Microsoft Azure and the Competitive Public Cloud Industry: What You Need to Know

RICHARD
HARBRIDGE
My twitter handle is @RHarbridge, blog is http://RHarbridge.com, and I work at
SPEAKER | AUTHOR | SUPER FRIENDLY

This is one of the biggest decisions for enterprise organizations today.
THE CHOICE YOU MAKE IS
REALLY REALLY IMPORTANT…

WHAT WE WILL TALK ABOUT TODAY…
1.What Is The Cloud Industry?
2.Key Considerations
3.Competitive Industry Analysis
4.Key Cloud Capabilities Comparison
5.Competitive Assessments & Summaries

IaaS & PaaS will be our primary focus today. SaaS is important but too complex.
PUBLIC CLOUD…

These vendors proved that Software as a Service (SaaS) works for enterprise orgs.
SALESFORCE,
WORKDAY &
MANY OTHERS
PROVE SAAS
BACK IN 2004
AND 2005…

Introducing public cloud platform (IaaS) to enterprise organizations.
AMAZON
LAUNCHED
AMAZON WEB
SERVICES IN
2006…

At the time Microsoft was focused on PaaS.
AZURE
LAUNCHED IN
JANUARY 2010…

Microsoft is doing more than just catching up to Amazon in the marketplace.
AND YET, HERE
WE ARE TALKING
ABOUT IT…

Large Scale Players (League Of Their Own)
Who are the vendors (and who matters)?
VENDOR &
TECHNOLOGY
ANALYSIS…
Notable Cloud Players
Transitioning Players
And many more…

DRIVERS FOR
CLOUD…
40%-60%
“Cooling costs will make up as much as 40% to 60% of a data center's electricity costs.”
(Hype Cycle for Data Center Power and Cooling Technologies, 2014 - Gartner)
75% or
More
“Orgs cited ‘better in
the cloud’ spam
management, security
reporting, less
disruptions, more up to
date antivirus,
compliance, recovery,
and efficiency keeping
up to date.”
300+ People
“Over 300 people focused on data privacy, including: Software
Engineers, Scientists, IT Pros, Marketing and Lawyers.” - Microsoft
There should be little debate that the public cloud is the eventual future for
almost every organization in the world.

Without the considerable investments and scale required – vendors will lose
to the emerging price war as costs continue to decrease.
WHY HYPER-SCALE
MATTERS…
2000+ People
“Microsoft has over 2000 people in cloud
infrastructure engineering and operations with
30,000+ software engineers involved in cloud-
based activities.“
19 Billion
“Microsoft has invested over 19 billion
dollars in global datacenter infrastructure.”
30 Regions
“That’s more than AWS and Google
COMBINED.”
600K Servers
“We have over 600,000 servers in one
of our Azure regions alone.”
1.4 Million
“1.4 Million miles of fiber in the DCs,
enough fiber to wrap around the
globe 56 times.”

Traditional vendors have a harder time than those that started in the cloud.
SERVICE MODEL
CHANGES…
B4B Technology Reinventing Supplier Relationships

Long term everything goes PaaS, but the timeline is further out than some wish.
IAAS IS USED FAR
MORE THAN PAAS
(TODAY)…

42Amazon between 2008 and April 2014 as
an example lowered it’s prices 42 times.
Microsoft Partners
Microsoft partners have a strong loyalty to Azure and often
provide their own pricing or base it on discount arrangements
based on pre-purchasing more Azure commitments.
Customers similarly often can buy it on their EA for different
discount rates while the scenario may be more optimal with
how Azure prices versus Amazon (see example of SQL Azure).
Between the complexity and differences in pricing calculators, enterprise
discounts and the constant price cutting it is very challenging to compare pricing.
DIFFICULT TO
COMPARE ON COST
EFFECTIVELY…

Let’s take a look at how IaaS has evolved according to Gartner over the years…
IAAS
INDUSTRY
FROM 2012
TO 2015…

These are all mainly
companies that
provide hosting.
At this point
both Microsoft
and Google
don’t offer IaaS.
AWS is classified as
the undisputed IaaS
leader.
Let’s take a look at how IaaS has evolved according to Gartner over the years…
IAAS INDUSTRY
IN OCT 2012…

Microsoft began
offering IaaS two
months earlier
AWS is
further out in
front
Google still
doesn’t offer
IaaS.
Note that Rackspace
and HP are both visibly
supporting OpenStack
IBM shows up in
the IaaS space, but
is struggling.
In 2013 Microsoft had been in the IaaS space for only 2 months. Not bad.
IAAS INDUSTRY
IN AUG 2013…
NEW!

