Cloud Landing Zones – AWS vs Azure vs GCP

As organisations migrate to the cloud, the importance of starting with a secure, scalable, and well-architected foundation cannot be overstated. Landing zone architectures provide this foundation, acting as a structured environment that incorporates best practices for governance, security, networking, and resource management. AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud each offer their own approaches to landing zones, reflecting their philosophies, tooling, and integration strengths. While they share a common purpose—to accelerate cloud adoption by offering a pre-configured starting point—they differ in design, emphasis, and implementation.

AWS Landing Zone Architecture
AWS offers a flexible and comprehensive approach to landing zones, focusing on multi-account architectures, security, and scalability. Central to AWS’s design philosophy is the concept of AWS Organizations, which allows organisations to create and manage multiple accounts under a single management structure. This multi-account strategy provides logical isolation for workloads, improves security boundaries, and simplifies cost tracking.

The AWS Control Tower service serves as the cornerstone of the AWS landing zone architecture. Control Tower automates the setup of a secure and compliant multi-account environment, integrating key services like AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM), AWS Config, and AWS CloudTrail. It sets up guardrails—predefined policies that enforce compliance and security across accounts—while providing visibility into activity through dashboards.

AWS’s approach is highly customisable, catering to organisations with diverse operational and governance requirements. Advanced users can build tailored landing zones using the AWS Landing Zone Accelerator on AWS, which offers additional flexibility for highly regulated industries or specific use cases. The architecture also emphasises automation, using AWS CloudFormation templates and Service Catalog to deploy and manage resources at scale.

Azure Landing Zone Architecture
Azure’s landing zone architecture is closely aligned with its Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF), reflecting Microsoft’s enterprise-focused ethos. It is designed to support both greenfield deployments and hybrid-cloud scenarios, making it a strong choice for organisations transitioning from on-premises environments or adopting a mix of cloud and legacy solutions.

Azure’s landing zones are built on a modular, layered architecture, offering a high degree of flexibility. They focus on key design areas such as identity and access management, security, networking, governance, and management. A notable feature is Azure’s heavy emphasis on enterprise-scale architectures, which are designed to meet the needs of large, complex organisations with rigorous compliance requirements.

Azure Blueprints play a critical role in automating the deployment of landing zones. These blueprints allow organisations to define templates that include policies, resource configurations, and role assignments, ensuring consistency and compliance across environments. Additionally, Azure Policy and Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates help enforce governance and automate resource provisioning.

Microsoft also provides detailed implementation guidelines for specific scenarios, such as migration, DevOps, or SAP workloads. This tailored approach ensures that Azure landing zones can adapt to an organisation’s unique requirements, especially those in regulated industries like healthcare, finance, or government.

Google Cloud Landing Zone Architecture
Google Cloud’s landing zone approach is centred on simplicity, flexibility, and cloud-native design principles. It is built around the Google Cloud Adoption Framework, with an emphasis on enabling organisations to scale efficiently while maintaining strong security and compliance postures. Google Cloud’s design philosophy often revolves around a single-project or folder hierarchy within Google Cloud Resource Manager, making it easier to structure resources logically.

Google’s landing zones are implemented using Google Cloud Deployment Manager or Terraform scripts, which provide infrastructure-as-code capabilities for defining and automating configurations. Google Cloud’s emphasis on organisation policies and IAM ensures that security and governance are embedded into the architecture from the start. These policies can be used to enforce granular controls, such as resource locations, service restrictions, or identity permissions, across projects or folders.

A key strength of Google Cloud’s landing zone architecture is its integration with innovative services like Kubernetes (via Google Kubernetes Engine) and advanced analytics (via BigQuery). Google’s native support for hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios is enabled by Anthos, allowing organisations to manage workloads across environments seamlessly.

However, compared to AWS and Azure, Google Cloud’s landing zones tend to be less prescriptive, offering flexibility for organisations to design environments that suit their specific needs. This approach is particularly advantageous for tech-driven companies and start-ups looking to prioritise innovation and adopt cloud-native tools.

Comparing the Landing Zone Architectures

1. Complexity and Flexibility
   • AWS offers a comprehensive and highly customisable landing zone architecture, making it ideal for organisations with advanced security, compliance, and multi-account requirements. However, this can increase complexity, especially for smaller teams or less mature organisations.
   • Azure strikes a balance between flexibility and structure with its modular enterprise-scale architecture, which is especially appealing for enterprises and hybrid environments.
   • Google Cloud focuses on simplicity and adaptability, making it well-suited for start-ups or organisations prioritising cloud-native innovation over rigid compliance frameworks.
2. Governance and Security
   • AWS excels in multi-account governance through AWS Control Tower and Organisations, offering fine-grained control and robust security features out of the box.
   • Azure’s governance capabilities shine through Azure Policy and Blueprints, which provide deep integration with enterprise tools and regulatory frameworks.
   • Google Cloud emphasises policy enforcement and IAM but offers fewer pre-configured options compared to AWS and Azure, relying more on user-defined configurations.
3. Automation and Tools
   • AWS leads in automation with tools like CloudFormation, Service Catalog, and the Well-Architected Tool, streamlining deployment and ongoing management.
   • Azure provides a strong suite of tools, including ARM templates, Azure DevOps, and Blueprints, which simplify the deployment and management of landing zones.
   • Google Cloud offers a straightforward automation approach with Deployment Manager and Terraform, though it may lack some of the richer native tooling found in AWS or Azure.
4. Use Case Alignment
   • AWS is ideal for organisations with diverse workloads, complex multi-account setups, and a need for industry-specific lenses.
   • Azure caters to enterprises with hybrid environments, regulatory requirements, and a reliance on Microsoft’s ecosystem.
   • Google Cloud appeals to innovation-driven organisations seeking simplicity, modernisation, and seamless integration with data and AI services.