If your company is considering which cloud services to use, it’s likely that it’s the top brass who will meet with the cloud bosses, as opposed to lower-level representatives from your tech department. That’s what Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Adam Selipsky recently said in an interview with Protocol on data and cloud management.
“The cloud and our relationship with these enterprises is now very much a C-suite agenda,” Selipsky said. “There was a time, years ago, where there were not that many enterprise CEOs who were well-versed in the cloud…Now it’s actually something that they’re, in many cases, steeped in and involved in, and driving personally.”
Amazon and fellow top cloud-services providers Microsoft and Alphabet are competing fiercely to meet that C-suite agenda. So far, AWS is the clear leader, with 34% of global market share as of Q2 2022. Microsoft’s Azure platform is next, with 21%, and Alphabet’s Google Cloud trails at 10%.
All three companies are seeing huge revenue coming in from their cloud services departments as they battle over the expanding market.
Here are the ways the companies are trying to distinguish themselves—and what executives are telling investors and the press.
- AWS and its “multicloud” bet: It is said that the internet effectively runs on AWS, so it makes sense that the company would guard that market. Not sharing was Amazon’s MO on working with other cloud services providers for years, but the company quietly shifted in December 2020 and now allows for cross-platform services.
There’s an ulterior motive for that change in company policy. Selipsky told Protocol that customers will develop better expertise and see benefits of scale by sticking to one service. The implication is that this will become self-evident once customers see all services together.
“In general, when we look across our worldwide customer base, we see time after time that the most innovation and the most efficient cost structure happens when customers choose one provider—when they’re running predominantly on AWS,” Selipsky said.
- Microsoft’s focus on saving costs: Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform is selling itself to customers as an energy-smart alternative to data-hosting that can weather the storms of an uncertain economic climate. During an earnings call Q&A in October, company CEO Satya Nadella told Mizuho Securities Analyst Gregg Moskowitz that the company feels the cloud services it offers allow for saving money because the “public cloud helps businesses offset the risk of taking demand risk.
”The uncertainty isn’t solely about consumer demand. Nadella noted that with supply-chain instability and rising energy costs, the benefits of Azure cloud computing for businesses that are looking to ensure the stability of data storage are clear.
- Google’s cloud plans are part of its AI strategy: Just because Google Cloud services are lagging behind the competition, doesn’t mean they are taking a step back. Instead, Alphabet’s tactical approach to the new cloud world is to use the data-management tool as a way to refine and expand its machine learning capabilities. It makes sense—Alphabet’s software is known for its strong AI, boosted by the omnipresence of Search and the popularity of Maps and YouTube applications.
The cloud is another step in the process, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai told Merrill Lynch Analyst Justin Post during an earnings call Q&A in October. “AI not only affects Search, it affects all our products,” Pichai said. “It makes YouTube better, ads better—and through Cloud, we are bringing it to other companies as well.”—EH
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