5 ms·

Sorry, Amazon, but Microsoft Is the World's #1 Cloud Vendor

43 points by polskibus 9y ago

arstaetro 9y ago
".. Nadella has spurred Microsoft to go all-in and end-to-end on the cloud across its enormous range of products and services that span everything from IoT sensors to mobile devices to hundreds of millions of PCs to [b]mission-critical servers[/b] and all the way in to the data center itself." Which servers?
- Thieum22 9y ago
  At least those - https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-architecture-2016-edition/ https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...
Xcelerate 9y ago
Mostly a short fluff article; however, I have noticed that Azure does have a few powerful features that AWS and GCP lack, most notably InfiniBand (fast interconnects), which I have needed on more than one occasion for HPC tasks. In fact, 4x16 core instances on Azure are currently faster at performing molecular dynamics simulations than 1x"64 core" instance on GCP. But the cost is extremely high, and I still haven't found a good cloud platform for short, high intensity HPC tasks. That said, Azure probably has the worst UI—slow, buggy, and their CLI doesn't work with Anaconda installed on OS X. I had to hack Anaconda out of my path temporarily while using Microsoft's 'az' tool. Also, their new resource manager system is confusing. In terms of sheer compute capability though, Azure is hard to beat.
- robinhoodexe 9y ago
  > I still haven't found a good cloud platform for short, high intensity HPC tasks. I would suggest contacting the nearby university with research groups using HPC such as theoretical chemistry, bioinformatics or computational economics. I would guess you could get a special deal for less than what you'd pay for an AWS instance.
claudiulodro 9y ago
I don't think Amazon needs to be #1 in everything they do to achieve the kind of worldwide market domination Bezos wants. They are top five in many multi-billion dollar industries like eCommerce, streaming video, eBooks, rockets, cloud services, and a bunch of other stuff I'm sure I'm missing.
skookum 9y ago
tl;dr: This is a Microsoft puff piece written by a PR firm. The ranking is based on abstract things like "completeness of offerings" and "future vision". There's a token revenue comparison as well in an attempt to give some substance which compares all of Microsoft's "cloud" (that is to say inclusive of things like Office 365) against Amazon's IaaS.
- ocdtrekkie 9y ago
  This has become annoyingly common and incredibly difficult to discern from honest articles these days. Google in particular seems to prefer them over actual blog posts of their own these days, and has major outlets like The Verge and WIRED heavily publishing for them. I feel like its already well-known people are supposed to disclose when they are paid for an article, but there are non-monetary perks like exclusive interviews/access which aren't clearly disclosed as conflicts.
- falcolas 9y ago
  Well, there was also the two revenue figures for their respective offerings. Doesn't get too much more concrete than that.
mankash666 9y ago
I had to verify the numbers stated in this article from different sources, and while I think the fair comparison is between Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud unit" (which excludes Office 365) & AWS, the conclusion on financials in the article is surprisingly true, if only by accident. Much to my surprise, Azure/MS seems to be making a lot more money, raking in $6.8B in Q1 2017 [1], vs AWS' $3.66B [2]!! [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-q3-fy2017-earnings-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-q3-fy2017-earnings-... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/27/aws-grabs-3-66-billion-in-revenue-in-q1-42-more-than-last-year/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/27/aws-grabs-3-66-billion-in...
- Analemma_ 9y ago
  Does that include Office 365 though? Because if so, that makes it an apples-to-oranges comparison.
  - mankash666 9y ago
    Doesn't include Office 365
    - candiodari 9y ago
      Does seem to include windows enterprise installations though.
- hrktb 9y ago
  The 6.8 in the article is for "Windows Server businesses", wouldn't it be way larger than just cloud sevices ? Even without office, there still would the windows server products in it.
  - ktta 9y ago
    So that'll include Windows Server licences in AWS, and GCE too wouldn't it?
- he0001 9y ago
johnsmith21006 9y ago
Microsoft is really getting desperate. Saw similar propaganda recently with Chromebooks. Guess going back to their old MO.
polskibus 9y ago
I found out recently that good chunk of this progress (esp. in their SaaS space) is being fueled by open source projects, for example Power BI uses D3 3.5 and angular 1.5. I hope they open source at least a part of their stack, for example the Azure Service Fabric.
- WorldMaker 9y ago
  Funny that you mention that: they announced the Azure Service Fabric .NET SDK recently went open source and there seems to be some intent to open source more, including possibly an open source version of the runtime: https://github.com/Azure/service-fabric https://github.com/Azure/service-fabric
  - polskibus 9y ago
    The sdk is nothing much. Open sourcing ASF is still undecided.
gumby 9y ago
The bulk of Microsoft's customer base is the global "Fortune 1000". They have a cloud structure designed for those customers, and those customers are comfortable working with MS. They are also large consumers of computing so this makes sense (though TBT the article seems more like a market "research" puff piece). However most startups aren't in that ecosystem; when you start with an empty buffer you don't have the same path dependencies that big businesses do. So the Azure/AWS/Gcs calculus is different, not always in MS's favor. Even Netflix, started by a former MS board director, is on AWS not Azure.
refresh99 9y ago
They rated Google #6, lol. Clearly the author has little real experience about this subject.
chr4004 9y ago
He couldn't even bother to remove the spell checker line?

