back to article Whoa, AWS, don't slip off your cloudy perch. Google and Microsoft are coming up to help

Gartner's magic quadrant rating public cloud storage suppliers has suggested Amazon is losing ground while Google and Microsoft make gains. The analyst pointed out that Google has consistently higher availability and markedly better network performance when compared to its main competitors for its multi-regional object storage …

  1. Michael Hoffmann Silver badge
    Meh

    Probably...

    I can see Alibaba moving into the upper right quadrant by sheer size once it becomes quasi-mandated within China and they even start pushing the other 3 out of the country.

    But would any Western organisation seriously consider using Alibaba? Whatever you may think of Google "Do no evil", AWS "Steamrollers R Us" and Microsoft "We CAN change our spots, honestly, meow!", shoving your data into the PRC just seems a step too risky. Regions outside of China notwithstanding.

    That said, how much do you trust the US-based Big 3?

    NSA or PLA... decisions, decisions...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Probably...

      "Google has consistently higher availability and markedly better network performance when compared to its main competitors for its multi-regional object storage"

      AWS and Azure have some customers using theirs though. Of.course it's fast when hardly anyone is using it.

    2. Lusty

      Re: Probably...

      Lots of western organisations use Alibaba. They do this because they need to have a presence in China and the choices in China have been Alibaba and Azure, with Azure run by a local company in that region. I believe AWS are in the process of following suit.

      If you want to be truly global, you can't not address China. If you address China you have to do so locally and on their terms. That means inside the "great firewall", on WeChat, run by a Chinese company following Chinese rules and regulations.

      It's not shoving your data in to China, it's keeping Chinese data in China. Not massively different to GDPR just a bit more controlling. If I were China I'd want to keep data out of the US too.

      You have to wonder too, how much of your distrust of Chinese companies is down to western propaganda (I'm not saying China have no issues, but come on, look at the US!). Read real security reviews of Aliexpress for instance and it comes out better than Amazon in terms of trust and security when compared fairly and objectively. It's also 1000x cheaper and sells knock off goods, but the security and trust is there!

      1. Equals42

        Re: Probably...

        Is the US as bad as China? Really? Trump may spout off like an idiot a lot and arrest immigrant children (ok that's really bad) but he's not "relocating" thousands of dissidents, creating a massive censorship firewall, or jailing writers. If anything, the US is still a bastion of economic and political freedom with huge economic heft. The EU and US have issues with bureaucracy and minor govt interference (encryption and myriad regulations) but they are nowhere near the repression of President-for-life Xi Jinping.

  2. Karlis 1

    I do have to wonder... Gartner keeps repeating Microsoft as being of relevance. That does not mirror what I see in the industry. Except their forced cloud365 offerings nobody seems to even remotely consider them as a platform to use.

    What am I missing? There's a well-hidden part of industry that actually uses Azure? Gartner just can't spend the money from Microsoft fast enough? Somehow using cloud offering translates in using the cloud platform?

    Baffled...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I can't speak for others but what I see down in the weeds, where the clients are SMB & SOHO support by smaller partners, Office365 and the like are pretty much a rule. And that is as intended by Microsoft. SME and up, that's the market for Azure and a lucrative market it is for MS indeed. About the only Azure opportunity here for my kind is cloud backup either pure software or perhaps an appliance. I used to play in the enterprise market myself, not anymore.

      That's not to say I don't know the products, I still use enterprise software in the home/lab here. It's just that there's no opportunities, save by word of mouth, that are going to appear my way. Not without a ton of sweat. For that, partners have Microsoft to blame.

    2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

      Azure is indeed popular with a host of companies as easy to set up and with value-added services not available on other platforms. You can see this in the numbers that Microsoft posted recently.

      That said, always take Gartner's prognoses with a large pinch of cui bono salt!

    3. msage

      Azure

      That's interesting in the UK public sector Azure appears to be king. I work with a number of local authorities and central gov QUANGOs and the Microsoft cloud appears to be the platform of choice. I think in part this is because of the O365 feeder drug... Then comes SQL server, then dev environments and before you know it everything but the legacy application infrastructure is in Azure, with SaaS offerings picking those up (again normally hosted with Azure). One of the big reasons the organisation I currently work for went Azure is because we already had expressroute and storesimple, so moving to AWS no matter how good their pricing and services we would need to bring in a direct connect connection.

      From a personal perspective, Azure DNS seems a lot better than Route 53 from AWS, I have found it easier to interface with programmatically .

      Again this is just a reflection of what I have seen.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Azure

        The blind men and the elephant.

      2. This post has been deleted by its author

    4. Jason Hindle

      “What am I missing? There's a well-hidden part of industry that actually uses Azure?”

