So Amazon is #1. And who’s next in cloud computing?

March 15, 2012 | Author: Michael Stromann


GigaOm has published the list of top 7 cloud providers besides Amazon. Why besides Amazon? Because Amazon Web Services for now is far ahead of competitors. AWS is an absolute cloud market leader in all reports of all analytical firms. According to various estimates, AWS runs on 450,000 servers and generates about $1 billion in revenue per year. And who's next? Here are the top 7 the cloud providers by GigaOM:





1. Rackspace


According to Gartner, Rackspace on the second place after the AWS by revenue. In 2011 it's revenue was slightly below $200 million. Rackspace - is the leader of the OpenStack, the alliance that develops the open cloud platform (ala Cloud Linux).





2. Google


By the number of servers, Google can surpass even Amazon. But Google can't extract revenue from its cloud infrastructure so effectively (search and advertising are not mentioned here). It's platform Google App Engine is not yet a serious option for business and SaaS providers.





3. Microsoft


Microsoft, perhaps, could be a leader in the cloud market thanks to its extensive partner network and customer base. But it's bound by the own desktop business. So while Windows Azure has a huge potential, it's still a niche platform.





4. IBM


IBM comes to the market from the big business side. It turns out, that IBM already provides its cloud platform SmartCloud to the large number of its big customers. However, apparently the company has no clear cloud strategy yet, because a week ago IBM decided to join the OpenStack alliance.





5. Hewlett-Packard


HP in general, builds private clouds (including those based on Windows Azure). But at the same time - it's building the own public cloud platform based on OpenStack. As a leading server manufacture, HP has a huge potential, but because of constant CEO change, it can't grow rapidly.





6. VMWare


VMWare - is the mother of virtualization (which is the core technology for all cloud platforms) and the daughter of EMC (the leading supplier of storage systems for cloud platforms). So VMWare has everything for cloud success. And VMWare prefers not to join alliances, but goes its own way - pushing the Cloud Foundry platform.





7. Facebook


Facebook was included in the list in advance. They say, Amazon also used to just sell books. And though Facebook doesn't provide its cloud to third party companies, but the size of this cloud - is WOW!

See also: Top 10 Public Cloud Platforms

Author: Michael Stromann
Michael is an expert in IT Service Management, IT Security and software development. With his extensive experience as a software developer and active involvement in multiple ERP implementation projects, Michael brings a wealth of practical knowledge to his writings. Having previously worked at SAP, he has honed his expertise and gained a deep understanding of software development and implementation processes. Currently, as a freelance developer, Michael continues to contribute to the IT community by sharing his insights through guest articles published on several IT portals. You can contact Michael by email stromann@liventerprise.com