You know about Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. But what about alternative cloud services providers (CSPs) in Europe? A recent CloudSpectator research report ranked the top 10 CSPs within the European region for 2017.
Each IaaS provider is ranked based on a CloudSpecs score -- which was calculated as a ratio between price and performance. The final score reveals how much performance a user could receive for each unit of cost. A company that had outstanding performance on their VM's may not be at the top of the list due to their higher costs, and vice versa, a company with really low cost, but poor performance would also not rank well.
Top 10 European CSPs Ranked by CloudSpecs Score
Here's a look at the Top 10 European CSPs based on that CloudSpectator research for 2017.
10. IBM SoftLayer: With over 30 data centers worldwide, SoftLayer claims each one is built, outfitted, and operated the same, so you get the exact same capabilities and availability anywhere they service.
9. DimensionData: DimensionData says it has a 99.999% SLA and consistent global service delivery using 15 cloud data centers across five continents.
8. Amazon Web Services: Each AWS Region has multiple Availability Zones and data centers and the AWS Cloud operates 42 Availability Zones within 16 geographic Regions around the world. The AWS Cloud has announced plans to expand with eight new Availability Zones in three new geographic Regions: Ningxia in China, Paris in France and Stockholm in Sweden.
7. Microsoft Azure: Available in 140 countries, including 40 regions Microsoft's Azure platform is supported by a growing network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. The company focuses on high reliability, operational excellence, cost-effectiveness, environmental sustainability.
6. CenturyLink: Using over 60 data centers worldwide, CenturyLink claims to deliver high-performance, secure, reliable and scalable clouds for any workload. (Though CenturyLink recently sold the data centers.)
5. DigitalOcean: Datacenters at DigitalOcean are individually audited and certified by various internationally-recognized compliance standards including SOC 1, SOC 2, PCI-DSS and ISO 27001. The company has 12 worldwide regions equipped with Tier-1 bandwidth and redundant 40G hypervisor connections.
4. Google Cloud Platform: Looking to double the number of regions the company services in 2017, Google currently services 8 regions and will add 9 more during the year. Google bills in minute-level increments (with a 10-minute minimum charge), so you only pay for the compute time you actually use. Google, Azure, and AWS consistently showed that they were the least variable among the group.
3. Rackspace: Servicing six regions, Rackspace guarantees that data center HVAC, power, and networking will be functioning 100% of the time, excluding scheduled or emergency maintenance. While Rackspace performed the highest in block storage, it had a high performance variability score at 45%.
2. 1&1: All 1&1 shared hosting products run in parallel at two separate data centers. In the event of a problem at one data center, the system automatically switches to the second, ensuring your data remains available. The company has 10 data centers throughout the US and Europe. In the report, 1&1's VM's displayed the best combination of high performance and high stability.
1. OVH: With the highest CloudSpecs Score in the group, OVH sits at the top of the list. This is due to the fact that it has the strongest VM performance with the most inexpensive package. OVH now has more than one million customers worldwide and has 20 datacenters around the globe.
You can get your own copy of the full CloudSpectator report here.