      Azure is huge. Probably bigger than Microsoft as AWS is bigger than Amazon. AWS tends to grab more headlines and, as I’ve commented here before, is perhaps more approachable for the curious nerd (though this curious nerd is approaching both), but Azure has plenty of very big clients and likely to be first cloud of call for developers embedded in the Windows ecosystem.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        According to Gartner.

        Company --- 2017 Revenue --- Market Share

        Amazon AWS ---12,221 Billion ---51.8%

        Microsoft Azure ---3,130 Billion --- 13.3 %

        Both Microsoft (not Azure) and Amazon (not AWS) are much larger in revenue than their cloud arms

        https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-08-01-gartner-says-worldwide-iaas-public-cloud-services-market-grew-30-percent-in-2017

        1. TheVogon

          "According to Gartner."

          A large chunk of Microsoft's cloud revenue is from O365, Xbox Live, dynamics online, visual studio online, etc. Not just Azure. In Azure (PaaS and IaaS) Azure is consistently growing ~ twice as fast as AWS and significantly more Companies are planning to move to it as cloud platform of choice.

      2. Charlie Clark Silver badge

        Probably bigger than Microsoft as AWS is bigger than Amazon.

        Not quite: what is true is that AWS generates more profit that Amazon's tat bazaar, though this is apparently by design.

        But the real margins are systems will as little system administration as possible. This is a market that Microsoft understands well from its traditional server products and as extended into Azure.

    5. Lusty

      Quite a few very large customers doing core business on Azure and more being added all the time https://customers.microsoft.com/en-us

    6. TheVogon

      "That does not mirror what I see in the industry. Except their forced cloud365 offerings nobody seems to even remotely consider them as a platform to use."

      Way more CTOs are planning to use Azure than any other cloud platform. And I guess you are not aware that Microsoft's cloud division overtook AWS in revenue over a year ago now? And are growing much faster.

  3. json

    Spot on!

    Unlike instances, theres no way to get discounted pricing for storage for production servers.. nothing like “reserved” storage fees. storage overhead is becoming a real pain point.

  4. fakington1

    Oracle Cloud

    There's about five different "Cloud" Divisions and Products within Oracle, some of which look less like Cloud and more like Managed Co-lo. Based on this, and some other "nuances" of Oracle's Cloud products, I'd love to know why Gartner ranks them higher than IBM, RackSpace or even Digital Ocean for that matter?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oracle Cloud

      Lol, you think IBM has one cloud and one division? They don't even have one strategy, unless you count marketing the non-product that is Watson as a strategy. Rackspace are just counting down the days as a large Colo provider, they don't have a cloud strategy. Digital Ocean who? Literally never heard of them and as such would expect them to fail under the juggernaut of AWS/Azure. The only ones on that list that won't be destroyed by AWS/Azure are Alibaba and Google. Assuming Google decide to stay in the game, which is never a certainty with their dice rolling board. Baba will though, because China.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Azure may win despite shortcomings

    I work for a very large UK-based multinational, where we previously used AWS. MS turned up offering free consultancy, free on-site support for the next x years, bulk discounts, golf days for execs - ok maybe not the last one, but there's almost nothing they won't chuck at us if it means they get us away from AWS and on to Azure, and it's working. This is despite the devs telling management that AWS is a far better fit from a technical point of view.

    Afaics MS are basically burning money to steal customers from competitors, so it's no wonder they're moving up. What remains to be seen is how sustainable that is.

    1. RudderLessIT

      Re: Azure may win despite shortcomings

      I think you have hit the nail on the head.

      For some large corporates, Azure is probably a very good fit - they are often Microsoft shops and this extends nicely.

      However, a startup, or a company that defines it's value through unique technology offerings will probably be better suited in AWS.

      I think that Google will try to go more for AWS's clients, than Azure.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Azure may win despite shortcomings

        Yep. Commercial fit and executive comfort are a big selling point that Microsoft leverage hard.

        Their challenge is to build developer mindshare more quickly than their developer-friendly rivals can build executive comfort.

        Quite a lot of large company projects start with an Azure-first mandate because of executive agreement but still end up on AWS because the people delivering are comfortable there.

        Google is playing the smart catch-up strategy of being cheaper and a lot more open-source friendly to convince firms worried about lock-in to use them instead. Executing well on their kubernetes advantage will be the key success factor but they’ve a fair bit of ground to make up.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Azure may win despite shortcomings

        Some of the largest companies on the planet accord nearly all markets use AWS. Gardner says AWS is the most widely adopted cloud for Enterprise customers.That old saying that AWS is for stat ups is just FUD the competition is slinging about trying to discredit AWS.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Azure may win despite shortcomings

          "Gardner says AWS is the most widely adopted cloud for Enterprise customers"

          For now because it had a head start. AWS is rapidly loosing ground to Azure.

