As 2019 comes to an end. Top public cloud providers want to solidify their positions with their core competencies, strategies, or approach towards the market. The public cloud wars have been primarily declared, and the credit goes to the cloud giants like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. New emerging players are also trying to hold the battle against the market leaders on a new and totally unknown battleground of upcoming technologies such as Cloud-based Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. 

Like other cloud giants, Google’s cloud is not as wellbeing as the others. Since GCP is comparatively new but a genuine competitor to AWS and Azure. Maybe cloud computing is not the primary source of revenue for Google, but it is catching the wildfire and growing its market stature. 

So, we’ve created a year-end report card of major cloud vendor’s performance against their peers. 

3. Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

2019 was a roller coaster ride for GCP. They were pretty new in 2018 and out of contention to become the top cloud vendor in the industry. They started 2019 at a low, but soon they picked the pace in April with Google Next. They announced their partnership with HSBC to have a firm grip on the banking and finance sector. It is one of their biggest collaborations in 2019, including VMware, to support hybrid or multi-cloud, and to ignite the Meditech industry. They built support for them and made tie-ups for the future of the industry. 

Moreover, they launched several innovative services like Anthos, a platform that is designed to run on-premise applications not just in Google Cloud but also on the other providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure. 

Skills and Strengths

1. The most significant advantage over its competitors that Google has is its “Pricing.” They provide the cheapest cloud services. 
2. They offer “Firebase,” a service that stores data and handles all the convulsive tasks between client and server. It may be known as a database, but it also provides support in mobile application development.
3. They have developed the “Kubernetes.” An open-source platform for the orchestration of containers. According to a recent survey from Redmonk, 54% of the Fortune 100 companies already leveraging the numerous benefits of container orchestration.

To deep dive into Google’s skills and strength. Click here.

Major Weakness 

1. The significant gap between Google cloud and other top public cloud vendors is the lack of services compared to the plethora of services offered by AWS and Azure. 
2. In the Asian markets, Google not only lags to AWS and Azure; Alibaba cloud has a high share of the market and more revenues than Google Cloud Platform.
3. Their inability to focus on the growing cloud markets is what puts GCP on the backfoot. India is one of the fastest-growing economies and so its cloud market; Still, Google Cloud hasn’t picked up in India.

Remark: 

1. 2019 was a pivotal year for the development of Google’s Cloud as it brought quite innovative solutions to target potential customers.
2. The search engine giant was quite active in acquiring SMB’s or companies that provide support in migration. This can lure customers to their platform because of smooth migration.

Verdict:

Google has very high potential to get succeed in such a competitive battleground; they are going at an excellent pace. Well, their numbers are not as high as their peers, but they are working. Their partnership with targeted market segment leaders to capture the whole bunch, innovative solutions/services can lure potential customers, and their recent acquisitions to ease the tedious migration process can be very fruitful for them in the future. 

2. Microsoft Azure

Microsoft Azure is the closest competition to the cloud crowned king AWS, and getting closer to it, but not right now. Microsoft Cloud arm is quite long, with a hefty lot of services that make it quite challenging to compare directly with others. As it is comprised of their cloud services to office 365, enterprise subscriptions to dynamic 365, and LinkedIn services. 

In 2019, they were the most active company in the industry by maintaining an average of 2 acquisition deals every month. They got the highly controversial JEDI deal, signed a 10 year long LinkedIn migration on Azure, acquired Movere and Mover to ease the cloud migration over Azure, and got some new names in their long list of customers such as Disney. 

Skills and Strength:

1. In 2019, Azure gets the much-required current to charge its batteries for the future. This year Azure’s growth rate was 89% and has extended its market share as well.
2. A plethora of services offered by Azure. The launched services provide the capability of creation, maintenance, and deployment of applications. 
3. Migration to the Azure cloud is so smooth. In some cases, they provide one-click migration. 
4. They are always aware of the enterprise’s needs and have a support system for their legacy apps, which is a benchmark for the industry. 

Weakness

1. Microsoft Azure cloud services are quite full of glitches. Moreover, you need to pay some extra buck to resolve them.
2. Still less flexible about non-Windows server platforms, in comparison to other cloud vendors.
3. The customer service that Azure provides is not transparent, and data is hosted globally. It means you have face data restriction when your data is getting stored in a specific country, you need to verify with Microsoft. 

Remark: 

1. Microsoft Azure had a fantastic year. They made some great acquisitions and partnership deals, sign a big JEDI contract that definitely helps them in the future.
2.  At Microsoft Ignite, they announced some brilliant cloud services and their future plans that are sufficient enough to make you excited about 2020. 

Verdict :

Microsoft Azure was the story of 2019. They had significant growth in every term, whether it be year on year profit, market share, or revenue generation. Their extended market share and growth do put them into the number one cloud vendor’s contention but didn’t win them at least this year. 

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)

In 2018, Amazon Web Services was the most profitable venture for Jeff Bezos and made him the richest person on the earth. It was the year of total domination for AWS. Since half of the cloud users come under their umbrella. 

However, 2019 was not the year that everyone was expecting. Since the growth rate of AWS gets slow down and mostly, they were absent throughout the year (except : re:Invent). We can’t predict their upcoming future, but 2019 like the year they had in 2018. Still, they manage to make the most revenue out of it. 

Skills and Strength

1. As of 2019, AWS is the market leader with the highest market cap. Till now, nobody is getting closer to that number. One slow year is not going to affect them much (well, it depends on how their competitors going to play their cards).
2. The service they offer is the benchmark for everybody else. For every user, they have a service on their shelf. Since they are the oldest in the market.
3. They offer a plethora of services. They are the first one to innovate and comes up with various cloud wrecking services for its users.

 Weakness:

1. AWS lacks customer service and is better suited to a technically astute group of consumers and companies who have their inbuild tech support team. 
2. AWS is a less open private cloud. This makes it an obnoxious storage option for sensitive industries such as banking. 
3. Less hybrid cloud friendly.

Remark: 

1. 2019 was not the year as they had in 2018. They used to be a dominating force, but now they don’t seem like one. Still, they own the biggest chunk of the market, but that gap is depleting with the emergence of new players. 
2. There is no significant acquisition or partnership deal made by AWS to have a firm grip over their peers. Though this is not going to affect them soon, we have to wait for that.  

Verdict:

AWS is the king of cloud computing. They know better how to run their business than anyone. 2019 was not their year, but the year before, that was a historical year for AWS. One year is not affecting them much, and they haven’t lost it all. In 2019, re:Invent has the highest number of footfalls. They launch a massive amount of service in their annual event. They made AWS outpost general available for everyone, the biggest highlight of 2019. They hold the cloud crown for a reason, and we think we’ll have a few more soon.