The Cloud Decision Nobody Should Take Lightly
Choosing a cloud provider is one of those decisions that ties a company down for years. It's like choosing an operating system in the '90s: theoretically you can switch, but in practice, it hurts. That's why it's worth taking a proper look before committing.
Three providers dominate the market: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Together they control over 70% of the global cloud market, which cracked the €800 billion mark in 2026. But which one is right for your company? Spoiler: the answer isn't "the biggest one."
AWS: The Veteran With the Biggest Toolkit
AWS was first. Since 2006, Amazon has built a lead that manifests in over 200 different services. There's practically nothing AWS can't do. That's simultaneously its strength and its weakness.
Strength, because you'll find something for every conceivable use case, no matter how specialised. IoT projects? Covered. Satellite control? Yes, really. Machine learning pipelines for genomics research? No problem. AWS is the toolkit where even the most obscure specialist tool is sitting in the drawer.
Weakness, because the sheer volume of options can be overwhelming. The price list alone has over 500,000 line items. That's not a joke. If your IT team has never worked with AWS, the learning curve is steep—and the risk of spending money on misconfigured resources is very real.
Where AWS shines: e-commerce (it is Amazon's cloud, after all), startups with scaling ambitions, and companies with complex technical requirements. If you have a development team that knows exactly what it wants, AWS is often the most flexible choice.
Azure: The Friend Who Knows Your Office Setup
Microsoft Azure has caught up massively in recent years and is nipping at AWS's heels. Its trump card: integration. If your company uses Microsoft 365—and in Europe, most do—the step to Azure is almost a logical one.
Active Directory? Seamlessly connected. SharePoint, Teams, Outlook? Everything works together as if it were a single system. Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant? Works best in the Azure ecosystem. For companies already deep in the Microsoft universe, Azure isn't just a cloud option—it's a natural extension.
Add to that: Azure is unbeaten for hybrid cloud scenarios. If you don't want to (or can't) move everything to the cloud and need to keep part of your infrastructure on-premises—for compliance reasons, say—Azure Arc offers a unified management interface for both worlds.
Where Azure convinces: companies with Microsoft 365 environments, SAP workloads, hybrid cloud strategies, and anyone who values European data centres and strict compliance. Azure has data centres in Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Dublin, and more—with full EU Data Boundary commitments.
Google Cloud: The Newcomer With AI Superpowers
Google Cloud has the smallest market share of the big three, but it's growing fastest—and has a few aces up its sleeve that the competition doesn't.
BigQuery is probably the best serverless data warehouse in the world. If you want to analyse large datasets, Google is the first port of call. Add Vertex AI, the most comprehensive AI platform on the market, and Gemini, Google's AI model integrated directly into cloud services.
And then there's a point that's becoming increasingly relevant: sustainability. Google has been carbon-neutral since 2007 and has the most ambitious climate target of all cloud providers: 24/7 emission-free energy by 2030. For companies that want sustainability to be more than a slide in a PowerPoint presentation, that's a real argument.
Where Google Cloud convinces: data analytics and business intelligence, AI projects, containerised applications (Kubernetes was invented at Google), and sustainability-conscious companies.
The Price Comparison—Handle With Care
Comparing prices sounds simple but isn't. All three providers have pricing models so complex they employ entire advisory teams. Still, a rough benchmark for a standard VM in a European region:
For 2 vCPU with 8 GB RAM, you'll pay about €65/month on AWS, €60 on Azure, and €55 on Google. The differences scale proportionally with larger configurations. But on-demand prices are only half the story. With Reserved Instances (1-3 year commitment), you save 30-60% with all three. Google is the only provider offering automatic discounts for sustained usage—no upfront commitment required.
The really expensive item most people overlook: egress costs. That's what you pay when data leaves your cloud. It can add up fast, especially if you're moving data between cloud and on-premises, or between different regions.
Our Honest Recommendation
For the majority of European SMEs, we recommend Azure. Not because Azure is objectively "better" than AWS or Google, but because most SMEs already use Microsoft 365 and the synergies are enormous. European data centres, strong compliance features, seamless integration—these are tangible, everyday advantages.
If you're a tech startup needing maximum flexibility and scalability, look at AWS. If data analytics and AI are your core topics, Google Cloud is worth considering.
And if someone tells you that you need multi-cloud (all three simultaneously): for most SMEs, that's complexity without added value. Multi-cloud makes sense above 100+ employees and an IT budget over €500,000 per year. Below that, a solid single-cloud strategy is almost always the better choice.
What really matters: try it out. All three providers offer free trials. Take a real workload, migrate it as a test, and see how it feels. The best cloud is the one that fits your requirements—not the one with the biggest market share.
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