Keep in mind that Microsoft had been in IaaS for just a little less than a year.
Microsoft makes
huge strides. <1yr
IBM is relevant
again now that it
bought SoftLayer.
Google has entered
the market and starts
strong like MSFT.
AWS leads by
even more.
IAAS INDUSTRY
IN MAY 2014…
NEW!

Amazon, MSFT, Google, & VMware all moved up/right. IBM dropped. HP gone.
Microsoft is
almost matching
in completeness
of vision.
IBM/SoftLayer
still struggling.
Google is
climbing into the
leader quadrant.
Not as fast as
Microsoft, but
could be a big
leader in IaaS…
AWS continues to
push the boundary
of the MQ.
IAAS INDUSTRY
IN MAY 2015…
NEW!
VMware enters the
market starting a little
weaker than Google or
Microsoft did.

If IaaS is virtualized instances in the cloud… how does this space look?
VIRTUALIZATION
INDUSTRY FROM
2014 TO 2015…

But note that
they aren’t alone.
VMware has the
lead when it
comes to this
space.
This is more important than it might seem. Cloud lock in, hybrid and more…
VIRTUALIZATION
INDUSTRY IN JULY
2014…

A little bit
forward for MSFT.
A little bit back
for them…
This is more important than it might seem. Cloud lock in, hybrid and more…
VIRTUALIZATION
INDUSTRY IN JULY
2015…

Cloud storage and data services power many things like IaaS and PaaS.
They are also important on their own.
CLOUD STORAGE
INDUSTRY FROM
2014 TO 2015…

But so is MSFT
Google is a ways
behind in 2014
AWS is in
the Leaders
Quadrant
The traditional
enterprise
vendors
Cloud storage is an important market and compliments IaaS and PaaS…
CLOUD STORAGE
INDUSTRY IN JULY
2014…

It’s those same three companies competing again! AWS, Microsoft and Google!
CLOUD STORAGE
INDUSTRY IN JUNE
2015…
Microsoft becomes a
little more visionary.
AWS is in
the Leaders
Quadrant
Google is
catching up!
IBM rises,
Rackspace and
AT&T fall.

If IaaS is virtualized instances in the cloud… how does this space look?
PAAS
INDUSTRY FROM
2014 TO 2015…

Note that Amazon doesn’t show up here. Salesforce and Google (again).
PAAS INDUSTRY IN
JANUARY 2014…
Google released their
version of PaaS before
Microsoft released
Azure PaaS.
Hey Microsoft is in
that leaders
quadrant again…
They started with
PaaS…
Look at this…
IBM is a player
in this space
(Bluemix)…

One question that is important here is whether scale leads to notable
price advantage.
PAAS INDUSTRY
IN MARCH 2015…
Still classified as a
challenger.
Things are
going better
than in the
IaaS space.
Microsoft improves
on ability to
execute.

What about the broader picture?
IAAS, VIRTUALIZATION,
CLOUD STORAGE & PAAS
INDUSTRY

Microsoft
Microsoft is the only one leading across all 3 key Cloud MQ’s (plus Virtualization).
Amazon leads 2, Google is working to also lead across all 3.
BUT WAIT
THERE’S MORE…

What about the broader data picture?
DATABASE, BUSINESS
INTELLIGENCE, &
DATAWAREHOUSE
INDUSTRY

MSFT is unquestioningly the leader in both vision and execution.
Great start for Amazon.
OPERATIONAL DB
INDUSTRY
OCTOBER 2015…
Surpassed Oracle
this last cycle. A
strong leader for
many years now.
Been
trending
downward
each year.
Brand new this year…

Making progress, but
still not a leader.
MSFT is maintaining leadership while other vendors shift quite a bit here.
Amazon lost vision but rose in execution last year… now improved vision.
DATA WAREHOUSE &
DATA MANAGEMENT
FEBRUARY 2016… Maintaining
Leadership.
Been
trending
downward
each year.

