Thursday, October 2nd, 2025 | Notion

Cloud Platforms Overview

Focus: The “Big Three” Providers — AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud

Platform	Core Strengths	Common Services	Market Use
Amazon Web Services (AWS)	Largest ecosystem, massive scalability	EC2 (compute), S3 (storage), Lambda (serverless), RDS (databases)	Web hosting, big data, AI/ML
Microsoft Azure	Deep integration with Windows Server, Active Directory, and Office 365	Azure VMs, Blob Storage, Azure AD, App Services	Enterprise & education infrastructure
Google Cloud Platform (GCP)	Data analytics, AI, and container orchestration	Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Kubernetes Engine	Research, analytics, SaaS products

Mini-Lecture Highlights

Each platform provides IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS layers:
- IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service): virtual servers and storage.
- PaaS (Platform as a Service): preconfigured development environments.
- SaaS (Software as a Service): complete applications (e.g., Gmail, Google Docs).
Emphasize multi-cloud strategies—many companies mix platforms for redundancy.

Discussion Prompts

Which platform do you personally interact with most?
How might choosing one cloud vendor lock a company into a specific ecosystem?