Mergers and Partnerships Threaten AWS Cloud Dominance
Amazon Web Services stands out as the world’s most popular enterprise-level cloud service provider. This is partially because Amazon got into the game early on compared with others, and somewhat because it has kept pace with the changing demands of the cloud market. However, recent events have seen AWS’s main competitors make acquisitions that may impact Amazon’s dominance in the cloud computing market.
AWS still has a lot of benefits when compared with its nearest competitors, Microsoft and IBM. Early adoption of cloud computing allowed Amazon to develop an interconnected system with datacenters worldwide, allowing for secure cloud access anywhere on earth. Amazon’s features also make them a formidable opponent to deal with. With benefits such as auto-scaling and disaster recovery, most businesses benefit from the peace of mind of running their company’s servers on AWS.
Competition Heating Up
The competitors have not laid dormant, however. IBM completed the acquisition of Red Hat earlier this year, gaining access to the company’s development teams and software. Red Hat offers IBM an upgrade in software services, bringing the computer giant into the modern information age. IBM’s sheer size will help Red Hat by allowing them to scale-up more effectively. It’s a win-win situation that is likely to lead to businesses leaning towards hybrid IT solutions thought multi-cloud management and open-source layer implementation.
Microsoft brokered their own deal with Oracle, seeking to make both companies’ cloud systems operational alongside the other’s. This mutually beneficial partnership allows Microsoft to offer competitive cloud rates without threatening their core business model. Oracle, on the other hand, raises revenue by being a preferential provider to one of the leaders in the industry. Competition in any market is good, and as more providers enter the space, it’s likely to drive down the costs of operating cloud servers. Only time will tell if the competitors can take down AWS completely from its perch as the leader of the cloud computing industry.
