HN Explorer

Cloud Consulting: AWS, GCP or Azure

6 points by stillblue ↗ HN
I've been in IT for close to a decade now and I'm trying to make a move into full time Cloud Consulting - I've done this sort of thing on and off over the years and have a fair amount of experience with all the big 3 cloud vendors.

Ever since the pandemic started my work had mostly devolved into endless meetings, general planning and very little coding. I've no idea what is happening with AWS/Azure/GCP these days and I wanted opinions on a few things

1. I don't want a list of pros and cons but if you had to pick a vendor today, which one would you go with and why?

2. Everytime I'd worked with Azure (from ~2016 to ~2019) there was always some PITA or the other and it was annoying. Is it still that way?

3. Folks who do consulting, Do you pick a solid vendor and then go with it or pick something that is full of weird gotchas and troubles and demand a higher price for that very reason?

4. People who've had first hand experience with GCP, Is it still "that" 3rd option or is it a solid contender against AWS and Azure?

5.I mostly work with small companies(5 to 50 employees) and some of them are lift and shift and some of them are optimising existing infra, and I was hoping if there were any suggestions on things I should think of when it comes to the Cloud keeping the company size in mind

On phone so apologies for the formatting but I'm curious on what y'all have to say.

Thanks and have a nice day / night :)

13 comments

[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 38.2 ms ] thread
mooreds
> if you had to pick a vendor today, which one would you go with and why?

Depends on what you need. But if forced to pick with no other context, I'd pick AWS. It's like the MS Windows of the 1990s--lots of momentum and tons of work.

> Is [Azure] still that way?

No first hand experience.

> Do you pick a solid vendor and then go with it or pick something that is full of weird gotchas and troubles and demand a higher price for that very reason?

Depends? Do you want to be the person maintaining the COBOL or perl program before the lights go out? Or pushing boundaries/doing new work? Both will pay the bills. I'd go with solid vendor myself, as it'd be more fun for me.

> 4. ...

No first hand experience.

> 5. ...

I don't understand the q.

roland35
I think it depends on the types of companies you are working with. Lots of larger enterprise corporations are going with Azure, there will be lots of opportunities in that space. Smaller and newer companies generally are using AWS more than GCP, so if that is your target market I would focus on AWS.
cpach
I would choose AWS. They simply seem to have the most complete offering. They have years of experience with offering cloud solutions and they keep churning out new features.
Spooky23
What’s the market that you have contacts in?

Azure and Google has traction in different areas. For example, if you want to build a practice around legacy app migration, Microsoft basically compels customers to move to Azure.

stillblue
Mostly Enterprisey shops with Azure but working with it is not a very pleasant experience imo hence trying to look at other options
shuki
AWS, GCP and Azure are all solid cloud platforms with high market adoption. I've found AWS easier to work with given the super simple and extensive documentation. However, you can't go wrong with any of the CP. what is important is you pick one, get started and work relentlessly and become the best consultant there is. It's not easy, but its that simple ! all the best !