Microsoft Races Ahead Of Google In The Cloud
The cloud war between Microsoft, Google, and Amazon is reshaping how AI gets built and deployed, and the gap between the three giants may surprise you. Hundreds of billions of dollars hinge on which platform corporations trust with their future.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
One of the things that was not entirely clear when Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN | AMZN Price Prediction), Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) announced their earnings was the extent to which Microsoft leads Alphabet in cloud market share. According to Cloud Zero, Amazon’s AWS has 28% of the market, Microsoft Azure has 21%, and Google Cloud Platform has 14%. Since their cloud businesses are a primary source of AI adoption, the figures are particularly important.
There is a second way to look at which company is likely to have the best cloud future. This is based on cloud revenue growth. In the most recently reported quarter, AWS revenue grew 37%. Microsoft’s growth was 43%, and Alphabet’s was 82%. Even at those growth rates, Alphabet may not catch its rivals soon, if it catches them at all.
Microsoft has a key set of advantages over Google. One is the installed base of Microsoft’s other software products across corporations. A huge number of companies already use Windows Server, Office 365, and Active Directory. Azure integration is likely much easier than Google Cloud integration.
Apparently, the availability of the Microsoft and Google products differs. “Region availability is limited in some geographies,” according to research firm Sotatek.
What is at stake? To a large extent, AI adoption. Cloud services integrate AI features and functions. With hundreds of billions of dollars on the table, this may be the most important single factor.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.
McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.
His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.
A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.
TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.
McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.
