"The big three cloud providers - Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) - all offer the essentials of modern infrastructure, including virtual machines, storage, serverless computing, and managed databases. But there are key differences in how their services are packaged, priced, and incorporated into an enterprise's tech stack, whether standalone or as part of a multicloud strategy. As IDC research VP Dave McCarthy puts it: "Every one of these clouds has a different personality.""
"AWS is the most mature of the big three, having started out as an internal platform and launched publicly in 2006. Originally, AWS' strategy was straightforward, McCarthy says: Get customers to move their entire infrastructure to the AWS cloud. But Amazon eventually realized that not every workload can, or should, move. "Latency requirements, data sovereignty laws, and the sheer inertia of legacy systems meant some things needed to stay on-premises," says McCarthy. The company's AWS Everywhere is an acknowledgment of this reality."
"AWS Outposts is the physical manifestation of this strategy, he explains. It's not just a server rack; it's a fully managed piece of AWS infrastructure that runs native AWS services, APIs, and tools in a customer's own data center. This allows for a consistent developer and IT experience, extending the AWS environment to on-prem workloads that can't reside in a public region. "It's about bringing the cloud operating model to the customer, rather than forcing the customer to come to the cloud," says McCarthy."
The major cloud providers — AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform — all provide virtual machines, storage, serverless computing, and managed databases. They differ in how services are packaged, priced, and integrated into enterprise technology stacks for standalone or multicloud strategies. AWS is the most mature and initially encouraged full migration to its cloud, but real-world constraints such as latency, data sovereignty, and legacy inertia require some workloads to remain on-premises. AWS shifted toward a "cloud wherever you need it" approach and offers Outposts: fully managed racks running native AWS services and APIs in customer data centers to deliver consistent developer and IT experiences for on-prem workloads.
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