A managed service (cloud) is a product offered by a cloud provider that enables you to exploit a technology without managing its maintenance from an infrastructure point of view.
These managed services are very popular in 2024, especially with our customers (mostly SaaS, ecommerce or mobile startups). The 3 major providers offer broadly the same catalog of services, but always presented under different names.
In this article, you’ll discover a list of the main managed services used by enterprises, their use cases and their equivalents at AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.
Databases
PostgreSQL
A postgreSQL managed service will enable you to exploit this relational database without having to deal with the associated infrastructure complexities (installation, configuration, updates, backups, disaster recovery and scalability in particular).
- GCP name: Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
- Azure name: Azure Database for PostgreSQL
- AWS name: Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
- Alternative française : Scaleway Database for PostgreSQL
MySQL
In the same way as PostgreSQL, a MySQL managed service lets you run your database without worrying about infrastructure management and configuration.
- GCP name: Cloud SQL for MySQL
- Azure name: Azure Database for MySQL
- AWS name: Amazon RDS for MySQL
- French alternative: Scaleway Database for MySQL
SQL Serverless
A managed service that’s even higher-level than a managed SQL service: it lets you run a serverless SQL database.
It’s important to understand the difference:
- A managed PostgreSQL service (RDS at Amazon, for example) will take care of provisioning servers on your Cloud account and orchestrating them to ensure that your databases are in a stable, operational state. You will be billed for the managed service and for the servers that are provisioned.
- A SQL Serverless service will offer you a database without you being aware that there are servers behind it, so it’s basically as if it were an external API. You will be billed for each query made to this database.
- GCP name: Cloud Spanner or BigQuery
- Azure name: Azure SQL Database serverless
- AWS name: Amazon Aurora Serverless
- Alternative : Scaleway Database for Serverless
NoSQL (document-oriented)
A NoSQL managed service lets you run a non-relational database like MongoDB without any Cloud infrastructure management.
- GCP name: Cloud Bigtable
- Azure name: Azure Cosmos DB
- AWS name: Amazon DynamoDB
- French alternative: Scaleway Database for NoSQL
- Another alternative: MongoDB Atlas
Data warehouse
Relational or non-relational databases used specifically to store large quantities of data.
- GCP name: BigQuery
- Azure name: Azure Synapse Analytics
- AWS name: Amazon Redshift
ElasticSearch
Elasticsearch is a distributed search and analysis engine, capable of handling complex queries and delivering results in near-real time. It is often used for full-text search, log analysis, system monitoring and analytical applications.
- GCP name: Elasticsearch Service on Google Cloud
- Name on Azure:Elasticsearch by Elastic on Azure
- AWS name: Amazon OpenSearch Service (formerly Amazon Elasticsearch Service)
- Alternative: ElasticSearch managed service
Cover
A cache management database is generally a key-value database and can store frequently requested query results, user sessions, HPC objects or static web pages in RAM. The best-known are Redis and Memcached.
- GCP name: Cloud Memorystore
- Azure name: Azure Cache for Redis
- AWS name: Amazon ElastiCache (Redis and Memcached offerings)
- Another alternative: Redis Labs
Calculation (VM)
These are services that directly provide virtual servers, which can be used in conjunction with other managed services (databases, Kubernetes, etc.).
- GCP name: Compute Engine
- Azure name: Azure Virtual Machines
- AWS name: Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)
- French alternative: Scaleway Instances
Containers and orchestration
Container execution
These are services that let you run containers (Docker, for example) without requiring you to deploy and scale them manually or via an orchestrator like Kubernetes.
- GCP name: Google Cloud Run
- Azure name: Azure Container Instances (ACI) or Azure Container Apps (ACA)
- AWS names: AWS Fargate and Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)
- French alternative: Scaleway Containers
Image registry
A registry is used to store, manage and distribute container images.
- GCP name: Artifact Registry
- Azure name: Azure Container Registry (ACR)
- AWS name: Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR)
- French alternative: Scaleway Container Registry
Kubernetes
A Kubernetes managed service lets you deploy, manage and scale containerized applications using Kubernetes, without having to worry about Kubernetes version upgrades yourself.
- GCP name: Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
- Azure name: Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
- AWS name: Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
- French alternative: Scaleway Kubernetes Kapsule
Functions
A managed function service, often called “serverless”, lets you deploy and execute pieces of code in response to events.
- GCP name: Google Cloud Functions
- Azure name: Azure Functions
- AWS name: AWS Lambda
- Scaleway Functions
DevOps and monitoring
Log storage and analysis
A managed log storage and analysis service lets you collect, store, view and analyze event logs generated by your applications and infrastructure.
- GCP name: Google Cloud Logging
- Azure name: Azure Monitor (Log Analytics)
- AWS name: Amazon CloudWatch Logs
- Alternatives: Datadog and Sentry
Code repository
A managed code repository lets you store, manage and track changes to your source code in a secure, collaborative way.
- GCP name: Cloud Source Repositories
- Azure name: Azure Repos
- AWS name: AWS CodeCommit
- Alternatives: GitHub (owned by Microsoft and therefore linked to Azure) and GitLab
Deployments (CI/CD)
This service enables you to automate your application testing and deployment pipelines.
- GCP name: Google Cloud Build
- Azure name: Azure Pipelines
- AWS name: AWS CodePipeline
- Alternatives : GitHub Actions, Gitlab CI/CD and CircleCI
Storage
SSD
A managed SSD storage service gives you high-performance, reliable disk storage for your applications and databases.
- GCP name: Google Persistent Disk
- Azure name: Azure Managed Disks
- AWS name: Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS)
File System (NFS)
A File System (NFS) managed service lets you configure, manage and use shared file systems based on the NFS (Network File System) protocol.
- GCP name: Google Cloud Filestore
- Azure name: Azure Files or Azure NetApp Files
- AWS name: Amazon Elastic File System (EFS)
Object storage
Popularized S3 by Amazon for Simple Storage Service, this type of storage lets you store and access large quantities of unstructured data, such as images and files.
- GCP name: Google Cloud Storage
- Azure name: Azure Blob Storage
- AWS name: Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service)
- French alternative: Scaleway Object Storage
- Other alternatives: Wasabi
Application services
The top-level managed service par excellence: a managed application service lets you simply send in your code, and the service takes care of all deployment and scaling.
- GCP name: Google App Engine
- Azure name: Azure App Service
- AWS name: AWS Elastic Beanstalk or AWS App Runner
