A practical mapping of equivalent services across the four major clouds. Use this when translating architectures between providers, planning multi-cloud strategy, or choosing where a workload fits best.
Every hyperscaler offers the same broad categories: virtual machines, managed Kubernetes, object storage, relational databases, identity, and observability. The names differ, the integration depth varies, and pricing models are never apples-to-apples. This guide maps the services I use most often when architecting across AWS , Microsoft Azure , Google Cloud (GCP) , and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) .
For deeper Kubernetes reference architectures per cloud, see the dedicated posts on Amazon EKS , Azure AKS , Google GKE , and Oracle OKE .
Sections
At a glance Compute Containers & Kubernetes Serverless Storage Databases Networking Identity & access Security & secrets Observability DevOps & CI/CD AI & ML Messaging & integration When to choose
At a Glance
Dimension
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Market position
Largest share, broadest catalog
Enterprise & Microsoft ecosystem leader
Strong in data, analytics, and Kubernetes
Enterprise Oracle workloads, competitive pricing
Regions (approx.)
30+ regions
60+ regions
40+ regions
40+ regions
Primary CLI
awsazgcloudoci
IaC ecosystem
CloudFormation, CDK, Terraform
Bicep, ARM, Terraform
Deployment Manager, Terraform
Resource Manager, Terraform
Billing model
Pay-as-you-go, Savings Plans, RIs
Pay-as-you-go, Reservations, Hybrid Benefit
Pay-as-you-go, Committed Use
Pay-as-you-go, UCM, often lower list compute
Compute
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Virtual machines
EC2
Virtual Machines
Compute Engine
Compute (VM instances)
Auto scaling groups
EC2 Auto Scaling
Virtual Machine Scale Sets
Managed Instance Groups
Instance Pools / Cluster Networks
Bare metal
EC2 Bare Metal
Azure BareMetal
Bare Metal Solution
Bare Metal instances
Spot / preemptible
EC2 Spot Instances
Spot Virtual Machines
Spot VMs
Preemptible instances
VM images
AMI (EC2)
Azure Marketplace / Shared Image Gallery
Compute Engine images
Custom images / Marketplace
Dedicated hosts
Dedicated Hosts
Dedicated Host
Sole-tenant nodes
Dedicated VM Hosts
Containers & Kubernetes
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Managed Kubernetes
Amazon EKS
Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE)
Serverless containers
AWS Fargate (ECS/EKS)
Azure Container Apps
Cloud Run
OCI Container Instances
Container orchestration (non-K8s)
Amazon ECS
Azure Container Instances
Cloud Run Jobs
Container Instances
Container registry
Amazon ECR
Azure Container Registry (ACR)
Artifact Registry
OCIR (Container Registry)
Service mesh
App Mesh
Istio on AKS / Open Service Mesh
Anthos Service Mesh (Istio)
Istio (partner / self-managed)
Serverless
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Functions
AWS Lambda
Azure Functions
Cloud Functions
Oracle Functions
API gateway
API Gateway
API Management (APIM)
API Gateway / Apigee
API Gateway
Event routing
EventBridge
Event Grid
Eventarc
Events / Streaming
Workflow orchestration
Step Functions
Logic Apps / Durable Functions
Workflows / Cloud Composer (Airflow)
Integration Cloud / OCI Functions chains
Storage
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Object storage
Amazon S3
Azure Blob Storage
Cloud Storage
Object Storage
Block storage (VM disks)
Amazon EBS
Azure Managed Disks
Persistent Disk
Block Volume
File storage (NFS/SMB)
Amazon EFS / FSx
Azure Files
Filestore
File Storage
Archive / cold tier
S3 Glacier
Blob Archive tier
Archive / Coldline
Object Archive tier
Hybrid / on-prem sync
Storage Gateway
Azure Arc / StorSimple (legacy)
Transfer Appliance
Storage Gateway
Backup
AWS Backup
Azure Backup
Backup and DR
Block Volume backups / Object lifecycle
Databases
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Managed PostgreSQL
RDS / Aurora PostgreSQL
Azure Database for PostgreSQL
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL
Base Database / PostgreSQL on VM
Managed MySQL
RDS / Aurora MySQL
Azure Database for MySQL
Cloud SQL for MySQL
MySQL HeatWave (OCI)
Managed SQL Server
RDS for SQL Server
Azure SQL Database
Cloud SQL for SQL Server
SQL Server on VM / Azure-linked
Oracle Database
RDS Custom / EC2
Oracle on Azure (partner)
Oracle on GCP (partner)
Autonomous Database
NoSQL / document
DynamoDB
Azure Cosmos DB
Firestore / Bigtable
NoSQL Database
In-memory cache
ElastiCache (Redis/Memcached)
Azure Cache for Redis
Memorystore
OCI Cache with Redis
Data warehouse
Redshift
Synapse Analytics
BigQuery
Autonomous Data Warehouse
Networking
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Virtual network
VPC
Virtual Network (VNet)
VPC Network
VCN (Virtual Cloud Network)
Load balancer (L4/L7)
ELB / ALB / NLB
Azure Load Balancer / App Gateway
Cloud Load Balancing
Load Balancer / Network Load Balancer
DNS
Route 53
Azure DNS
Cloud DNS
DNS Management
CDN
CloudFront
Azure Front Door / CDN
Cloud CDN
OCI CDN (Akamai-backed)
VPN
Site-to-Site VPN
VPN Gateway
Cloud VPN
Site-to-Site VPN
Private connectivity
Direct Connect
ExpressRoute
Cloud Interconnect
FastConnect
Firewall / WAF
WAF / Network Firewall
Azure Firewall / WAF
Cloud Armor
WAF / Network Firewall
Private PaaS access
VPC Endpoints / PrivateLink
Private Link
Private Service Connect
