This month was dominated by the release of two major analyst evaluations on cloud computing, one from Forrester and another from Gartner. Microsoft also made noise at Kubecon, with claims of 10x adoption increases of Kubernetes on Azure and partnering with RedHat to bring OpenShift to Azure. Lastly, the world of the month is “Trust” as Microsoft and Amazon fight to be the most trusted public cloud provider. Read on!
Gartner Slims Down Their IaaS Magic Quadrant
May was a big month for major analyst evaluations related to the public cloud. First Gartner released their Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide. As always, this report was met with intense interest and analysis, everything from why Oracle’s cloud hasn’t caught on to excitement over Google breaking into the Leaders quadrant (no surprise here). However, one thing that was notable to me was the thinning of the herd. In the 2017 Gartner Magic Quadrant on IaaS, 14 top vendors were evaluated. In 2018, that number was six! What happened? Gartner adjusted their inclusion criteria, adding revenue targets of a minimum of $250 million in 2017 revenue for solutions available more than 3 years and $10 million for solutions available less than three years. I believe this criteria is what caused the eight vendors to drop out of the evaluation. The result is a positive one — the evaluation now includes the six major players who are dominating the market and gives customers the ability to easily compare and contrast these offerings.
In other analyst report news, Forrester released their Cloud Cost Management and Optimization Wave, which highlights the most significant vendors in this space. I’ve already done a deep analysis on this, which you can check out here.
Sabre Admits the Obvious: It’s a Multi Cloud World
Over the past few months I’ve reported out on major vendors selecting AWS or Azure or Google as their chosen cloud provider. I always read these announcements with interest, but a little bit of eye rolling since no one seems to want to state the obvious that it’s a multi cloud world. Sure, many organizations have a primary cloud provider and then a secondary (and maybe a tertiary one too), but very few have a long term vision of only being hosted on a single cloud. According to a recent Forrester study, only 8% of global infrastructure decision makers at enterprises who use public cloud have just one vendor’s public cloud environment in place. So that’s why it’s great to see large enterprises publicly embracing this multi cloud world, as Sabre did last month with their announcements of large deals with both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. Sabre, it turns out, has a very modern approach, using a universal microservices architecture (that I assume is portable across clouds) and leveraging RedHat OpenShift for container orchestration. I’m impressed, especially since I still associate Sabre with the mainframe (although recent reports have recently been showing the entire airline industry’s modernization).
Microsoft Making Noise in the Container World
Everyone wants a piece of that sweet sweet containers boom and Microsoft is no different. In recent months the company has been gaining momentum and in May, Microsoft released a slew of new capabilities for Azure Kubernetes Services. In this announcement, they made bold claims about a 10x Increase in Kubernetes Usage on Azure Cloud, even though (SPOILER ALERT) they wouldn’t GA the solution for another month. June also saw the GA of Amazon’s EKS, but you’ll have to wait until next month for my breakdown the EKS vs AKS showdown!
The other significant container news Microsoft announced in May was that the very popular Red Hat OpenShift is coming to Azure. What’s cool about this flavor of OpenShift is that it enables customers to use both the Azure public cloud AND Azure Stack private cloud. Will this allow the long-awaited, but rarely sighted TRUE HYBRID CLOUD dream become a reality? Eh, probably not, but I dare you to prove me wrong.
The Cloud Price Wars Are Over, The Next Battle is About Trust
I’m calling it, the cloud price wars are over. Ok, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first time myself or others have said this, but this time, I mean it! The tides are turning and for many customers, picking a cloud provider is not about price, it’s about trust. Think about it, when was the last time we saw the rippling waves of price drops across AWS, Azure, and Google? Cloud prices have for the most part stabilized, and the battle has moved elsewhere: to trust. Trust includes so many aspects: will you support my business long term or will you try to cannibalize it? Will you live up to your SLAs for availability and durability? Will you keep my information safe, or will you provide backdoors for government agencies? Will you comply with the latest standards (i.e., GDPR)? The cloud providers definitely see these tides changing as well, with both Andy Jassy and Satya Nadella making statements about trust last month.
The thing about trust is that it’s hard to gain, and easy to lose. It’s not a stat you can publish on a marketing page, or something that is easily compared to your competition. The battle for trust will be a long and bloody one, with many casualties along the way.
That wraps up the top cloud computing news in May 2018! Join me next month for the latest and greatest happenings in all things cloud computing.
Top Cloud Computing News: April 2018
Happy spring (or fall depending on your hemisphere)! Last month was a big month for both Amazon and Microsoft, with positive news on earnings and several new services. Click here to read more.
Top Cloud Computing News: March 2018
They say that March comes in like a lion and out like a lamb. But this year between the multiple Nor’easters in New England, snow in Rome and the United Kingdom, and a constant onslaught of cloud news, I’d say this year March came in like a lion and out like a dragon. Click here to read more.
Top Cloud Computing News: February 2018
February 2018 was a short but eventful month in the cloud computing industry. From Microsoft taking a new approach to recruiting startups onto Azure, to Oracle quadrupling their data center footprint, read on for all the cloud computing news that caught our eye this month. Click here to read more.
