Google is Amazon’s only real cloud threat, say observers including Cloudscaling’s Randy Bias. But under new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, that’s more likely to morph.
Cloudscaling CEO Randy Bias said in a blog Wednesday that Amazon Web Services’s only real competition is Google. That can be true. Google is an important web technology company that’s invented many large-scale technologies that the enterprise desires to use today. It’s logical that enterprises would definitely turn to Google for leadership within the cloud.
But then, doubts set in. Google Apps, a pivot point of Google’s outreach to the enterprise, doesn’t have many large converts. some , but not many, a minimum of not at the record. If businesses don’t cash in on this Google service, which they will initiate at no cost, how likely are enterprises to become long-term Google customers for cloud services?
[Would like to see how Google is taking over Amazon in storage? See Google Compute Cloud Challenges Amazon.]
After witnessing Satya Nadella’s ascension at Microsoft, i need to amend Bias’s assessment. Amazon’s only real competition is Google at the technology front and Microsoft at the enterprise front. Microsoft doesn’t need to work out easy methods to sell to the enterprise; it has been doing it for decades. Nor does Microsoft instantly be on an equal footing with Amazon or extract large profits from its Azure cloud offerings.
On the contrary, Microsoft has this sort of strong enterprise systems offering in place that its cash flow might help fund its expansion into cloud services. Not many companies can say this; it takes capital — plenty of it — to launch a world cloud service. Google and Microsoft are the best two companies that i will see (and IBM, maybe) that will make a commitment to supply cloud services and persist with it. The services don’t remain the identical. They, just like the universe, constantly expand.
Amazon.com knows it has a tight thing entering into Amazon Web Services, selling infrastructure that it had to engineer within the first place to function as a web business. It’s constantly adding to its infrastructure services, then selectively lowering prices as competitors attempt to build out matching sets. It is a form of squeeze on competitors. Match on price in order to drive your spending right into a hole.
Rackspace has needed to pull back from head-to-head competition, offering more support services and relying more on open source development to carve out its place inside the cloud universe.
Google appears to need to check Amazon blow for blow. For instance, when it made the Google Cloud Platform generally available in early December, it lowered prices on Persistent Disk block storage by 60%. That was a flanking maneuver to get Amazon customers to take it seriously.
Amazon responded Jan. 23, cutting Elastic Block Storage by 50%. The pugilistics over storage prices were largely portrayed as a battle between Google and Amazon. On Jan. 24, in a less noticed move, Azure general manager of operations Steve Martin said in a blog that Microsoft was “committed to compare Amazon Web Services prices for commodity services like compute, storage, and bandwidth. Effective March 13, customers will see lower prices for Block Blobs Storage and Disks/Page Blobs Storage matching AWS’s prices.”
Other vendors don’t dare follow Amazon in “a race to the base” in cloud pricing, but Microsoft has stated at the record it can do just that. Google is acting love it will do it (but check back with us after the following Amazon price cut).
The Azure commitment to compare Amazon prices was made at a time when Satya Nadella was head of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise unit. Nadella is now CEO. It’s in Amazon’s DNA to be a skinny-margin retailer. It’s carrying over the teachings of its online store to the retailing of cloud infrastructure services.
One of the few companies with the same DNA (we will be able to exclude IBM here) is Microsoft. It wasn’t the 1st to come back up with the GUI or applications for the computer, nevertheless it offered better value for the associated fee than IBM, Sun Microsystems, Lotus, Word Perfect, or whoever you’ll want to name inside the 1980s or 1990s. It also engaged in some sharp business practices that were eventually judged anticompetitive and monopolistic by the Justice Department.
Now another drama is playing out where the playing field is more level and the players are all bringing respective sets of strengths and weaknesses to cloud computing. Amazon.com is expanding on such a lot of fronts that it truly is either within the means of becoming the world’s largest distribution, fulfillment, and delivery company (in addition to retailer) on the earth, or something’s going to offer somewhere.
Google has its own position of strength to compete for cloud users. But of the 3, Microsoft is the single with a continuing, assured revenue stream, the technical chops, and a focused new leadership — person who may to be determined not to let Amazon run off with the prize on its own.
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Charles Babcock is an editor-at-large for InformationWeek, having joined the publication in 2003. He’s the previous editor-in-chief of Digital News, former software editor of Computerworld and previous technology editor of Interactive Week. He’s a graduate of Syracuse … View Full Bio
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