I’m sure that anyone who is interested in Cloud Computing has seen the Gartner Iaas Magic Quadrant. It was interesting to compare the 2010 quadrant with the 2013 quadrant. Below are the quadrants.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
AWS was still the largest player in 2010 but it is almost untouchable in 2013. It is THE company that has complete vision and can execute. It is clear that any CIO or senior manager who decides to move to cloud and use AWS must be able to justify their decision.
IBM has been reduced to a niche player. Even smaller companies are ignoring this giant. If I was top management at IBM, I would be very concerned. IBM has had a difficult time getting large corporations, but AWS is now more accessible to Fortune 500 companies than IBM.
IBM bought SoftLayer to improve its cloud credentials. However, even that company is not very high on Gartner charts. It will be interesting for IBM to see if SoftLayer can improve their combined offering or if they will be relegated back to niche players next year.
Google Execution Engine is missing from the 2013 graph. This could be because it was still in beta for most of the year. It will be interesting to see where it stands next year.
Microsoft Azure saw a surprising amount of growth. Gartner believes that Microsoft Azure is currently second in completeness of vision. Microsoft has put a lot of effort into Azure, but we will need to see if they have enough technical know-how to continue scaling. Microsoft is known for providing ineffective solutions. If any of its cloud services fail to scale, it can lead to a backlash against Azure.
Rackspace, which was once considered a worthy competitor for AWS, is also losing momentum. It has not been able keep up with other cloud giants’ features.
CSC is another player that has gained significant momentum. Cloud IaaS is often limited to giants like AWS and Azure, Google, IBM, and others. CSC is making steady progress. It has customers such as NASA, Coka Cola and giant insurance companies. Perhaps 2014 will be the year it makes its presence known to the general public.
Joyant, HP, GoGrid and GoGrid are losing momentum again. They will need to find niche markets instead of competing head-on with AWS.
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