All three platforms can run your business. The right choice for a small-to-medium Australian business usually comes down to what you already run, how your team likes to buy IT, and who's around to support it — not which cloud has the most services on paper.
The natural fit if your business already runs on Microsoft 365, Windows Server or on-prem Active Directory. Deepest, most seamless integration with the tools your staff use every day.
The largest, most mature service catalogue and the biggest local partner ecosystem. Strong choice for custom-built or developer-heavy applications, less so for a lean SMB IT team.
Strongest for data, analytics and AI workloads, and a natural pairing if your business runs on Google Workspace. Smallest local support footprint of the three.
All three bill on consumption, but the way you earn discounts — and how forgiving they are of an Australian dollar and Australian usage patterns — differs quite a bit.
| Azure | AWS | GCP | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discount model | Reserved Instances & Savings Plans, plus Azure Hybrid Benefit if you already own Windows Server or SQL Server licences. | Reserved Instances & Savings Plans, deepest discounts for multi-year, predictable commitments. | Automatic sustained-use discounts with no upfront commitment, plus Committed Use Discounts. |
| Billing currency | Can be billed in AUD through local partners like us — removes FX surprises on your invoice. | Typically billed in USD; AUD billing is limited, so your monthly cost moves with the exchange rate. | Typically billed in USD, same FX exposure as AWS. |
| Licence overlap | Many SMBs are already paying for Microsoft 365 — Azure spend often layers on top of a relationship you already have. | No natural overlap with existing SMB software spend. | Overlaps with Google Workspace spend if that's your productivity suite. |
| Free tier | Modest, time-limited free credit. | Modest always-free tier for small workloads. | Most generous always-free tier of the three. |
All three offer volume and partner discounts — what actually moves the needle for a 10-150 person business is whether a local partner can put you on the right agreement in the first place, since list price is rarely what anyone ends up paying.
If your business already runs on Microsoft 365, Entra ID (Azure AD), Windows 10/11 and Windows Server, this is the single biggest factor most Australian SMBs underweight when comparing clouds.
AWS and GCP can absolutely connect to Microsoft 365 and Entra ID — plenty of businesses run a hybrid setup successfully — but it's an integration you build, not one you get by default. For a lean SMB IT budget, that difference in effort matters.
Fewer specialist services can be a feature, not a limitation, when you don't have a dedicated cloud engineering team on staff.
Admin portal will feel familiar to anyone who's used the Microsoft 365 admin centre. Best supported by the largest pool of local MSPs and Microsoft-certified partners.
Extremely powerful but the console reflects its size — 200+ services means more options to get wrong without an engineer who lives in it daily.
Widely regarded as the cleanest console of the three and genuinely simple for data and AI projects, but the smallest local partner and support bench in Australia.
Skip the feature checklists. For most SMBs, these four questions get you to the right answer faster than any comparison chart.
Our honest take: most Australian SMBs we work with land on Azure, simply because they're already paying for Microsoft 365 — but the right answer always depends on what you're actually running. We're happy to walk through your specific setup before you commit to anything.
We'll assess your current setup and recommend a platform based on what you actually need — no sales pitch required.
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