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Study: Amazon and Google rule the cloud

New research from Evans Data shows that Amazon.com and Google stand alone in the cloud. Can other vendors, including IBM, VMware, and Microsoft, catch up?

Dave Rosenberg Co-founder, MuleSource
Dave Rosenberg has more than 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to startup IPOs to open-source and cloud software companies. He is CEO and founder of Nodeable, co-founder of MuleSoft, and managing director for Hardy Way. He is an adviser to DataStax, IT Database, and Puppet Labs.
Dave Rosenberg
2 min read

If recent research is any indication, Amazon.com and Google are winning the cloud game.

Evans Data on Tuesday released a report (registration required) on how developers perceive cloud service providers related to cloud services offerings, including their completeness and the companies' ability to execute on the vision.

Janel Garvin, the founder of Evans Data and the author of the report, provides excellent insight into the current state of the market and how quickly things could change, if certain large vendors (notably AT&T and Microsoft) got their acts together more quickly.

Given their robust services, it isn't surprising that Amazon and Google top the list. And although IBM, VMware, and Microsoft trail, each offers important components of cloud infrastructure.

Cloud leaders
Cloud leaders Screenshot by Dave Rosenberg/CNET

In relation to private clouds, Garvin writes:

For private clouds, IBM has already taken the lead perceptually and is in an excellent position to dominate the market, going into the future. This is especially true amongst the largest corporations, (which) are most likely already IBM customers, as well as those who want the security and reliability of a vendor with an established reputation for excellence in the large enterprise space.

I've argued a number of times that big vendors like IBM and Sun Microsystems need to step up to the cloud (and IBM recently has) in order to make CIOs more comfortable with moving their data outside of their firewalls.

Google got the top nod from developers for scalability, reliability, uptime, and best value, and Garvin states that Google "shows more strength in both perceived capabilities and perceived ability to execute, and the adoption patterns for Google are stronger, going into the future." However, Google's offering via AppEngine is nowhere near as robust as Amazon's Web Services capabilities.

The big vendor that continues to be late to the cloud game is Microsoft, which, despite an army of developers interested in Azure and other cloud services, has yet to offer a production-ready product. Says Garvin:

The two companies that truly straddle the cloud worlds, AT&T and Microsoft, both have excellent potential: through existing physical infrastructure in the case of AT&T or as in the case of Microsoft, by virtue of a prodigious developer network and well-known software capabilities. But, both are late to the party. And, in a market that's evolving as quickly as this one, that's a significant handicap.

Cloud computing continues to emerge as an enterprise option for many companies, and it's a certainty that more big vendors will join the fray. It remains to be seen if any vendor can catch up to the expertise and vision of Amazon and Google, both of whom designed their infrastructure to support infinite scale.