Top 10 Cloud Providers

Published on: August 28, 2023

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15 min read

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For German Version

Delivering hosted services through the internet is referred to as "cloud computing" in general. These services fall under the three main subcategories or types of cloud computing: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Software as a Service (SaaS).

The term "cloud" was first used to metaphorically depict how the intricate telephone networks interconnected when the internet was still in its infancy. Presently, a lot of people and organizations refer to it as "THE cloud," yet it doesn't exist in a single location or as a single thing. So, exactly what is it?

Servers, networks, storage, development tools, and even applications (apps) can all be accessed through the internet in the cloud computing model. A cloud service provider can take care of some or all of these requirements, saving enterprises the expense of purchasing equipment, hiring people, and performing continuous maintenance.

Businesses are embracing the cloud as the essential tool for completing their digital transformation, and the COVID pandemic has expedited this requirement even more. As businesses move from a piecemeal strategy to a more comprehensive end-to-end digital transformation with the cloud at its center, the cloud is becoming a top agenda item for the C-suite. The people who can negotiate this transition quickly, make the correct decisions, and collaborate with the right partners to strengthen their own talents will be the winners in the future.

Before the advent of the cloud, businesses had to keep all of their data and software on their own servers and hard drives. The necessity for storage increased as a corporation grew larger. This method of handling data cannot scale quickly. For instance, your servers would probably fail if word of your company spread and you suddenly received a large number of online orders. For the IT department, successful business meant a lot of work.

Cloud computing has advantages for individuals as well as for companies. The cloud has changed the way we conduct our personal lives. Many of us utilize cloud services on a regular basis. When we check our bank accounts, change our status on social media, or binge-watch a new streaming series, we most certainly use applications hosted by cloud services. Instead of being downloaded to our devices or hard drives, these programs are accessible online.

With today's cloud technology, businesses can expand and react quickly, promote business agility, accelerate innovation, modernize operations, and cut expenses. This can lead to more strong, long-term growth in addition to helping firms get through the current crisis. Companies that use technology more strategically do better financially. In terms of revenue growth, they surpass companies that adopt and implement technology more slowly by a factor of more than two. In actuality, 95 percent of executives have embraced advanced cloud services.

In this article, we will cover the following topics.

• What are cloud providers?
• Why do you need a cloud provider?
• Top 10 cloud providers
  1. AWS
  2. Microsoft Azure
  3. Google Cloud Platform
  4. Alibaba Cloud
  5. Salesforce
  6. IBM
  7. Digital Ocean
  8. Oracle
  9. Tencent Cloud
  10. Huawei Cloud
• What to Look for When Selecting a Cloud Computing Company
• What are the small Cloud Providers?
• Comparison of Top 3 Cloud Providers

Top 10 Cloud Providers

The top three cloud service providers according to Gartner's most recent Magic Quadrant report for cloud infrastructure and platform services (CIPS) are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud. Beyond the top three competitors, Oracle, Tencent Cloud, and IBM were listed by Gartner as "niche players", and Alibaba Cloud was placed in the "visionaries" category.

Offerings for integrated platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are included in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for CIPS. They include industrialized distributed cloud services that are frequently used in business data centers, functions as a service (FaaS), database PaaS (dbPaaS), application developer PaaS (adPaaS), and application PaaS (aPaaS) (i.e., private clouds).

Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure and Platform Services

The top 10 cloud service providers that supply these services have fundamentally altered the worldwide market landscape for IT infrastructure. Public cloud service providers are facilitating distributed cloud computing's inherent efficiency, which is enabling the development of cutting-edge software applications and platforms while strengthening information security and privacy controls. As a result, it's crucial to comprehend each top cloud service provider and its various business models. The following table, which includes the number of regions and availability zones that each vendor holds, lists the top 10 cloud service providers globally.

