Some Companies Choose Microsoft's Cloud Service Because They're Afraid of Amazon (cnbc.com)

"In the cloud wars, Microsoft has been able to win big business from retailers, largely because companies like Walmart, Kroger, Gap and Target are opting not to write big checks to rival Amazon," reports CNBC: The more Amazon grows, the more that calculation could start working its way into other industries -- like automotive. In a recent interview with CNBC, Volkswagen's Heiko Huttel, who runs the company's connected car division, said the carmaker chose Microsoft Azure late last year for its "Automotive Cloud" project after considering Amazon Web Services... "If I take a look at all the competitors out there, you see they have capabilities in disrupting you at the customer interface," Hüttel said. "Then you have to carefully choose who is really getting down into the car, where you open up a lot of data to these people, and then you have to carefully choose with whom you are doing business."

Microsoft likes to tout the merits of its cloud technology, but the company is fully aware that taking on AWS, which has a commanding lead in the cloud infrastructure market, isn't just about offering the best services... Microsoft doesn't break out Azure revenue, but analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that it accounted for almost 10 percent of sales in the latest quarter.

Comments

Also if your company is afraid of the public cloud

[williamyf]

Microsoft's Azure Cloud offerings can be used Public, Private and true hybrid cloud types. Unlike amazon, which is 99.9% public cloud at the moment. And google, which is 100% public cloud.

Which means that, as your strategy shifts, you can go from Public cloud to hybrid clud to private clud with the same software stack.

Many companies are afraid of cloud technologies in general, and even more so about public clouds, and use this technology out of necesity, rather than desire. Other companies like the cloud, but would be deligthed to get everything inhouse if, for examle, what started up as a small project, grows so large that is cost-effective to do so (think DropBox).

While is true that there are SW layers that let you deploy in a "Cloud stack agnostic" fashion, those add a layer of complexity, appeal to the lowest common denominator, and show a technological lag.

Realisticaly, only Azure and OpenStack* can claim an uniform software stack between public cloud, private cloud and true hybrid cloud...

* There are others, like VMware, but their public cloud offering is marginal at best.

Aaaaaand they're stupid

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Not buying cloud services from Amazon is NOT going to keep them from disrupting your business or intruding on your business. "Who buys from us" is not a factor in how Amazon makes decisions as to what they're going to do next. And I'd bet that goes for Google and Microsoft too.

You should buy the best cloud service that fits your mission, period. If that's Amazon, great. If it's Azure or Google, great.

Buy whatever makes the most sense for what you need to do, and then move on to the next thing on your list.

Re: It's crossed my mind as well

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

microsoft = software. amazon = marketing. some companies are smart because amazons IT will never compare to microsofts IT.

Errr, no.

The company I'm consulting with right now has done in-depth studies of AWS, Google, and Azure. They eventually want to have a setup where they can, at will, move their services between any of the big 3 providers.

They've been having all sorts of meetings with reps from all 3 trying to see what they can do, and I've no doubt that eventually they'll be able to do this (easily shift services from provider to provider).

In the most basic terms, this is the way things stand:

First off, in case you didn't know, AWS is IaaS - Infrastructure as a Service while Azure is PaaS - Platform as a Service. (No one knows what the fuck Google is yet.) These two approaches obviously have some serious implications as to how you deploy and manage your stuff, so you'll want to either know what the fuck you're doing or pay someone smart look at your operation and tell you which makes the most sense for you.

AWS is far and away the most flexible and "featurific" of all three. Whatever it is you want to do, AWS can do it. AWS also offers the most bang for the buck, especially at scale. AWS uptime and file persistence is beyond excellent, it practically borders on science-fiction. You could nuke 90% of the world and all of your precious S3 files would still be perfectly safe. Their overall security posture is outstanding. For the moment, AWS is king, end of story.

