4 ms·

Microsoft “won” the European market though, by being extremely quick to adopt European policies and offering really, really great support. I took AWS a while to

Microsoft “won” the European market though, by being extremely quick to adopt European policies and offering really, really great support. I took AWS a while to get out of the legal grey area, and their support is still pretty mediocre because they rely too much on automation, which may be more efficient, but being able to call Seattle directly is a tremendous selling point for governments. Also having office365 helped Microsoft sell Azure quite a bit. Google on the other hand are still in the legal grey area, and they’re even more automated than AWS. I say “won”, because there isn’t a clear monopoly in Europe, and AWS allied themselves with a bunch of lobbying powerhouses like Deloitte and EY, but I’d say Azure is still far ahead.

dkhenry 8y ago
AWS is still by far the largest cloud provider in Europe so I think its a bit early to say Microsoft "won". Microsoft has a bunch of gains mainly on the back of their strong non cloud product portfolio ( Office365 ) and their well established sales team, but even with those advantages they are still very far behind in terms of market share
- eksemplar 8y ago
  We were talking government not private sector. I have no clue who’s ahead on private in Europe. :)
IodineWasp 8y ago
Microsoft's great strength is the integration with the business (the Microsoft EA and Cloud Services agreements are powerful weapons to drive business) and technology (they can scale those offerings). They can make the first hit of Azure free by "discounting" something else. Everyone who is a potential customer of Azure has a contract already. But that strength is also a weakness. They have at least 3 US Office 365 offerings (Commercial, "Government Community", and Federal). It's harder for them to hit compliance targets, because their customer scope is so huge. The security needs for XBox are different than the Army. I think AWS and in many cases GCP has a better story there. The support equation is irrelevant.

dkhenry 8y ago

AWS is still by far the largest cloud provider in Europe so I think its a bit early to say Microsoft "won". Microsoft has a bunch of gains mainly on the back of their strong non cloud product portfolio ( Office365 ) and their well established sales team, but even with those advantages they are still very far behind in terms of market share

eksemplar 8y ago
We were talking government not private sector. I have no clue who’s ahead on private in Europe. :)

IodineWasp 8y ago

Microsoft's great strength is the integration with the business (the Microsoft EA and Cloud Services agreements are powerful weapons to drive business) and technology (they can scale those offerings). They can make the first hit of Azure free by "discounting" something else. Everyone who is a potential customer of Azure has a contract already. But that strength is also a weakness. They have at least 3 US Office 365 offerings (Commercial, "Government Community", and Federal). It's harder for them to hit compliance targets, because their customer scope is so huge. The security needs for XBox are different than the Army. I think AWS and in many cases GCP has a better story there. The support equation is irrelevant.