#	Cloud Service Provider	Availability Zones	Regions
1	Amazon Web Services (AWS)	84	26
2	Microsoft Azure	116	60
3	Google Cloud Platform (GCP)	103	34
4	Alibaba Cloud	84	27
5	Oracle Cloud	46	38
6	IBM Cloud (Kyndryl)	29	11
7	Tencent Cloud	65	21
8	OVHcloud	33	13
9	DigitalOcean	14	8
10	Linode (Akamai)	11	11

Table 1. The number of regions and availability zones of Cloud Providers

A more thorough breakdown of each of the top 10 cloud service providers is provided below:

1. AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a division of Amazon.com, is the biggest global supplier of cloud services. The company offers over 200 fully featured services, including computing, storage, and databases, from its data centers.

84 availability zones and 26 regions are now operational on AWS. These regions and availability zones can be found all around the world, including in the Middle East and Africa, Amazon GovCloud (US), the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

From $8 billion in 2015 to more than $17 billion in 2017, $35 billion in 2019, and now about $74 billion a year, Amazon Web Services' (AWS) net revenues have soared. The main cause of this remarkable expansion has been AWS's development from 32 availability zones in 2015 to 52 availability zones in 2017 and now 84 availability zones. The company has simultaneously introduced dozens of new AWS services, which has aided in its growth.

Features of AWS are listed below:

• Improved registration procedure
• Simple and quick deployment
• Accommodating capacity management (add or remove as needed)
• Unlimited use of resources that scale
• Streamlined billing process

Pros of AWS are given below:

• Easy-to-use setup
• A wide selection of more than 200 services
• Possessing the ability to host static web pages makes it possible to create complicated, scalable systems.

The main cons of AWS is recurring issues with the AWS cloud services.

2. Microsoft Azure

Azure is a part of Microsoft Corporation's Intelligent Cloud division and is currently the second-largest cloud service provider in the world. A dependable hybrid cloud experience, developer productivity, AI capabilities, and security & compliance with Microsoft Azure are all provided by the company. On Microsoft Azure, 116 availability zones and 60 regions are now operational. Together with Azure Government, these regions and availability zones are dispersed around the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa (U.S.).

There are more than 200 actual Microsoft Azure data centers throughout the world, each housing computer servers with distinct power, cooling, and networking setups. The firm connects its data center infrastructure with more than 175,000 miles of fiber optic cable that spans 140 countries.

For the most recent quarter, Microsoft Cloud revenue which includes revenue from Azure and other cloud services, Office 365 Commercial, LinkedIn for Business, and Dynamics 365, reached $23.4 billion, up 32% over the same period last year. As a result, Microsoft Cloud's revenue today stands at $93.6 billion on an annual basis. Azure is only a portion of overall Microsoft Cloud revenue, as Azure revenue is not expressly disclosed by Microsoft.

Features of Microsoft Azure are listed below:

• Management and deployment of applications
• Various OS, languages, frameworks, and databases are supported
• Tooling across clouds with consistency
• Capabilities for scalable IT resources

Pros of Microsoft Azure are given below:

• Extremely scalable
• Economical
• Flexible
• Offers a risk-free sample

The main cons of Microsoft Azure is that it needs skilled management.

3. Google Cloud Platform

The third-largest global cloud service provider is Alphabet Inc.'s Google Cloud Platform (GCP), which offers cloud services that are suitable for businesses. Programmers can design, test, and deploy applications using GCP's distributed and scalable architecture while taking advantage of the service's capabilities for security, data management, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI). On Google Cloud, 103 availability zones and 34 regions are now operational. The Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the United States are all covered by these areas and availability zones. Customers pay the Google Cloud division of Alphabet Inc. for its platform, infrastructure, and other services.

Google Cloud's most recent quarter saw $5.8 billion in sales, nearly 44% year-over-year growth. As a result, Google Cloud generates $23.3 billion in revenue annually.

