Gartner’s IaaS Magic Quadrant for 2017 implies AWS and Azure as Top Leaders

Gartner recently released its IaaS Magic Quadrant for 2017 outlining, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure as clear Leaders in the infrastructure-as-a-service space.

Google Cloud, on the other hand, made it to the third position trailing behind AWS and Microsoft Azure, placed on top of the Visionary quadrant. But, the curiosity remains; will Google Cloud cross the Visionary border and step its foot on the Leaders quadrant?

IaaS is portrayed as a form of cloud computing where virtualized computing resources namely compute, storage and networking are offered by a service provider as a standardized, automated service on demand. The essences of Gartner’s Magic Quadrant lie specifically in the infrastructure and not platform, nor software-as-a-service.

Let’s take a look at what these Quadrants have to showcase:

Looking at the rankings what Gartner came up with, it is not at all surprising or was unexpected to see AWS on top followed by Azure in the scene. AWS is one of the few organizations that publicly summarizes its quarterly operating results and numbers. Holding a horde of enterprise customers, potential use cases, and a pretty good number of success stories, Gartner finds AWS as the “most commonly chosen for strategic, organization-wide adoption.”

But, there is still a need for embracing expertise in its services and simplifying the existing pricing structure.

As far as Microsoft Azure is concerned, its Cloud maturity varies in accordance with various levels of customers it appeals to. Since Gartner believes Azure is broad enough to manage diverse workloads, it is also seen as a strategic enterprise-wide cloud partner. Gartner thumps on Azure for improving its customer support, service and user experience, documentation, and training. Microsoft however, has improved in terms of its service offering over the past few years.

Having discussed AWS and Azure, Google Cloud Platform cannot be left behind. Though the company stands as a distant third in Magic Quadrant, it’s a decent choice for cloud-native organizations, as per Gartner. The research and advisory firm also mentioned that “Google’s emphasis on portability and its innovation engine is somehow critical.” Yet, Google is often picked up as a secondary option and an alternative to AWS. The heavy investment that Google has made in analytics and its infrastructure are expected to pay off well, in the upcoming Cloud wars.

Moving further to where others stand in the quadrant, IBM has been placed in the Visionary group taking its SoftLayer infrastructure into consideration. The infrastructure, however, is currently being re-engineered. According to Gartner, “The IBM Cloud experience is currently disjointed.” The research and advisory firm also implied that IBM hasn’t enhanced its IaaS much, since acquiring SoftLayer in 2015.

Another key player worth taking a look at is Alibaba Cloud, which earned “the best amongst the rest” position in IaaS field. Gartner is pretty convinced that Alibaba’s current offering in the Cloud demonstrates a lot of potential in the future and, sees it as a key player in China. However, the potential track record of Alibaba Cloud is limited outside of China, in any case.