The most important launches from AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud in 2021

Cloud adoption is at an all-time high with every organization wanting a taste of the unlimited potential of the cloud. Public cloud services have changed the entire landscape over the last couple of years. The public cloud space is teeming with newer offerings that help make the cloud even more tempting to organizations still leveraging on-premises data centers. With the constantly growing ecosystem of cloud-native tools, the competition between cloud providers has never more fierce. The top dogs in the public cloud space: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are innovating faster than ever and releasing new tools and services that address use cases that were not a possibility a few years ago.

The cloud is constantly evolving and the possibilities seem limitless. The future of cloud computing looks very different. Let’s take a look at some recent important launches by the leaders in the public cloud market.

ECS & EKS Anywhere

Hybrid computing is emerging as a massive trend in the tech world. With a hybrid infrastructure, organizations can leverage multiple platforms without fearing vendor lockdown while considerably reducing costs. These offerings by AWS are an answer to a growing demand for tools that enable a seamless hybrid infrastructure. Elastic Kubernetes Service Anywhere (EKS Anywhere) is built on AWS EKS for creating and managing clusters on the cloud or on-premises with default configurations. EKS Anywhere allows organizations to automate cluster management no matter where their clusters reside. You can run EKS Anywhere on your on-premises systems using VMWare VSphere. Support for more target deployments, including bare metal, is underway. With EKS Anywhere, you can bring your clusters (no matter where they reside) on the same plane and can monitor them using the EKS console. EKS Anywhere supports all EKS deployments and third-party integrations, so you don’t have to worry about maintenance costs for each of these components.

Elastic Container Service Anywhere (ECS Anywhere) is another offering to orchestrate containers across different platforms. Unlike EKS Anywhere, ECS Anywhere is AWS’ proprietary offering. With ECS Anywhere, you can orchestrate your containers on-premises and on the cloud seamlessly. You can start managing your containers quickly without a steep learning curve. This fully managed service provides the ability to manage clusters, schedule workloads, and monitor your containerized application no matter where they reside.

AWS App Runner

AWS App Runner is another new AWS offering that helps with web application builds and deployments. Application and infrastructure management can be cumbersome and distract developers from actual development. This fully managed service helps automatically build apps using source code or a container image. It also takes care of the application runtime configurations with minimal manual effort. With a couple of clicks, you can deploy your application while App Runner takes care of networking, load balancing, and scalability. App Runner load balances your application traffic with end-to-end encryption and ensures your web applications are secure. App Runner also scales your applications up and down based on traffic, which can save money. This service also integrates your web application with your deployment pipeline, empowering developers and letting them focus on what really matters.

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AWS Proton

Operators can find it hard to manage infrastructure across an enterprise. Different teams work differently, and it can be hard to ensure infrastructure consistency and best practices across all workloads. With AWS Proton, operators can better manage infrastructure because it hands more control to operators to monitor services across the enterprise. AWS Proton lets you create environment templates that help maintain consistency and apply best practices when developers deploy containers or serverless applications. It allows developers to develop the code and deploy it without worrying too much about best practices. Operations teams can monitor all the deployed services through a centralized dashboard and upgrade any services that may not meet your infrastructure definition.

Azure Percept

Edge computing is taking the tech world by storm. As more and more use cases come into the picture along with the 5G capabilities, the edge will become a norm. Azure Percept is an end-to-end edge platform that helps you get to work immediately. Azure Percept provides several pre-built edge AI models that you can start working on, right out of the box. The pre-built models come with object detection, shelf detection, anomaly detection, and voice control that address several use cases across several verticals. Azure Percept Studio allows you to build edge solutions quickly by leveraging other Azure offerings like Azure IoT Services, Azure AI, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure Cognitive Services. Azure Percept also addresses security concerns in edge devices by implementing a zero-trust security model. Each device is authenticated before any communication takes place to ensure the security of sensitive edge workloads.

Azure Synapse Pathway

Azure Synapse Pathway is a substantial offering that addresses migration concerns for data warehouses. Organizations that rely on traditional data warehouses shouldn’t feel trapped due to the cost of migration. The cost to migrate to modern warehouse solutions like Azure Synapse Analytics can become a problem. Most organizations would spend time rewriting the DDLs and DMLs to make them more compliant with the modern data warehouses. However, this can take months because of the sheer volume of scripts written over the years. Handing the manual work over to a third-party practice can be extremely expensive. Azure Synapse Pathway is a free service that takes your DDLs and DMLs and converts them to T-SQL compatible scripts that can be run on modern data warehouses. This tool helps you quickly migrate to Azure Synapse Analytics without having to worry about the cost.

Google Cloud Vertex AI Workbench

The Vertex AI Workbench solution simplifies ML workflows. This tool provides a single collaborative environment to analyze extensive data and to build AI models and prototypes using the infinite compute power of Vertex AI. Engineers and data scientists can quickly access data and get in-notebook access to Google Cloud’s big data offerings to move from data to training in less time. Vertex AI Workbench empowers teams to implement and deploy training models all in one place with minimal transition.

Google Distributed Cloud

Like AWS EKS and ECS Anywhere offerings, Google Distributed Cloud helps bring cloud resources closer to edge for various use cases. Many organizations are hesitant to move to the cloud because of security, regional regulatory compliance constraints, and cost. With Google Distributed Cloud, you can enjoy the benefits of a cloud-native infrastructure no matter where you host your workloads. Powered by Anthos, the Distributed Cloud brings Google Cloud Platform (GCP) resources to your system so that you don’t have to worry about regulatory compliance, security, or costs. You can manage all of your resources just like in GCP. With GCP’s AI, data analytics, and database solutions, you can process your data at scale even if it is hosted on-premises. Google Distributed Cloud helps you perform computing without worrying about cost and performance. Based on your organization’s needs, you can run the Distributed Cloud in one of the four locations: Operator edge, Customer edge, Customer Data Center, or Network Edge.

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The innovation in the public cloud space is rapid, and it’s hard to keep track of all the trends in the market. However, due to heavy competition, vendors are working hard to provide the best tools for your organization’s many needs. No one can tell what the cloud landscape will look like going forward, but the possibilities are endless.

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