Features of Google Cloud Platform are as follows:

• Workflow Management
• Data Visualization
• Data Import and Export
• Detailed reporting and statistics

Pros of Google Cloud Platform are listed below:

• Enough storage for data
• Strong data analysis skills
• Suitable for firms that are cloud-native
• Remarkable portability

Cons of Google Cloud Platform are given below:

• Less than expected data centers
• Comparatively few features are offered

4. Alibaba Cloud

The cloud computing division of Alibaba Group, known as Alibaba Cloud, is the biggest cloud service provider in China, the main cloud vendor in Asia Pacific, and the fourth largest cloud service provider internationally. Elastic computing, big data analytics, machine learning, databases, storage, network virtualization, large-scale computing, security, administration, and application services are among the cloud services offered by the company through Alibaba Cloud. On Alibaba Cloud, there are currently 84 availability zones and 27 active regions. Alibaba is the top cloud service provider in Mainland China, with more than 10 regions around the country. Outside of Mainland China, Alibaba Cloud operates across the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East.

Based on how long and how often their services are used, Alibaba Group typically receives payments from business clients for cloud computing services. In the most recent quarter, the company's cloud sector generated $2.99 billion (RMB 18,971 million) in revenue, a 12% year-over-year rise. As a result, Alibaba Cloud's revenue is currently close to $12 billion on an annual basis.

Features of Alibaba Cloud are as follows:

• Storage options for elastic computing
• Network of Things (IoT)

Pros of Alibaba Cloud are listed below:

• Large service offering
• The existence of
• Global growth
• Revenue increase

Cons of Alibaba Cloud are given below:

• Concentration on China
• Possible linguistic obstacles
• Market competition for cloud services

5. OVHcloud

OVHcloud is a provider of cloud services with a focus on Europe. It provides bare metal and hosted private cloud, public cloud, and web cloud services. Thirteen sites, 33 data centers, and 400,000 physical servers make up the current OVHcloud network. Significantly, 30 of the 33 data centers that OVH Cloud uses are its own. There are 8 different nations where these data centers are located: France, Canada, the United States, Australia, Germany, Poland, the United Kingdom, and Singapore.

More than 1.6 million consumers can purchase domain names, web hosting packages, and cloud solutions from OVHcloud. 800 of the company's customers out of this total are businesses. OVHcloud has a low-cost model and typically competes on pricing in terms of value.

Features of OVHcloud are given below:

• Metal servers only
• Private cloud hosting
• Services offered by public clouds
• Broadened clientele
• Various data centers
• Reasonable options

Pros of OVHcloud are listed below:

• Several cloud services
• Especially in regard to Europe
• Budget-friendly options
• Infrastructure that is scalable

Cons of OVHcloud are limited presence worldwide and possible latency difficulties for users outside of Europe

6. IBM

IBM's managed infrastructure services division was spun off to Kyndryl in late 2021, and the company is currently designing, constructing, and managing private, public, and multi-cloud systems for its clients.

29 availability zones and 11 territories are currently operational on IBM Cloud (Kyndryl). These regions and availability zones are dispersed over the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, and the United States.

Through fusing services from private cloud service providers, internal platforms, independent software suppliers, and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, Kyndryl's Cloud Services division aids businesses in making the most of cloud service providers. Kyndryl recently forged new strategic agreements with Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud in order to do this.

Features of IBM cloud computing are listed below:

• Offerings in SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS
• Capability for cloud backup and recovery
• Create unique services by utilizing a variety of technologies, data models, and delivery methods.
• Dependable network management

Pros of IBM cloud computing are as follows:

• Regularly releases new products and integrations
• Options for flexible pricing
• Powerful computing capacity
• Emphasizes a data-first strategy in accordance with consumer needs

Cons of IBM cloud computing are listed below:

• A lower-than-average number of data centers
• The responsiveness of customer service should be enhanced.

7. Digital Ocean

A cloud service company called DigitalOcean caters to smaller clients like developers, start-ups, and small- and medium-sized organizations (SMBs) by providing on-demand infrastructure and platform tools.

