How Microsoft could beat Google and even AWS to lead the cloud
August 29, 2014
Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.
Microsoft Azure took an unexpected dirt nap last week. This is not good news for Microsoft, which identified the Azure IaaS and PaaS cloud as key to its success. Azure competes against Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, and others, with AWS and Google as the main rivals. Among such contenders, Azure can’t afford many missteps.
I don’t take outages seriously unless they start to form a pattern. All public cloud providers, Microsoft included, are learning how to operate a public cloud service in real time. Outages are a fact of life, at least occasionally. Notice that the other cloud providers did not chime in with criticism? They know they could be next, and nearly all have experienced their own outages…
Overall, Microsoft is in second place in the cloud market — way, way behind AWS. How far behind depends on which numbers you believe. Google is also coming on strong. It could have parity with and perhaps surpass Microsoft very soon. People forget that Google understands how to do "Web scale" and has a marketing machine and strong brand…
Read more from the source @ http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/how-microsoft-could-beat-google-and-even-aws-lead-the-cloud-249137