Azure is getting there, but it's got a long way to go. MS knows this and as a result Azure reps and dev groups will do ANYTHING you ask for. ANYTHING, including happily replicating any AWS features or functionality that you would need in order to get you onboard. And they'll do it on their dime.
For example, MS paid a 3rd-party dev team to build (from our specs) an entire service catalog for us in Azure, in the hopes that we may use them in addition to AWS. It was a piece of the puzzle that we needed and MS paid to have it built. Azure is hungry and motivated. Amazon should keep an eye on their rear-view mirror for Azure.

Google is in last place, and they aren't nearly as feverish about developing their cloud as you would expect them to be. We meet with them and it's always a little too relaxed. I honestly have no idea what they've done or delivered.

Re:Also if your company is afraid of the public cl

[williamyf]

brunes69 mentioned IBM, while an AnonCW mentioned Amazon Outpost, and JustAnotherOldGuy mentioned Amazon's VPC for HIPPA use*. And some other comments, so let's Clarify.

IBM's cloud is based on VMware and Openstack, both of which I mentioned in my comment. Problem is, IBM's public cloud offering is so small, like a drop in (huuuuge) bucket.

Some cloud providers offer you a "Cloud on colocation" where the servers are used only for your workloads, but is still servers on colo with cloud software installed, not a private cloud. A VPC is even worse, as your private cloud is running on servers were other workloads from other tenants are running, just that the network addressing and other things make it seem like a private cloud to you. That qualifies even less as private or true hybrid cloud.

Amazon lets you have a very specific box in a very specifc configuration for a very specific subset of workloads on premises. That's Amazon Outpost, and that can hardly be called a true hybrid cloud, let alone a private cloud.

The thing is, the Openstack public cloud market is highly fragmented, and OpenStack is a beast to set up and administer in your Datacenter (I shall know, I am technical trainer for OpenStack in the telco space), and the different parts of that Voltron are not cohesive enough.

Meanwhile Microsoft's Azure is the second largestpublic cloud in the market. And believe it or not, if you do not want public Azure cloud directly from microsoft (say, because you do not want to or can not deal directly with an american corporation), you can get it from telcos and partners. And if you get it in your private datacenter, you will find that the pieces are more cohesive and easier to administer than Openstack (but all of them still way behind of VMware, dare I say, the gold standard).

In the public cloud, the three biggest players are Amazon, Microsoft and Google (in that order). All the others are dwarfs in comparison (IBM included). The technologies that underpin those clouds are whatever propiertary stuff Amazon did to Xen (and moving away from xen), whatever stuff google is using, and Azure. Then you have a lot of small fish using Openstack (with KVM), Oracle (another small fish) using Xen, VMware doing deals with players big and small all over the place but reamining a small fish in the public cloud stakes nonetheless.

As I said, Amazon lets you have a very specific box in a very specifc configuration for a very specific subset of workloads on premises. Also gives you a VPC, or even a "Colocloud". So does IBM. But that does not qualify as private cloud or true hybrid cloud.
Google gives you nothing on premises. But of course they offer you a VPC.
Oracle hangs on in cloud because of predatory pricing if you run their software on other clouds, public or private.
Only Microsoft and openstack can claim a large public cloud presence (big in the case of microsoft, in the case of openstack, a really large shoaling of small fish) coupled with the posibilities of running your cloud on premises or true hybrid).

* for OldGuy: I am not a lawyer, and probably you are not one either. But your company's tech dept. should double check with your company's legal dept. if getting your HIPPA stuff in AWS (be it in public, colo cloud or VPC) is legal or not. The tech team probably checked before the project got started, but is good to re-check regularly. I know amazon is lobbying extensively for it to be legal, and I am a big proponent of cloud in general and public cloud in particular. But laws are somethinmes weird for us engineers, and maybe, just maybe, some of that HIPPA stuff shall not be in a VPC or Colo cloud. Also, laws change from time to time, and people (even lawyers) make mistakes. With things like HIPPA, sarbanes-oaxley and financial info, is best to err on the side of caution from the legal point of view. I hope is all legal and no changes are needed. JM2C, YMMV.