Research firm TBR noted Microsoft and Salesforce are revenue leaders in the overall cloud space, while AWS is market leader in public cloud IaaS.
Amazon Web Services may garner a significant share of the limelight when it comes to the growing cloud services market, but according to a recent report from Technology Business Research, Microsoft and Salesforce.com are the dominate players across the entire platform ecosystem.
TBR noted that judged exclusively by the “narrow definition of public cloud [infrastructure as a service],” AWS is indeed the market leader and will likely hold that position for some time. However, the firm is said to have just a small share in the software-as-a-service, hosted private cloud, on-premise public cloud and cloud professional services market, thus diluting its overall position in the space.
Microsoft and Saleforce.com were noted by the research firm as revenue leaders in the space, with the latter holding court until being overtaken by the former this year. TBR said it expects Microsoft to maintain its position next year “by leveraging a combination of legacy base migration and growth in areas that are either new or not historically successful.”
TBR said Microsoft’s position is bolstered by its Office 365 product, which generated nearly $8 billion in SaaS revenue this year, though the research firm did have to argue for the platform’s “cloud” worthiness explaining “it is a cloud-delivered service and major source of revenue and opportunity of which Microsoft is taking full advantage.” The platform was also cited for providing the computing giant with access to cloud customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning market segments.
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Microsoft’s Azure IaaS and platform-as-a-service offering, which is viewed as the firm’s core cloud platform, is also seen as a growing business that “could challenge AWS on a head-to-head basis if Microsoft continues to exploit the advantage of a broader cloud portfolio.”
Microsoft is also making headway in migrating its platform to the telecom space, highlighted by an agreement earlier this year with AT&T linking Azure with AT&T’s machine-to-x data storage pool and Flow Designer application management solution. Flow Designer is said to let developers connect their “internet of things” devices using AT&T Global SIM and manage them with AT&T Control Center to run the solutions and store their data in Azure.
Amazon.com earlier this year said its AWS platform hit $10 billion in annual sales in 2015, which was 10 years after the platform was launched. Microsoft, by comparison, reported its “intelligent cloud” business, which includes the Azure platform, generated $6.3 billion in revenues during the company’s second fiscal quarter.
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