While Gartner reports may be little consolation to Windows phone users, its cloud IaaS scores seem pretty favorable for anyone using Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Platform. According to Gartner’s latest IaaS scores for AWS, Azure and Google’s cloud platforms, Microsoft’s efforts in the cloud have put it right behind industry leader Amazon.
Gartner’s assessment of IaaS services is rather comprehensive and thoroughly involved, so much so it’s easier to use their wording for clarification.
The updated in-depth assessments research and scores are based on the May 2016 update of the Evaluation Criteria for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (Elias Khnaser @ekhnaser) which is now made up of 234 criteria items. The 234 criteria items are organized into 8 categories as follows:
Technical:
- Compute
- Networking
- Storage
- Security and Access
Non-technical:
- Service Offerings
- Management and DevOps
- Service and Support Levels
- Price and Billing
In conclusion, I know you are all wondering about the scores, so I will share how each provider faired in the overall Required category:
- Amazon Web Services: 92%
- Microsoft Azure: 88%
- Google Cloud Platform: 70%
The comparison leaves Microsoft within a 4% margin between itself and the presumptive leader, Amazon. Both Microsoft and Amazon have put a gap between themselves and Google, but not one that is insurmountable, especially as the latter company is putting a renewed interest in corporate cloud offerings.
In the end, the battle for cloud computing and hybridized on-premises solutions seem to be one fought between AWS, Azure and Google, for the time being. Perhaps as Microsoft continues to move much of its assets and legacy solutions the cloud, the company can use its integrative leverage to stand out amongst the crowd.
