Cloud Capability Mapping

How common cloud capabilities map across major providers. Use this as a reference for understanding portable architecture decisions, not as a guarantee of functional equivalence.

Important: Provider services are not always identical. Mappings represent comparable cloud capabilities, not exact one-to-one replacements. Differences in pricing, performance characteristics, managed vs self-managed trade-offs, and integration patterns vary significantly across providers. Always validate capability fit for your specific workload and requirements.
Capability AWS Azure Google Cloud
Virtual compute Amazon EC2 Azure Virtual Machines Compute Engine
Managed container orchestration Amazon ECS Azure Container Apps Cloud Run
Managed Kubernetes Amazon EKS Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
Serverless functions AWS Lambda Azure Functions Cloud Functions
Elastic compute scaling EC2 Auto Scaling Virtual Machine Scale Sets Managed Instance Groups
Object storage Amazon S3 Azure Blob Storage Cloud Storage
Block storage Amazon EBS Azure Managed Disks Persistent Disk
Shared file storage Amazon EFS Azure Files Filestore
Managed relational databases Amazon RDS / Aurora Azure Database for PostgreSQL / MySQL / SQL Cloud SQL / AlloyDB
Managed NoSQL databases Amazon DynamoDB Azure Cosmos DB Firestore / Bigtable
Private cloud networking Amazon VPC Azure Virtual Network Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
Application load balancing Elastic Load Balancing (ALB) Azure Application Gateway Cloud Load Balancing
DNS and traffic routing Amazon Route 53 Azure DNS / Traffic Manager Cloud DNS
Content delivery and edge caching Amazon CloudFront Azure CDN / Azure Front Door Cloud CDN
Centralized network transit AWS Transit Gateway Azure Virtual WAN Network Connectivity Center
Managed message queues Amazon SQS Azure Service Bus / Storage Queues Cloud Pub/Sub
Publish/subscribe messaging Amazon SNS Azure Service Bus Topics Cloud Pub/Sub
Event routing Amazon EventBridge Azure Event Grid Eventarc
API management Amazon API Gateway Azure API Management Cloud Endpoints / Apigee
Identity and access management AWS IAM Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) Cloud IAM
Single sign-on AWS IAM Identity Center Microsoft Entra ID SSO Cloud Identity
Encryption key management AWS KMS Azure Key Vault Cloud Key Management Service
Secrets management AWS Secrets Manager Azure Key Vault Secrets Secret Manager
Web application firewall AWS WAF Azure WAF Cloud Armor
Monitoring and metrics Amazon CloudWatch Azure Monitor Cloud Monitoring
Logging Amazon CloudWatch Logs Azure Monitor Logs / Log Analytics Cloud Logging
Audit trails AWS CloudTrail Azure Activity Log / Microsoft Defender Cloud Audit Logs
Infrastructure as code AWS CloudFormation / Terraform Azure Bicep / ARM Templates / Terraform Deployment Manager / Terraform
Multi-account governance AWS Organizations + SCPs Azure Management Groups + Policy Resource Hierarchy + Organization Policies
Cost management AWS Cost Explorer / Budgets Azure Cost Management + Billing Cloud Billing / Cost Management
This mapping is provided for reference purposes. Provider services evolve rapidly: features, pricing, and capabilities change frequently. Always consult official provider documentation before making architectural decisions based on this mapping. My hands-on implementation experience is primarily with AWS, with conceptual understanding of comparable services on Azure and Google Cloud.
View Capability Matrix → View Projects →