Currently, DigitalOcean runs 14 data centers in 8 regions. The company, in particular, leases data centers in New York City, San Francisco, Toronto, Canada, London, United Kingdom, Amsterdam, Netherlands, Frankfurt, Germany, Bangalore, India, and Singapore.

More than 185 countries and 620,000 clients are served by the infrastructure and software solutions provided by DigitalOcean. Unusually, around 70% of DigitalOcean's revenue comes from sources outside of the US. Similar to OVH Cloud, DigitalOcean competes on price, frequently offering services that are 50% or more affordable than those offered by the biggest cloud service providers.

Features of DigitalOcean are as follows:

• Infrastructure that is scalable
• Tools geared toward developers
• Flash storage
• There are many sites for data centers
• Options for flexible pricing

Pros of DigitalOcean are listed below:

• Simple to use
• Quick and dependable performance
• Cost-effective
• Strong community backing

Cons of DigitalOcean are given below:

• Less services than those offered by competing cloud providers
• Possible need for greater technical expertise
• Several users mention sporadic downtime

8. Oracle

The cloud services provided by Oracle Corporation include Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Oracle Cloud Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). The business offers cloud services through OCI, including computing, storage, and networking services, as well as infrastructure technology.

There are currently 46 availability zones and 38 regions active on Oracle Cloud. All over the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), Latin America, and Asia Pacific are these regions and availability zones. Oracle Cloud offers federal cloud regions for the US government, the US Department of Defense (DoD), and the UK government.

As a customer uses Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) services over a predetermined time period, the prepayment price that was initially charged to them steadily diminishes. Oracle's cloud revenue for the most recent quarter, which comprises IaaS and SaaS, increased by 19% year over year to $2.9 billion. Oracle Cloud thus brings approximately $11.6 billion in revenue per year.

Features of Oracle Cloud are as follows:

• Full-service cloud solutions
• Options for infrastructure, platforms, and software
• Focus on data management
• Abilities in application development
• A focus on safety

Pros of Oracle Cloud are listed below:

• Many cloud offerings
• Powerful data environment
• Easy data development and sharing reduces IT complexity
• Reputable and long-standing provider
• Scalable and adaptable choices

Cons of Oracle Cloud are given below:

• May require some learning
• Pricing can be difficult
• Limited opportunities for customization

9. Tencent Cloud

The second-largest cloud service provider in China after Alibaba Cloud is Tencent Cloud, a branch of Tencent Holdings. Tencent Cloud now operates 65 availability zones across 21 geographies. Moreover, Tencent Cloud offers a total of 26 locations and 70 availability zones, not counting its five partner areas. With the exception of its partner territories, Tencent Cloud operates across Mainland China, the US, Brazil, Germany, and the Asia Pacific.

Features of Tencent Cloud are listed below:

• Many cloud solutions
• Presence in Mainland China
• Strong operations across various countries

Pros of Tencent Cloud are as follows:

• A sizable and reputable provider
• Vast array of services
• Focused heavily on the Chinese market
• Global reach and presence

Cons of Tencent Cloud are given below:

• Chinese market is the primary target
• Limited availability in some areas
• Language and cultural difficulties that might exist
• Competing cloud service providers

10. Linode

Linode was purchased by Akamai Technologies, a provider of content delivery networks (CDNs) and security solutions, for $900 million in March 2022. Nowadays, Linode operates 11 data center regions through which it offers storage services as well as computation in the form of virtual machines and containers. The markets where the company maintains data centers include Newark, New Jersey, Atlanta, Georgia, Dallas, Texas, Fremont, California, Toronto, Canada, London, United Kingdom, Frankfurt, Germany, Tokyo, Japan, Singapore, Mumbai, India, and Sydney, Australia.

The infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) platform from Linode offers cloud computing services to 1 million clients and companies globally. The business competes on price and concentrates on serving start-ups, businesses, and developers.

