Top Cloud Providers
Considered the frontiers in this industry, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have made significant investments in cloud computing, software as a service solutions and artificial intelligence. Each company has focused on certain core competencies, and thus, each has certain strengths that enterprise clients are drawn towards. The history of these organizations entry into cloud services will be addressed in subsequent paragraphs, along with the benefits and weaknesses of each.
Amazon – Amazon Web Services
As the largest in terms of worldwide usage, Amazon started offering its cloud services in 2006 with the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Due to the fact that they were the first to enter the market with a cloud offering, and it took some years for competitors to release similar offerings, Amazon gained traction early and continually had the highest year over year growth of any cloud service provider. (Dignan, 2019). Today, it boasts impressive numbers: 2018 revenue numbers were $25.65 billion, with 2019 projections topping $33 billion. Amazon Web Services boasts ownership of over 30 percent of the cloud market, but this number is decreasing year after year for the past 5 years. While Amazon does not release official data center locations, AWS services can be used across any of the 69 availability zones which exist in 22 regions throughout the world (Global Infrastructure, n.d.). Some clients have complained about the level of support received, however, enterprise customers identified positive experiences online.
Microsoft - Azure
Next on the list is the software and hardware giant Microsoft. While difficult to compare to AWS, Microsoft started offering its cloud computing commercially in early 2010 after announcing its cloud intentions in 2008 (Harvey, 2017). The direction from CEO Satya Nadella has been to align Microsoft as a cloud solution provider and empower every person in the world with the benefits of cloud computing.
While nearly four years later to market than Amazon, the familiar set of corporate tools integrated into the Azure platform makes it a clear choice for many commercial organizations. Tagged the commercial cloud, Microsoft’s suite of cloud services includes the enterprise solutions of Productivity and Business Processes (comprising Office, Dynamics, LinkedIn), Intelligent Cloud, and Personal Computing (Protalinski, 2019). Intelligent cloud signifies the Azure cloud services that are relevant to this paper, and Azure revenue was $11.4 billion for FY19. Customers of Microsoft’s platform benefits from the entire cloud stack it offers, and enterprises are taking notice as it gains ground on AWS.
While AWS’s latest quarter results showed 37 percent year over year growth, Microsoft’s latest quarter reported a 64 percent growth in Azure sales (Novet, 2019). While Microsoft’s cloud services showcase a suite of solutions, common complaints against Azure include the high learning curve associated with understanding the infrastructure, the high level of complexity involved with managing and integrating critical business services, and the higher prices of computing resources compared to the competitor’s offerings.
Google – Google Cloud Platform
While both AWS and Azure initially offered IaaS solutions, Google’s first cloud solution offering to developers was a PaaS solution model. Google started its cloud computing in 2008 as a developer release and later in 2011 as commercially viable (Harvey, 2017). Google boasts impressive machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities that exist from other parts of its business, that are integrated into their core cloud solution offerings at a cost that is affordable on an hourly pay as you use basis.
While third in sales, Google sees tremendous value in this market as evidenced by the $13 billion invested in new data centers and offices throughout 2019 (Sonenshine, 2019). Plans show that Google will add data centers in Nevada, Texas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Iowa. Significant value for all these states will be realized as these data centers generate new jobs, add tax income, and increase new businesses in the area.
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