43 points by polskibus 9y ago

".. Nadella has spurred Microsoft to go all-in and end-to-end on the cloud across its enormous range of products and services that span everything from IoT sensors to mobile devices to hundreds of millions of PCs to [b]mission-critical servers[/b] and all the way in to the data center itself." Which servers?

Thieum22 9y ago
At least those - https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-architecture-2016-edition/ https://nickcraver.com/blog/2016/02/17/stack-overflow-the-ar...

Xcelerate 9y ago

Mostly a short fluff article; however, I have noticed that Azure does have a few powerful features that AWS and GCP lack, most notably InfiniBand (fast interconnects), which I have needed on more than one occasion for HPC tasks. In fact, 4x16 core instances on Azure are currently faster at performing molecular dynamics simulations than 1x"64 core" instance on GCP. But the cost is extremely high, and I still haven't found a good cloud platform for short, high intensity HPC tasks. That said, Azure probably has the worst UI—slow, buggy, and their CLI doesn't work with Anaconda installed on OS X. I had to hack Anaconda out of my path temporarily while using Microsoft's 'az' tool. Also, their new resource manager system is confusing. In terms of sheer compute capability though, Azure is hard to beat.

robinhoodexe 9y ago
> I still haven't found a good cloud platform for short, high intensity HPC tasks. I would suggest contacting the nearby university with research groups using HPC such as theoretical chemistry, bioinformatics or computational economics. I would guess you could get a special deal for less than what you'd pay for an AWS instance.

claudiulodro 9y ago

I don't think Amazon needs to be #1 in everything they do to achieve the kind of worldwide market domination Bezos wants. They are top five in many multi-billion dollar industries like eCommerce, streaming video, eBooks, rockets, cloud services, and a bunch of other stuff I'm sure I'm missing.

skookum 9y ago

tl;dr: This is a Microsoft puff piece written by a PR firm. The ranking is based on abstract things like "completeness of offerings" and "future vision". There's a token revenue comparison as well in an attempt to give some substance which compares all of Microsoft's "cloud" (that is to say inclusive of things like Office 365) against Amazon's IaaS.

ocdtrekkie 9y ago
This has become annoyingly common and incredibly difficult to discern from honest articles these days. Google in particular seems to prefer them over actual blog posts of their own these days, and has major outlets like The Verge and WIRED heavily publishing for them. I feel like its already well-known people are supposed to disclose when they are paid for an article, but there are non-monetary perks like exclusive interviews/access which aren't clearly disclosed as conflicts.
falcolas 9y ago
Well, there was also the two revenue figures for their respective offerings. Doesn't get too much more concrete than that.

mankash666 9y ago

I had to verify the numbers stated in this article from different sources, and while I think the fair comparison is between Microsoft's "Intelligent Cloud unit" (which excludes Office 365) & AWS, the conclusion on financials in the article is surprisingly true, if only by accident. Much to my surprise, Azure/MS seems to be making a lot more money, raking in $6.8B in Q1 2017 [1], vs AWS' $3.66B [2]!! [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-q3-fy2017-earnings-2017-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-q3-fy2017-earnings-... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/27/aws-grabs-3-66-billion-in-revenue-in-q1-42-more-than-last-year/ https://venturebeat.com/2017/04/27/aws-grabs-3-66-billion-in...

Analemma_ 9y ago
Does that include Office 365 though? Because if so, that makes it an apples-to-oranges comparison.
- mankash666 9y ago
  Doesn't include Office 365
  - candiodari 9y ago
    Does seem to include windows enterprise installations though.
hrktb 9y ago
The 6.8 in the article is for "Windows Server businesses", wouldn't it be way larger than just cloud sevices ? Even without office, there still would the windows server products in it.
- ktta 9y ago
  So that'll include Windows Server licences in AWS, and GCE too wouldn't it?
he0001 9y ago

johnsmith21006 9y ago

Microsoft is really getting desperate. Saw similar propaganda recently with Chromebooks. Guess going back to their old MO.

polskibus 9y ago

I found out recently that good chunk of this progress (esp. in their SaaS space) is being fueled by open source projects, for example Power BI uses D3 3.5 and angular 1.5. I hope they open source at least a part of their stack, for example the Azure Service Fabric.

WorldMaker 9y ago
Funny that you mention that: they announced the Azure Service Fabric .NET SDK recently went open source and there seems to be some intent to open source more, including possibly an open source version of the runtime: https://github.com/Azure/service-fabric https://github.com/Azure/service-fabric
- polskibus 9y ago
  The sdk is nothing much. Open sourcing ASF is still undecided.

gumby 9y ago

The bulk of Microsoft's customer base is the global "Fortune 1000". They have a cloud structure designed for those customers, and those customers are comfortable working with MS. They are also large consumers of computing so this makes sense (though TBT the article seems more like a market "research" puff piece). However most startups aren't in that ecosystem; when you start with an empty buffer you don't have the same path dependencies that big businesses do. So the Azure/AWS/Gcs calculus is different, not always in MS's favor. Even Netflix, started by a former MS board director, is on AWS not Azure.

refresh99 9y ago

They rated Google #6, lol. Clearly the author has little real experience about this subject.

chr4004 9y ago

He couldn't even bother to remove the spell checker line?