      3. Equals42

        Re: Azure may win despite shortcomings

        The trick for a few of my clients is that Amazon seems to enter every market eventually. Healthcare providers/insurers can't get out of AWS fast enough. Why? Who want's to give money to Amazon when they are now your competition to some degree.

        Retail? No way.

        Office products? Nope, they have a new division to replace OfficeDepot and CDW.

        Entertainment industry or cable cos? Nope. Amazon distributes video/music and now produces content.

        Car manufacturer? Just wait. Well, he's already making rockets so why not planes, trains and automobiles?

        Microsoft Azure is a comfy place since you know what they sell: software, mice, tablets, video games. They suck at video and music so who cares.

        Google is just that cheap, sleazy guy who reads your email and sends you junk mail but at least they aren't really trying to get into your business unless it's IoT or taxis/self-driving cars.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Azure may win despite shortcomings

      "I work for a very large UK-based multinational, where we previously used AWS. MS turned up offering free consultancy, free on-site support for the next x years, bulk discounts"

      If your acctepting MS tech support and incentives to move your loads to Azure, you need to read the T's&C's more carefully. There's shared IP clauses in there when MS get their hands dirty with your processes, it'll certainly help MS when ther're bringing your competitors on board, probably won't be so good for your competative advantage though.

    3. TheVogon

      Re: Azure may win despite shortcomings

      "This is despite the devs telling management that AWS is a far better fit from a technical point of view."

      Azure is a way better technical solution and far easier to integrate and manage from an Infrastructure point of view and cloud infrastructure services are generally considered an infrastructure decision, not a development one.

  6. Milton

    Just one 'winner'?

    Reading some remarks here about who will 'win', and wondering if that's really how things will pan out. Sure, one provider will be 'bigger' than the others at any given point in time and by whatever measure (income; storage; geographic spread; number of customers; etc) and you may even find that the top spot changes hands occasionally—but given (a) the foolishness of putting all your eggs in a single basket and (b) the constant competition among providers, which sometimes might even be called innovation, I'd have thought we'd see maybe five or six big providers jostling in the long term.

    I do wonder whether we will see an explosion in security intermediation, since one of the overwhelming concerns about trusting other companies (and other nations' companies ) with your crown jewels of data is that you simply ... shouldn't. The almost inextricably thorny issue of how you can store properly encrypted data on someone else's cloud and also work with it (without shuffling it back on-prem, decrypting, processing, re-encrypting, sending back to the cloud) is unlikely to go away. Indeed, it'll only take a few hugely damaging breaches to change the nature of this discussion in a very big way.

    That said, I am on the paranoid end of the security-and-trust scale, and perhaps there are large corporates entirely happy to risk their valuable data on the word of businesses like Microsoft and Google, who have earned such glowing reputations for honesty and corporate integrity.

    1. Bernard

      Re: Just one 'winner'?

      The bit you’re missing is that cloud isn’t a services play (high touch, bespoke contracts, personal relationships) which lends itself to market fragmentation.

      It’s a software platform play. Massive scale is required to compete on feature growth and feature growth is a big part of what locks customers in.

      SME cloud players have died or are spreading themselves as fast as possible into service companies managing the big cloud platforms.

      Telcos have given up on their own clouds and are focussing on becoming the network provider of choice for integrating cloud into your corporate network.

      A host of big tech players have given up trying to run a public cloud or are on the verge of. HP and Fujitsu the latest 2.

      Microsoft and Google are investing billions to win mindshare and feature roadmap over AWS who are printing money but still plowing lots back in.

      IBM and Oracle are struggling to keep up, but still trying to because they know their software business is at serious risk if they lose control of the platform discussion.

      5 or 6 players is no more stable for cloud than it is for social media. Big business will likely sustain 3 to avoid getting locked in 1980s IBM style.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Just one 'winner'?

        Agree with Bernard - in an industry where IBM and Oracle can't afford to invest enough to keep up (and that's evident in current numbers whether they've admitted it yet or not) it's going to be 2-3 players, maybe 4 globally because of China. We also mustn't forget that each has a marketplace (aka app store) where you can get ISV offerings. Could developers be bothered to keep 3 app stores going for phones? No, Apple was #1, Google (at the time) choice number two and Windows/Blackberry/Nokia/etc all died as a result.

        Currently the MS and Amazon marketplaces are where ISVs are making money. Google will need to catch up there if it can, although corporate trust issues may prevent that. Alibaba will manage because China backs it. Everyone else will eventually realise they don't have the market share to justify the tens of Billions a year investment to keep afloat.

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