Determing the Best Cloud Computing Provider
by Don Jones

In the world of technology, best often means something like fastest, or most features. In the world of cloud computing, the situation can be a bit more complicated. Major cloud providers - Microsoft Windows Azure, Amazon EC2, Google App Engine, GoGrid, and so on - offer substantially different services. EC2, for example, is a Linux-based environment where you have root access and the ability to run pretty much any application you want. App Engine is also Linux-based, but is restricted to a limited Python language and a proprietary database back-end. Windows Azure doesn’t provide direct access to the operating system, supports SQL Server, and can use ASP.NET or PHP.

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