Cloud infrastructure business seen as three-horse race

Grazed from Investors. Author: Patrick Seitz.

The battle to control the infrastructure for cloud computing is coming down to market leader Amazon.com (AMZN) and competitors Google (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT), a report by Bernstein Research says. Amazon is top dog in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market, with estimated 2013 revenue of more than $3 billion from its Amazon Web Services (AWS) business, Bernstein analyst Carlos Kirjner said in a report published Friday. AWS revenue jumped 85% in 2013, he said.

In contrast to Amazon’s $3 abillion, Google’s competing Google Compute Engine likely generated $100 million or less in 2013, said Kirjner. And Microsoft probably took in a few hundred million dollars in 2013 IaaS revenue as part of its Azure business, he added. IaaS lets companies and government agencies access computing resources over the Internet on a pay-as-you-go basis…

"We believe the number of players who can compete at scale with AWS (i.e., beyond specialized niches) can be counted in the fingers of one hand," Kirjner wrote. "This is because playing in the big boys’ IaaS league requires a set of assets, skills and experiences that very few businesses have."

Read More At Investor’s Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/technology-click/041414-697163-goog-msft-only-companies-likely-to-threaten-amazon-in-cloud.htm#ixzz2yxda2fG0

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