in Hangzhou, China and has a workforce of over 228,000 employees spread across over 15 global office locations. Along with a plethora of consumer products, Alibaba also offers one-stop B2B trading solutions for small and medium-sized businesses globally, in addition to a smattering of other services including a Cloud Computing Platform.

Source

Making its way back to our list this year is Alibaba Cloud, which brings users 100+ products spanning services such as computing, storage, networking, security, database, analytics, computing, big data, container and middleware. Alibaba even makes over 50 such products available for free trial. This includes capable and powerful generative AI tools and a comprehensive AI computing platform for high-performance computing tasks, such as foundation model training.

Alibaba Cloud ensures it provides advanced technology without compromising on the basics. It comes with a pay-as-you-go subscription and more flexible pricing options, along with providing a reliable, secure and compliant Cloud Computing Platform loaded with powerful products and services. Alibaba even brings its users non-stop services with 24/7 support and 1-on-1 consulting services to solve any issues they may have.

Feature Ratings:

Ease Of Use: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Value For Money: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Startup Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Enterprise Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Customer Support: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Tool 5: Oracle Cloud

Founded in 1977, Oracle has its headquarters in Austin, Texas, USA. With a workforce of over 164,000 employees spread across 60 global locations, Oracle has a customer base of more than 430,000 businesses in 175 countries. Over the years, Oracle has acquired over 150 companies, spending $110+ billion in the process and becoming a leader across various industries and sectors. Kudos, Oracle!

Source

Featuring on our list as a new entrant, Oracle brings Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) that can help users run any application, faster and more securely, for less. The platform comes with all the tools a business needs to build, test and deploy applications on Oracle Cloud, with an always free service that businesses can use for an unlimited time. They can scale up later or experiment with other services using the $300 cloud credit provided. This includes a suite of services spanning over 60 products for solutions such as AI, machine learning, computing, networking, databases and storage.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is preparing to bring leading AI features through its partnership with industry leader NVIDIA. The platform will soon enable users to leverage generative AI services across Oracle’s distributed cloud to deploy AI factories. These factories will enable businesses to optimize and automate their global cloud computing needs, allowing them to run cloud services locally, with top-notch security.

Feature Ratings:

Ease Of Use: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Value For Money: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Startup Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Enterprise Friendly: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Customer Support: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

Winding It Up

Cloud Computing Platforms help businesses with application development, scalability and management, as well as avail cost-effective services for data storage, management, computation and accessibility. This eliminates their need to establish self-owned IT infrastructure or manage associated maintenance costs.

Each business has unique cloud computing needs, which is why you should ensure you pick a platform that suits your unique requirements.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Are The Top Five Cloud Computing Platforms Of 2024?

In 2024, the top five Cloud Computing Platforms are AWS Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Alibaba Cloud and Oracle Cloud. These platforms offer a wide range of services including computing, storage, databases, machine learning and more, helping businesses streamline their application development processes while reducing costs.

How Can Cloud Computing Platforms Benefit My Business?

Cloud Computing Platforms offer numerous benefits to businesses, including cost-effectiveness, scalability, reliability and ease of use. By leveraging these platforms, businesses can access managed computation, storage and networking solutions, streamline application development and reduce the need for proprietary IT infrastructure, ultimately leading to improved efficiency and competitiveness.

What Factors Should I Consider When Choosing A Cloud Computing Platform?

When selecting a Cloud Computing Platform for your business, it's essential to consider factors such as ease of use, value for money, startup and enterprise friendliness and customer support. Additionally, assess the platform's compatibility with your specific business needs, such as the availability of required services like AI, machine learning and database management, as well as the platform's security features and compliance certifications.

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Tags:

Cloud ComputingTop 5 Cloud Computing Platforms Of 2024 - AWS Cloud Microsoft Azure Google Cloud Platform Alibaba Cloud Oracle Cloud Computing Cloud Computing Platforms Compute Solutions Storage Solutions Database Solutions Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS) Platform As A Service (PaaS)

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