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Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

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Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#3

Post by carlsborg »

Its incredibly hard to catch up. The following is a list of new major AWS functionality delivered just in the month of January:

https://blog.clusterdyne.com/posts/new_aws_features_jan2019....

Two new services introduced and one in GA, plus multiple solid innovations like the Elastic Inference Predictors API. And this doesn't include roll-outs of existing services in new regions.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#5

Post by airstrike »

excalibur wrote: post #2

Related, seemingly contradictory: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/12/microsoft-google-cloud-pitch...

Great point. I think way to reconcile may be around this data point from the original article:

> For instance, we know that AWS is the market leader with around 32 percent of market share. We know Microsoft is far back in second place with around 14 percent, the only other company in double digits. We also know that IBM and Google are wallowing in third or fourth place, depending on whose numbers you look at, stuck in single digits.

Best-case scenario, IBM / Google have 9% each, so with this still leaves 36% of the market in the hand of smaller players that both these companies can steal market share from

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#6

Post by toomuchtodo »

carlsborg wrote: post #3

Its incredibly hard to catch up. The following is a list of new major AWS functionality delivered just in the month of January: https://blog.clusterdyne.com/posts/new_aws_features_jan2019.... Two new services introduced and one in GA, plus multiple solid innovations like the Elastic Inference Predictors API. And this doesn't include roll-outs of existing services in new regions.

The amount of movement to Azure is staggering from AWS (if only from job postings and recruiters I speak to). There are a lot of businesses that do not want to fund their competitor (rightfully so), even if Azure is half baked (it is, but one desperately hopes it gets better if one is forced to use it).

Also, Office 365, Exchange, AD, Sharepoint/OneDrive, Flow, and other platform lock-ins are not to be discounted.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#7

Post by airstrike »

> Neither company is satisfied with that, of course. Google so much so that it moved on from Diane Greene at the end of last year, bringing in Oracle veteran Thomas Kurian to lead the division out of the doldrums.

> (...)

> Bloomberg reports that he announced a plan to increase the number of salespeople and train them to understand specific verticals, ripping a page straight from the playbook of his former employer, Oracle.

I'm not an Enterprise IT expert, but looking from the outside, it doesn't seem like AWS and Azure got to where they are today by following that playbook...

My personal take on it is that AWS was first-to-market with a 21st Century-ready cloud offering (i.e. you could pretty much hear developers shouting "Yes, THIS is what I'm talking about. Finally!") and Azure got to where it is by responding quickly and aggressively, with an additional pull for certain customers due to the synergy with MS / Windows, as well as being the next best choice for those directly competing with or not willing to sign up to Amazon.

If that's true, then unless Google / IBM can really differentiate themselves, they will always lag far behind. I don't know what other plans they have in store, but opening up Watson to other platforms or hiring an Oracle sales guy are not quite what I'd call differentiators.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#8

Post by timClicks »

airstrike wrote: post #7

> Neither company is satisfied with that, of course. Google so much so that it moved on from Diane Greene at the end of last year, bringing in Oracle veteran Thomas Kurian to lead the division out of the doldrums. > (...) > Bloomberg reports that he announced a plan to increase the number of salespeople and train them to understand specific verticals, ripping a page straight from the playbook of his former employer,…

Even being a differentiator doesn't seem to help. Joyent's Triton infrastructure is extremely impressive and container-centric, yet hasn't made a major dent into AWS.

Re: Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

#9

Post by latch »

Am I the only one that thinks IBM's acquisition of Softlayer did more to help Amazon than it did to help IBM? (or, more specifically, their mishandling of the acquisition)

Cloud isn't the big market, traditional hosting is. But cloud continues to grow. I thought the idea behind the Softlayer acquisition was going to be to try to funnel the much larger group of people who aren't ALL IN on cloud into some hybrid/cloud option.

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