Features of Linode are given below:

• Services for computers and storage
• A world-wide network of data centers
• Scalable and trustworthy cloud solutions

Pros of Linode are listed below:

• Substantial market presence
• A wide range of clients
• Reliable execution

Cons of Linode are as follows:

• Less than expected data centers
• Possibility of large expenses
• Technical knowledge is necessary

What are Cloud Providers?

An IT company that offers scalable, on-demand computer resources like processing power, data storage, or applications online is known as a cloud service provider, or CSP. IaaS (infrastructure as a service), PaaS (platform as a service), and SaaS are the most common cloud-based service models (software as a service).

Because it provides the flexibility, scalability, resilience, and security that business demands require without worrying about the physical limitations of your own on-premises servers or investing a lot of resources into setting up, managing, and maintaining an in-house data center, cloud computing is quickly replacing on-premises servers as the model of choice for accelerating digital transformation and innovation.

For internal services and commercial applications, you can rent services from a CSP on their infrastructure, which you'll share with other people or businesses, as opposed to developing your own.

Why Do You Need a Cloud Provider?

The benefits of employing a cloud service provider are outlined below:

• Regular, Predictable Monthly Expenses: You can choose a cloud provider and choose the cost of your computational requirements while receiving a fixed monthly bill. You may optimize the cost of your IT support by choosing a set monthly service package that fits your needs and budget.
• Cost Reduction: Cloud computing outsourcing manages and lowers exorbitant network maintenance costs. Owing to the economics of cloud providers, outsourcing to a cloud provider can help you avoid having to pay your own internal IT department's annual costs by thousands of dollars. Your staff will just be controlling cloud consumption to make sure you stay within your budget, rather than managing your own servers. Compared to maintaining your own local or remote server infrastructure, managing cloud installations is far simpler.
• Customized and Integrated Service: Providers of managed cloud services offer versatile alternatives that can be tailored to your requirements. Prepaid or pay-per-service plans are provided by several cloud providers, allowing you to allocate additional funds to business expansion. Converged solutions are provided by other cloud service providers, which further reduces costs. With the help of a single provider, converged infrastructure is an IT solution that lets you bundle several services into one. Among other services, these integrated solutions could offer servers, data services, network monitoring, or security defense.
• Investing in Your Business's Future: The first step in preparing your company for the future is to use cloud computing. Your IT team will need to use business time to train whenever a necessary upgrade or a new technology is launched if you have internal IT professionals and your own data centers. By utilizing public clouds, you are contracting out the development of this technology and skill to the service provider's staff of technicians. You thus gain access to cutting-edge technology without having to pay for it.
• Centralized Network Services and Applications: In a single data center, a cloud service provider will oversee all aspects of cloud computing, including servers and applications. While this makes network management simpler, it has drawbacks like the ability to create a single point of failure. That is, all network services will cease to function if the centralized network fails. For protection against such a scenario, the majority of suppliers have several fail safes in place.
• Dependable Infrastructure: Cloud service providers offer reliable network infrastructures that are monitored around the clock. A managed service provider can keep an eye on the network, check for security issues, and more. In order to provide additional levels of round-the-clock security that may be lacking (or significantly more expensive) with an internal infrastructure management staff, cloud service providers are used. Moreover, managed service providers can offer complete platforms for application development, integrate current business procedures and rules to manage your network, and assist with cloud migration.
• Emergency Recovery: Any company that offers managed cloud services depends on the services it offers. Cloud computing systems are built with redundant and resilient networks and data centers to support business continuity. Your data will be protected and secure across all applications and services if you use a managed service. Your operations and business will be able to carry on with little interruption if a crisis strikes
• Complete Service-Level Protection: The improved control that cloud service providers provide on maintenance, performance, and service levels. Your business will be able to gain service continuity thanks to thorough service-level agreements. Your infrastructure will become more familiar to any managed cloud services provider the longer you engage with them, which will lead to speedier response times.
• Vendor Partnering: A managed service provider will take care of working with third-party vendors to quickly handle any service issues that are unique to them when they occur.
• Quick Reaction Times: Through enterprise-level remote cloud services and monitoring, your business can count on quick responses. Almost any network issue may be frequently repaired, monitored, and accessed remotely by providers. A technician is typically deployed on the same working day if a local fix is required.

