Microsoft doesn’t release revenue numbers for Azure cloud services, but an executive claimed that it has an edge over Amazon Web Services Inc.
Mike Schutz, general manager of cloud platform market at Microsoft, was asked about Azure’s differentiation from AWS during a presentation at Deutsche Bank 2015 Technology Conference.
“You spoke about hyperscale. According to Seeking Alpha’s transcription, Schutz stated that this is fundamentally how we differentiate. “There are only a few or three hyperscale clouds in the world, with us being one. We currently operate in 19 regions, which is 19 more than the number of datacenters we have globally. We will continue to grow as our customers require. This is about twice the number of AWS instances and five to six times the number of Google Cloud Platform instances.
Schutz stated, “And so even though you combined AWS with Google Cloud, we are in more regions than they combined.”
The Microsoft exec also claimed an edge in hybrid and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) services.
“That’s one tenet, but AWS is huge, so the other elements — this is where really differentiation comes in — are around hybrid. This is because our fundamental strategy is to help customers deploy the exact technologies that we put into our public cloud hyperscale and run them in their datacenter on Hyper-V on top of our System Center assets. We also bring Azure [Infrastructure as a Service] capabilities to their datacenters.”
Noting that AWS and Azure were both identified as “leaders” in research firm Gartner Inc.’s Magic Quadrant report about Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) providers, Schutz maintained that Azure has an edge in PaaS.
Schutz stated that AWS is not the leader in public cloud PaaS platforms and Microsoft is. He also mentioned Storage as a service, where Amazon also plays. So think about the breadth and depth of the Microsoft offering.
A recent report by Synergy Research Group shows that AWS, Azure, and the Google Cloud Platform are all competing for a large share of the cloud pie. According to Synergy Research Group’s research, public clouds are reportedly generating more revenue than $20 billion per quarter for IT companies.
The research firm stated that the public cloud generated over $20 billion in quarterly revenue for IT companies last quarter. $10 billion went to companies that supply public cloud operators with hardware, datacenter facilities, and $12 billion was generated by selling IaaS (PaaS) and SaaS to enterprise clients. “In addition, the cloud is supporting huge revenue streams from a variety Internet services like search, social networking and ecommerce platforms. The top five companies in terms of revenue share are Cisco, HP and Dell. Equinix is second. AWS, Microsoft and Salesforce are the market leaders in cloud services. IBM, Google, IBM, and Microsoft are also the market leaders.