Dive Brief:
- Amazon Web Services came out just ahead of Microsoft Azure in Gartner’s latest in-depth technical assessment of the three major cloud Infrastructure as a Service providers, released Tuesday.
- Overall, AWS scored 92%, followed by Azure at 88% and Google Cloud Platform at 70%.
- The scores are based on 234 criteria items, broken down into four technical categories (compute, networking, storage, and security and access) and four non-technical categories (service offerings, management and DevOps, service and support levels, and price and billing), according to the announcement.
Dive Insight:
The results are good news for Microsoft, which has been working to expanded its IaaS offerings over the last few years. AWS started in the IaaS area and has led in that category from the beginning. T
he three major cloud service providers have each jockeyed for market share, working to to lead in the space. Evaluating each provider's scored on set criteria could prove the deciding factor for organizations looking for an IaaS supplier.
The new IaaS study was "the result of hard work, an exhaustive criteria-validation process, and a brutal vendor review," Gartner research director Elias Khnaser wrote in a company blog.
IaaS has been experiencing some of the largest demand among cloud services. In January, Gartner predicted IaaS would grow more than 38% in 2016, potentially reaching $22.4 billion by the end of the year.