Which Cloud Service Provider is the Least Expensive?

Which cloud service provider is the least expensive? How much do services for cloud computing cost? We looked at a recent comparison by Linode that looked at the monthly cost of a deployment with a CPU Dedicated/Optimized 2vCPU, 4GB RAM, and 80GB SSD. The four biggest public cloud service providers, namely Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Alibaba Cloud, have provided an overview of the monthly prices for this implementation as follows:

#	Cloud Service Provider	Cost per Month	% Higher
1	Alibaba Cloud	$48.42	-
2	Google Cloud Platform (GCP)	$63.38	31%
3	Microsoft Azure	$70.05	45%
4	Amazon Web Services (AWS)	$71.47	48%

Table 2. Overview of the monthly cloud provider prices

Alibaba Cloud was the least expensive public cloud service provider at $48.42 per month for the CPU Dedicated/Optimized 2vCPU, 4GB RAM, 80GB SSD deployment, as seen in the example above. The most expensive public cloud service provider, however, was Amazon Web Services (AWS), which charged $71.47 per month, or 48% more than Alibaba Cloud.

Although the analysis above focuses on the most affordable public cloud service provider among the major vendors, the most economical cloud service providers are actually the smaller ones, such as OVHcloud, DigitalOcean, and Linode. When compared to AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud, these organizations are often 20% to 35% to 50% less expensive overall.

What to Look for When Selecting a Cloud Computing Company?

The process of adopting the cloud is rarely straightforward or universal. Which supplier, if any, is suitable for you will depend on your specific needs and technological requirements. Some of the important aspects to take into account while assessing cloud service providers are listed below:

• Cost: Money is frequently one of the most important considerations when choosing a cloud service, although it shouldn't be the only one. It's beneficial to consider both the initial and ongoing direct expenses of service usage, as well as any indirect costs, such as those associated with recruiting personnel or retiring on-premises systems.
• Digital capabilities and procedures: You should evaluate how well a CSP can assist you in meeting your present and future IT demands, in addition to the cloud products and services that are offered. It's beneficial to think about how simple it is for you to deploy and manage services, as well as what integration options are offered for current business-critical apps. The usage of standard interfaces and APIs, event and change management, and support for hybrid and multicloud architectures are further crucial factors to take into account.
• Trust: For your partnership with your cloud service provider to be effective, you must have their trust. You should be honest with yourself about what you really require from a CSP and think about whether a provider can deliver on those promises. For instance, how well-known is the CSP in the industry? What level of technological expertise and cloud experience do they possess? Are they a stable business? And will they be able to give you the advice and help you need to achieve your objectives?
• A free ecosystem: Proprietary solutions are increasingly unsuitable for the technical needs of contemporary industry. The degree to which cloud service providers are "open" should be considered. Consider, for instance, whether you have the ability to create, move, and deploy your apps across various settings, including both on-premises and the cloud. Wherever your workloads may be, a top cloud service provider should use open-source technology and interoperable solutions to maintain consistency and efficient management.
• Security: Finally, you should think about a cloud provider's security procedures. Your CSP must show that they can protect the data belonging to your company and customers. This entails assessing everything from identity management to backup and retention of data to security architecture, security policies, and identity management. It's essential to understand the measures used to ensure the data center's physical security, such as environmental controls, defined business continuity plans, and disaster recovery.

What are the Small Cloud Providers?