Service Gateway / Private Endpoint
Identity & Access
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Identity platform
AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO)
Microsoft Entra ID
Cloud Identity / Workforce Identity
IAM + Identity Domains
Resource IAM
AWS IAM
Azure RBAC
Cloud IAM
OCI IAM Policies
Workload identity
IAM Roles for Service Accounts (IRSA)
Managed Identities
Workload Identity Federation
Instance Principals / Dynamic Groups
MFA / conditional access
IAM MFA policies
Entra Conditional Access
Context-Aware Access
MFA / Identity Domains policies
Directory sync
AD Connector / IAM Identity Center
Entra Connect (native AD)
Cloud Identity sync
Identity Domains federation
Security & Secrets
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Secrets management
Secrets Manager
Azure Key Vault
Secret Manager
Vault (OCI Vault)
Encryption keys (KMS)
AWS KMS
Key Vault keys
Cloud KMS
Vault keys
Certificate management
ACM
Key Vault certificates
Certificate Manager
Certificates service
Threat detection
GuardDuty
Microsoft Defender for Cloud
Security Command Center
Cloud Guard
Compliance / posture
Security Hub / Audit Manager
Defender for Cloud / Policy
Security Command Center
Cloud Guard / Compliance
HSM
CloudHSM
Dedicated HSM
Cloud HSM
Dedicated KMS / HSM options
Observability
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Metrics & dashboards
CloudWatch
Azure Monitor
Cloud Monitoring
Monitoring / Telemetry
Centralized logging
CloudWatch Logs
Log Analytics
Cloud Logging
Logging Analytics
APM / tracing
X-Ray
Application Insights
Cloud Trace
APM (native + partner)
Alerting
CloudWatch Alarms
Azure Monitor Alerts
Alerting policies
Alarms / Notifications
Managed Prometheus
Amazon Managed Prometheus
Azure Monitor managed Prometheus
Managed Service for Prometheus
Self-managed or partner stacks
DevOps & CI/CD
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
CI/CD pipelines
CodePipeline / CodeBuild
Azure DevOps Pipelines
Cloud Build
DevOps (build pipelines)
Source control (native)
CodeCommit (deprecated path)
Azure Repos
Cloud Source Repositories
DevOps Repos
Artifact registry
CodeArtifact
Azure Artifacts
Artifact Registry
DevOps Artifacts
GitOps / config mgmt
CodeDeploy / third-party
Flux on AKS / Arc
Config Sync (Anthos)
Resource Manager + third-party
Infrastructure deployment
CloudFormation / CDK
Bicep / ARM templates
Deployment Manager
Resource Manager (ORM)
AI & ML
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Managed ML platform
SageMaker
Azure Machine Learning
Vertex AI
Data Science service
Foundation models / LLM APIs
Amazon Bedrock
Azure OpenAI Service
Vertex AI (Gemini, PaLM)
Generative AI (OCI / Cohere)
GPU compute
EC2 P/G instances
NC/ND series VMs
A2 / G2 GPU VMs
GPU shapes (A10, H100)
Speech / vision APIs
Rekognition, Transcribe, Polly
Azure Cognitive Services
Cloud Vision, Speech-to-Text
Vision / Language AI services
Messaging & Integration
Service type
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Message queue
Amazon SQS
Azure Service Bus (queues)
Cloud Tasks / Pub/Sub
Queue (OCI Queue)
Pub/sub
Amazon SNS
Event Grid / Service Bus topics
Pub/Sub
Notifications / Streaming
Event streaming
Amazon MSK (Kafka)
Event Hubs (Kafka API)
Pub/Sub / Dataflow
Streaming (Kafka-compatible)
Enterprise integration
Amazon MQ
Logic Apps / Integration Accounts
Application Integration
Integration Cloud
When to Choose Each Cloud
Provider
Strong fit
Consider alternatives when
AWS
Broadest service catalog, startup-to-enterprise scale, mature partner ecosystem, default choice for greenfield SaaS
Deep Microsoft stack integration is required, or team has no AWS experience and strong GCP/Azure alignment exists
Azure
Microsoft 365 / Entra ID shops, hybrid with Active Directory, .NET workloads, enterprise EA agreements
Best-in-class data analytics (BigQuery) or lowest-cost Oracle DB hosting is the priority
GCP
Data engineering, BigQuery analytics, Kubernetes-native teams, ML/AI with Vertex, global anycast networking
Legacy enterprise procurement favors Azure/AWS, or Oracle database consolidation is the driver
OCI
Oracle Database and ERP consolidation, competitive compute pricing, sovereign/regulated industry requirements
Team needs the widest third-party SaaS marketplace or smallest operational learning curve (AWS often wins)
Keep this updated: Cloud providers rename and retire services regularly. Treat this table as a mental map, not a contract. Validate service names in each provider's documentation before writing Terraform modules or procurement documents. For multi-cloud governance patterns, see
Designing Multi-Cloud Strategies for Enterprise Scale .
Practical Tips for Architects
Use Terraform provider modules per cloud with consistent naming conventions for networks, tags, and IAM roles.Abstract at the workload level , not every primitive. Kubernetes + Postgres + object storage patterns port well; proprietary PaaS features do not.Standardize observability with OpenTelemetry so traces and metrics export to the same backend regardless of cloud.Document service mappings like this table in your internal wiki so onboarding engineers do not relearn equivalencies from scratch.Run proof-of-concepts on two clouds for critical workloads before committing to a multi-year contract.
Topics & Tags
AWS
Azure
GCP
OCI
Multi-Cloud
Cloud Architecture
Comparison
DevOps