Microsoft is BEATING Amazon's cloud revenues. Er, how? Microsoft's cloud revenues are beating those of Amazon's AWS. That's if analyst-haus Stifel Nicolaus's data is correct. Back in 2012's third quarter Microsoft commercial cloud revenue was $254m, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) ahead at $530m. In the first quarter of 2015 AWS revenues totaled $1.566bn, with Microsoft nudging …
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>But they ARE cloud, so Microsoft are indeed now ahead of Amazon in Cloud. And are growing faster.
Its all about the intent of the figures and the reporting. Why are people interested in the subject?
To a large extent (as identified by the article as MS inflating its cloud with Office365 which includes local PC/Mac installations and licensing - that isn't "cloud computing", its mostly a download CDN) its about PR. The subtext is "whose stuff is better?" and the implication is "the cloud with higher revenue figures is better" though that correlation isn't rational. AWS isn't charging excessive licensing fees for client software, its selling what they call "IT heavy lifting" - its IT hardware infrastructure with an API, mostly using linux as the shell. AWS is mostly selling (mostly) server infrastructure, whereas Office365 is client infrastructure which includes non-cloud MS Office licensing. MS' "cloud" figures includes a lot of people moving to software rental for local installations rather than actually using cloud compute, so imagining that MS' cloud must be "better" because it has more revenue is misleading.
Just because the MS revenue could be for cloud services doesn't mean that it is for cloud services. AWS revenue on the other hand, definitely is just for cloud services because they don't do anything else and they appear to pro-actively help you to identify cost savings.
While I can understand that the cloud introduces lots of latency and so on, I reckon there is scope for lots of new software development. Write cloud-specific apps rather than just sticking DC apps in the cloud. The advantage of starting from scratch is that you can avoid some of the more expensive licensing options from Oracle and MS. That means easier sharding, and you may be able to bring the app & data closer to your customers than if you were restricted by expensive per-instance licensing. Quite frankly, the enterprise-scale apps built on Remedy and so on are quite appalling slow anyway.
You don't sound like you understand Office 365. It is true that Office 365 does allow local installs and that some companies initially use it just to license Office, but it is so much more than that. Those local installs are really just an edge for an incredibly powerful set of SaaS solutions. OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online, Yammer, Exchange Online, and Office Web Apps sure... but also with PowerBI, Dynamics CRM Online, and a host of Azure Services providing it both with hosting and numerous extensions. Moving to Office 365 has had a significant impact, due to its cloud based design, in every company where I have helped roll it out (ranging from small charities to companies with over 100,000 employees).
Aerm, yes. All those powerful SaaS solutions that nobody wants, ok with the exception of Exchange maybe. Sharepoint only survives becuase its effectiveky the only PaaS olution for the Windiws stac. The rest are a pile of poo. The figures are just a jenga block of skus that Microsift has sold with cloud attach. And azure AD, that looks similarly dodgy at scale.
Lets compare apples with apples. That's another story, too.
MS doesn't give the number of customers while Amazon did. If Amazon is servicing a lot small places and MS is getting the big hitters, then it's very possible.
I don't think a straight comparison of the twio will really be possible due to what each defines as "cloud"....
Does that count things like Office 365 as "cloud"? Seems to me Amazon doesn't have a whole lot of Amazon SaaS services. They do IaaS and PaaS. The SaaS side of things is provided by Amazon's customers.
If Microsoft is incorporating SaaS applications like Office 365 into their cloud revenues in order to get this "Amazon-beating" figure, is this factoring in the amount of revenue lost by the traditional Office, Exchange, Dynamics, etc groups?
And shouldn't you then count Amazon's tat bazzar as "cloud revenue"? If Microsoft is including revenue other than IaaS and PaaS, Amazon should include "Physical Items as a Service" in their cloud reporting. Does Amazon report it's Content as a Service as part of cloud?
It's really hard to know if things are being compared like for like here.
Also if you compare revenue it's entirely likely that the highest priced service will win. Ultimately adoption is more important. Either way, AWS and Azure are the only horses in this particular race right now. We could use a third runner for competition but nobody else seems close and VMware seem uninterested in offering a real cloud for some reason and are concentrating on managed hosting with the word cloud in the name.
I can think of lots of well known third party companies who run their operations entirely on Amazon. I can't think of any who do the same with Microsoft Azure.
I tried googling for something about this Aaron Rakers from Stifel to see what he actually said about MS Azure, and all I can seem to find is older Register reports which last year said that Rakers claimed that MS Azure was beating Amazon, and obscure blogs which said that the Register reported that (you get the picture). Of this mysterious report itself, there seems to be no sign (I notice that it isn't linked to in the story). Nobody else in the IT press seemed willing to touch the story (including the earlier versions) with a barge pole.
So, I'm going to say that I'm a bit sceptical about the whole thing unless I see some real evidence. I also notice that the Reg journo seems to be holding the report out at arm's length like a long dead fish. I hope he got a decent lunch out of the Microsoft PR flack last Friday because otherwise his time was thoroughly wasted.
"If Microsoft is incorporating SaaS applications like Office 365 into their cloud revenues in order to get this "Amazon-beating" figure, is this factoring in the amount of revenue lost by the traditional Office, Exchange, Dynamics, etc groups?"
Irrelevant to that Microsoft are ahead of Amazon in cloud. That traditional desktops are a declining market is another conversation...
"And shouldn't you then count Amazon's tat bazzar as "cloud revenue"?"
Nope - it doesn't class as PaaS, SaaS, or IaaS.
I care about the variety of services, the (un)proven reliability over a significant period of time, the trustworthiness of the host to not pull service as it fits its business model, the accessibility across multiple zones, buzz/buzz/buzz.
I also don't really think that Google and Microsoft "got" the idea until later and are worried about losing some key customers (well, so is Amazon.) I do give a bunch of credit to the Bezosians for trying to make this a real virtual service.
Maybe what we need now is a CSaaS - a Cloud Service as a Service. Someone brand new (AOL, HP, DEC) supplying a virtual entry into a cloudy puffery of other vapors - all guaranteed to have epsilon(9)[tm] reliability since everything is distributed everywhere through their magic routers (we could call them Puff the Magic Dragons.)
http://superuser.com/questions/270350/is-there-a-meaningful-single-unit-measure-of-computing-power
Basically, multiply the number of cores by their efficiency at running instructions, by the number of instances served, by the % of workload served averaged daily.
That will give you an estimate of the raw cpu served by the cloud, regardless of what did it powered.
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