Although the top 10 cloud service providers account for over 77% of spending on cloud infrastructure services, there are still many minor vendors operating on the international market. Some cloud service providers, for instance, might focus on a particular market, like small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), or they might operate locally, as in Europe or Asia Pacific. Examples of these modest cloud service providers are provided below:

• Bleu (Orange and Capgemini) (Europe)
• Leaseweb (Europe)
• Hetzner (Europe)
• Baidu AI Cloud (China)
• Kingsoft Cloud (China)
• QingCloud (China)
• JD Cloud (China)
• UCloud (China)
• Huawei Cloud (China)
• Fujitsu
• SoftBank
• NTT
• KT Cloud
• NAVER Cloud
• SAP (SaaS Partners)
• Salesforce (SaaS Partners)
• Heroku (SMB)
• Vultr (SMB)
• UpCloud (SMB)
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Private Cloud / Managed Services)
• VMware (Private Cloud / Managed Services)
• Rackspace (Private Cloud / Managed Services)

For managed service providers like Rackspace, there is a crucial differentiation to be made within the cloud service provider industry. Enterprises can migrate, architect, and deploy workloads to the public cloud with the aid of managed service providers. These managed service providers subsequently "manage" the IT infrastructure across several settings for their clients, including public cloud, private cloud, and on-premises. Under this business model, the cloud service providers continue to be the primary owners and suppliers of IT infrastructure.

Comparison of Top 3 Cloud Providers

The three cloud service providers with the greatest market shares, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform (GCP), acquire approximately 65% of the money spent on cloud infrastructure services. The top 10 cloud service providers are included in the table below, with a focus on AWS, which holds a 34% market share, Microsoft Azure, which holds a 22% market share, and Google Cloud, which holds a 9.5% market share.

What are AWS, Azure, and GCP's main advantages?

Microsoft knows what major corporations want and how to give it to them because they have been supplying software to commercial customers for around 40 years now. Additionally, Azure offers a pretty convincing path to moving to the cloud and can serve as an all-in-one solution for businesses trying to reduce their vendor list.

Compared to rivals, AWS has over a 7-year lead and far more current options. With that advantage, the talent pool is broader, and more people are familiar with AWS. Anyone can learn to cloud with a little time and training. So, the skill pool issue may not be as important as it once was.

Then there is GCP, which has neither a head start nor a large enterprise footprint. There will undoubtedly be a benefit from the addition of executives from other enterprise-focused businesses like SAP and Oracle to their personnel. Containers are currently very popular. And Kubernetes, one of the most widely used container orchestration technologies, was actually created by Google. GCP has turned its container expertise into a portfolio of services marketed under the name Anthos, which is currently receiving a lot of attention.

What are the main difficulties that Amazon, Azure, and GCP are facing?

You're bound to step on a few toes when your company is as large as Amazon. Because many merchants see Amazon as a direct rival, they simply can't bring themselves to do any business with AWS. This feeling will probably increase as the Amazon empire expands into other sectors of the economy. Similar to Microsoft and Google, as Amazon expands, governments and other organizations will scrutinize it more for being far too large. Since AWS contributes significantly to Amazon's revenue, it may someday be sold or spun off. Well, that's simply a little ambiguity, not necessarily a good or negative thing.

Google's two main revenue streams are search and YouTube. A desk in the basement with a tiny red stapler might be where we are tempted to picture GCP as well. Yet, Google sees the public cloud as a potential area for growth and continues to spend money on data centers and acquisitions. The deprecation policy comes next. This means that Google has the right and ability to discontinue some services and features while possibly developing a replacement. Not so wonderful if your mission-critical application depends on that service, but great for Google. (It might be done now.)

In comparison, the sunsetting procedures and backward compatibility philosophies of Azure and Amazon are far more developer-friendly. Open-source software has gained significant traction over the past ten years, both on-premises and in the cloud, partly as a result of businesses looking for alternatives to for-profit software companies like Microsoft. To its credit, Microsoft has embraced the open-source movement gradually at first but considerably lately, primarily in the field of software development. But make no mistake, Microsoft would still like you to purchase numerous software licenses because it is still a significant source of income for the company.