Study: Amazon, Microsoft Continue IaaS Battle

Cloud services providers (CSPs) leveraging infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platforms seem to have differing opinions on which services provider offers the best option, especially when market research conflicts.

Even Talkin’ Cloud’s own research confirms a difference in results among respondents. According to the 2014 Talkin’ Cloud 100 — which ranks the world’s top cloud service providers, aggregators, brokers and more according to cloud revenues and other metrics — Amazon Web Services (EC2) is the favorite IaaS platform among CSPs.

Not only did Amazon rank as the most commonly used IaaS platform among CSPs, the Seattle-based tech giant also showed its dominance on our research list overall, snagging the number three spot with $3.94 billion in total recurring revenue in 2013. Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Azure took the number two spot on Talkin’ Cloud’s most commonly used IaaS platform list. VMware (VMW) vCloud Hybrid Service ranked third. Citrix Systems (CTXS) took fourth.

POLL: Which PaaS platform does your company leverage?

Our readers, however, disagree. According to Talkin’ Cloud’s (unscientific) monthly poll, 33 percent of participants leverage something other than AWS EC2, Azure, vCloud Hybrid Service, Google (GOOG) Compute Engine, IBM (Softlayer), Rackspace (RAX) or Citrix Systems for IaaS. And surprisingly — Amazon didn’t follow immediately.

Microsoft Windows Azure did, with 20 percent of the vote from readers who participated in the poll. AWS EC2 took third with 17 percent, and Google snagged fourth with 13 percent.

As the industry fights over who the top IaaS platform is in the business, one thing is for certain: The battle between Amazon and Microsoft in this space isn’t going anywhere.

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