Managed LLM Platforms — Bedrock, Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI
Three hyperscalers, three distinct strategies. AWS Bedrock is a model marketplace — Claude, Llama, Titan, Stability, Cohere behind one API. Azure OpenAI is an exclusive OpenAI partnership plus Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs) for dedicated capacity. Vertex AI is Gemini-first with the best long-context and multimodal story. In 2026 Artificial Analysis measures Azure OpenAI at 50 ms median and Bedrock at 75 ms on Llama 3.1 405B equivalents — PTUs explain the gap because dedicated capacity beats shared on-demand. The decision rule is not "which is fastest" but "which model catalog and FinOps surface match my product." This lesson teaches you to pick with the tradeoffs written down, not vibes. Name the three platform strategies (marketplace vs exclusive vs Gemini-first) and match each to a product use case. Explain what Provisioned Throughput Units (PTUs) buy you in Azure OpenAI and why on-demand Bedrock typically reads 25 ms slower at the 405B scale. Diagram the FinOps attribution surface for each platform (Bedrock Application Inference Profiles vs Vertex project-per-team vs Azure scopes + PTU reservations). Write down a "two-provider minimum" policy and explain why single-vendor lock-in is the expensive mistake in 2026. You picked Claude 3.7 Sonnet for your product. Now you need to serve it. You can call the Anthropic API directly, or you can call it through AWS Bedrock, or you…
Managed LLM Platforms — Bedrock, Vertex AI, Azure OpenAI: Three hyperscalers, three distinct strategies. AWS Bedrock is a model marketplace — Claude, Llama,…
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