Cloud Computing Wars 2018 – AWS vs. Microsoft vs. IBM

Meta: Though Amazon, Microsoft and IBM have been among the most outstanding cloud vendors for years, they will follow different strategies to reshape the market in 2018.

Introduction

For many years, three heavyweights Amazon, Microsoft and IBM are still among the biggest cloud service providers in the world. With the aim to grow up and dominate the cloud market, it is obvious that each vendor will follow different strategies that are associated with their resources and capabilities.

However, their impact will revolve around some critical initiatives which have the potential to reshape the cloud market in the upcoming years. In fact, these initiatives are the result of cloud computing evolution, which moves the cloud closer to customers and gets away from jargon bluster and technical discussions like the early beginning of the cloud marketplace. That would be a very crucial step for enterprise cloud computing companies to grow. And fortunately, Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM, with the total 2017 revenue of over $16 billion, seem to do it the best with their customer-centric culture.

Let’s take a look at some initiatives that those three cloud vendors will focus on in 2018 to reshape the cloud marketplace in the near future:

• End-to-end management of the entire digital property and asset becomes viable within the cloud.
• The emergence of new technologies such as containers or Machine Learning provokes customers to access open approaches.
• The multi-cloud environment becomes popular and easy-to-use, but effective solutions will enter the marketplace.
• The diverse demands of businesses are well satisfied with a large range of cloud-based solutions and tools. For instance, customers will have more choice of the cloud data set, not just the high-end premium database. 
• The cloud vendors should leave back the tech-obsessed language and provide their customers with understandable information.
• The cloud industry must make changes in itself to meet customer’s new demand and need instead of focusing on the complicated and irrelevant phraseology. 

Considering those areas, I strongly believe that Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are the three leaders in the cloud transformation war. Let’s scroll down to find out why:

Amazon

Amazon Web Service CEO Andy Jassy has shown his desire to take the company to the emerging cloud segments beyond their leading IaaS with the combination of cloud-based technology of AWS with the customer-first breakthroughs of the parent company Amazon. Their goal is to provide users with a better, less expensive and easier-to-use than what they have.

AWS doesn’t just want to extend their dominating IaaS.

Because Amazon doesn’t have the breadth and depth expertise in enterprise software like Microsoft or IBM, their strategy is not to become a complete IaaS, PaaS and SaaS provider, but to promote and combine their outstanding customer engagement with their internal cloud-based technology.
Instead of only focusing on their IaaS segment, Amazon wants to become the Innovator’s Enabler with new approaches for their customers. This strategy will force other cloud service providers to relinquish the easy and foreseeable approaches and focus more on the new things.

Microsoft

CEO Satya Nadella claimed that he always builds the company remarks based on the opportunities as well as challenges that businesses face in this era. He doesn’t want to make the audiences confused with his technological knowledge, but does show his understanding of their current situations. They all want a digital transformation in their business; they want to change their business management for A to Z so as they can meet the demands of customers who have a rapidly-changing digital life, and they are encountered with huge pressure to attain these goals along with the need of enhanced cybersecurity.

Microsoft has a deep understanding of customer’s insight

Unlike the other cloud vendors CEO, Nadella doesn’t attempt to persuade business owners to adapt their operating models to that cloud. Instead, he concentrated on how businesses can create new operating models coalesce around customer’s demand with the support of a customer-first cloud vendor and end-to-end cloud service.

IBM

In 2018, IBM will turn 107 years old, compared to the 45-year-old Microsoft and 20-year-old Amazon. What the IBM CEO Ginni Rometty has done is to promote the expertise of a century-old technology heavyweight and fill up the swaths in a relevant and modern way. It includes the journey began with the Watson Data Platform to cloud-plus-cognitive, then from the mainframes reconfigured to encrypt staggering volumes of information-in-motion, with the aim to bring more values to the business world and defend against continual cyber attacks.

IBM has regained their prestige as the best IT partner of businesses. 

In fact, all of IBM major opponents are pursuing the same strategy: take their unique expertise and customer relationships to the cloud. For example, Salesforce leverage their CRM, SAP becomes successful with applications, Microsoft with platforms and Office, Oracle with databases. However, IBM still surpasses them all with an 8-billion-dollar business that allows their users to convert legacy apps and systems into cloud-compatible environments.

Their strategy has helped regain IBM’s prestige as a modern businesses’ IT partner with a cloud-based service offering great value to enterprises: Cloud plus Watson, Cloud plus AI and Cloud plus Cognitive.

Conclusion

In general, what enterprise customers need is not tech-obsessed discussion but a tempting plan that can help them to grow up. Fortunately, AWS, Microsoft, and IBM are still there to offer their amazing services. With different strategies and goals, the Cloud War among those three heavyweights doesn’t seem to come to an end soon, but it does look like a big change is going to happen in the upcoming year.