The cloud wars rage on. But things have taken a turn for the interesting lately. Microsoft has emerged as the bona fide challenger, even as Amazon continues to hold onto its impressive lead.
However, while other contenders are struggling to keep up pace, the Seattle based technology giant seems to be having no issues competing pound-for-pound with its Azure platform, which last year witnessed a 76% growth.
And is likely to continue its cloud momentum for the foreseeable future.
For Amazon Web Services, though, a new reality is setting in.
AWS is now forced to embrace the idea that it spent better part of the decade downplaying — that of the hybrid cloud. And in a sign that shows Microsoft was right all along, the cloud leader has now started to embraced this concept.
As noted, many customers are not yet read to go all in on cloud, even as most are ready and raring to embrace a cloud strategy.
They want to move some of their workloads to the cloud, but the fact that their information is so sensitive, they can’t move it all to the cloud. Luckily for them, Microsoft Azure has long embraced a hybrid cloud, even before other companies paid heed to the notion.
But they are now, as is apparent from the recent AWS announcement at its annual cloud conference.
Amazon has partnered with VMware to launch AWS Outposts, which lets users run Amazon cloud services or VMware Cloud in datacenters and at on-premises facilities. Big deal, considering how little AWS has invested in on-premises infrastructure.
Outposts is a clear signal that Amazon now admits that hybrid clouds are here to stay.
IBM also made a big push in this regard by announcing that it would acquire Red Hat. And with Microsoft already prepared, hybrid cloud is all set for significant movement in enterprise.
Hybrid cloud is now a reality.
And new battles will be fought there.
