Google Cloud gains in Gartner's 2019 cloud infrastructure Magic Quadrant
Google Cloud is moving up the infrastructure as a service rankings to become more of a tier 1 provider as it invests in service, new analytics capabilities and builds out its portfolio with acquisitions, according to Gartner's 2019 IaaS Magic Quadrant report.
On the surface, Gartner's Magic Quadrant for IaaS looks about the same as the 2018 version when the research firm put Google Cloud in the leader quadrant and cut the field to six vendors. However, Google Cloud's ability to execute has improved, Microsoft took a reliability hit and Amazon Web Services continues to be the top dog.
Here's Gartner's take on IaaS.
However, there are a lot of moving parts to consider in Gartner's assessment of strengths and weaknesses for the big three cloud vendors that go beyond the well-known graphic.
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Consider the following takeaways on the big three cloud vendors.
AWS
Not surprisingly, Gartner considers AWS the most enterprise-ready, mission critical hyperscale provider. AWS also covers the most use cases and company sizes with new services and has a strong track record.
The catch? Gartner noted that AWS doesn't have the best prices and its default storage for its compute hasn't had a price reduction since 2014. In addition, AWS is often first to market with services, but require engineering updates to become feature rich. And if you're in an industry that competes with Amazon broadly your board may tell you to find a new cloud vendor.
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Google Cloud Platform
Google Cloud is building out its enterprise chops after an initial focus on cloud-native startups and its analytics and machine learning expertise are making it a strategic vendor. Google has also created programs to help customers leverage its engineering and operations team, noted Gartner.
The catch? Google Cloud hasn't fully developed its processes to deal with enterprise accounts. Contracts, discounts, licensing and integration can be headaches for customers and the sales coverage is thin. Google Cloud also lacks a big roster of managed service providers, said Gartner. Rest assured Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian is addressing those issues.
Microsoft Azure
The strengths of Azure are obvious: Microsoft has integrated its software well with its cloud services. As a result, Microsoft shops can build hybrid applications. Microsoft has also developed a strong edge and Internet of things strategy for Azure and is open with half its workloads on Linux and integration with key enterprise platforms.
The catch? Gartner noted that Azure has had a bevy of outages with Azure Active Directory and that should give customers pause. In addition, Gartner said its clients have had challenges with implementations that are on time and on budget and complain about technical support.
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