Gartner Suggests AWS Still King; Azure Close Behind
With IaaS becoming more agnostic, cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services and Azure look for ways differentiate themselves from each other. If you’re just starting out with the public cloud, it could be difficult to figure out which path you should choose in regards to using Amazon Web Services and Azure. Luckily, the research crew at Gartner has broken down each cloud service provider in order to provide you with the most comprehensive break down of each of the two IaaS providers.
Kyle Hilgendorf, the Research Director for Gartner, mentions that AWS is still the leader overall but he suggests that Azure is closing in quicker than most realize. Hilgendorf was quoted as saying, “The race has just begun, and it’s a very long race.” Hilgendorf made this comment at a recent presentation hosted by AWS. Hilgendorf set out a list of 205 points that encompassed 8 different categories in which he broke down each of key features and services provided by Amazon and Azure.
Gartner’s report mentions that AWS has 92% of corporate enterprise use cases covered with its cloud solution. When tested against the same criteria, Microsoft netted 75% of criteria available. Another critical area in which AWS excelled against the Azure is in the availability and use cases for its API versus Microsoft offerings. Gartner believes that AWS’s robust library of APIs helps its cloud developers scale solutions up and down more quickly.
With so many positives weighted in Amazon’s favor, why would organizations be inclined to choose Microsoft? Gartner mentions that Microsoft has excellent rapport with its existing clients and its sales representatives are able to give special deals when enterprise agreements are inked. Since so many new Microsoft products fluidly integrate with Microsoft Azure, it becomes natural that so many organizations that are Microsoft shops would transition into cloud using Microsoft. Gartner mentions that 64% of organizations that use Azure did so because of their existing relationship with Microsoft.