Microsoft
What about Data? PaaS, IoT, and sooo much more run on Data Warehouses, BI,
and DBs…
BUT WAIT
THERE’S MORE…

All compete on price and features. Scale efficiencies dictate advantage.
Note the marketplace focus for both AWS & Azure. Azure 3435 vs AWS 2372…
CAPABILITIES COMPARISON:
IAAS…
Elastic
Compute
Cloud (EC2)
Virtual
Machines
Compute
Compute
Engine

The pricing is DIFFERENT. This is the big thing to consider here. Also note that
MSFT has a premium option.
DIRECT CONNECTIVITY…
AWS Direct
Connect
ExpressRoute
Direct
Peering
ExpressRoute Premium, which enables a single
connection to fan out across Microsoft’s private
network into many regions rather than having to have
point-to-point connections into each region being used.
Amazon uses VLAN (layer 2), MSFT uses BGP (layer 3) as does Google.

For distributed cloud environments. Signals and alerts based on context-correlated
threat intelligence derived from vast global intelligence assets and expertise.
SECURITY OFFERINGS…
Amazon
Inspector
Security Center
?

What about the PaaS offerings from competing vendors in this space?
Azure Functions (Preview)… Amazon Lambda (2014)… Google Cloud Functions (Alpha)…
Xamarin Test Cloud… Amazon Device Farm… Moving faster than any other space.
PAAS…
Elastic
Beanstalk
Cloud
Services
App
Engine
Force.com
App Logic

Blob Storage
Storage wars tend to be focused on price. Hybrid has an impact here as does
partner communities.
CLOUD STORAGE…
Simple
Storage
Service (S3)
Object
Storage
Cloud
Storage

MSFT offers SQL IaaS instances and SQL Azure DB which is a PaaS service.
Since SQL is such a significant portion of MSFTs business (and they are the largest
database provider in enterprises) does this give them an advantage?
CLOUD RELATIONAL STORES
(RDBMS)…
Relational
Database
Service (RDS)
Azure SQL
Database
Database
Cloud
SQL

SQL Data Warehouse AWS Redshift
Pricing
Independently adjust
compute & storage.
Fixed compute/
storage ratio.
Elasticity
Grow/Shrink in
seconds.
Hour to days to resize.
Pause/Resume Yes. No.
Hybrid Yes. No.
Compatibility True SQL support
No support for
indexes, SQL UDFs,
Stored Procedures,
Constraints…
SQL Data Warehouse vs Amazon Redshift (Quick Points)
WHICH DATA WAREHOUSE?
AWS Redshift
SQL Data
Warehouse

In-memory Hekaton, SQL-like queries, and more differentiate DocDB – closer
to Googles Cloud Datastore vs DynamoDB which is more like a ‘key-value store’
CLOUD NON RELATIONAL
STORES (NOSQL)…
DynamoDB
Cloud
Datastore
Force.com
Database
DocumentDB,
Azure Tables

Microsoft and Salesforce both have identity platform offerings. Similar in approach.
Microsoft is investing more on the security side with recent notable acquisitions and
is still the leading identity provider (by far) for enterprises with AD on-premises today…
IDENTITY…
Google has Identity
Tools for Dev (but
not a current
platform player).
Microsoft has more
than 5 million
organizations using
Azure AD today.

MACHINE LEARNING…
Azure Machine Learning, Amazon Machine Learning and Googles Prediction API are all notable
machine learning offerings. Amazon focuses on (narrow) supervised machine learning
scenarios, MSFT on drag and drop data pipelines (broader) applied machine learning…

IOT…
MSFT has IoT suite approach to pricing. MSFT is making way more active on standards (device discovery
& heterogeneous devices talking together). MSFT has more mature stream analytics platform,
ML marketplace, data marketplace, Power BI, Azure Data Factory ETL and Azure Data Lake Store…

Differentiators Advantages Disadvantages
• Microsoft emphasizes hybrid
clouds and has a compelling
hybrid story including a
virtualization option that
reduces Cloud Lock in risk.
• Microsoft is offering the most
complete Public Cloud when you
look across SaaS, PaaS, IaaS and
supporting services like Identity.
• Microsoft has the best
integration story with it’s vast
partner network and enterprise
credibility.
• Microsoft has a very large on-
premises install base (Azure Pack).
• Most IT leaders place a high value
on MSFT (safe bet).
• Microsoft owns the only notable
non open source server OS.
• Microsoft has arguably made the
most investments (19 billion+) in
Cloud.
• More compliance certs than any
other cloud.
• Azure Marketplace is a big
opportunity (outpaced Amazon).
• Only global vendor w/ License to
operate in mainland China.
• Microsoft was slow in offering
IaaS, they truly believed PaaS
was the key to the cloud.
• Microsoft has to transition it’s
salesforce, operations and
revenue to the cloud and cloud
services.
So what’s the summary on Microsoft?
MICROSOFT ASSESSMENT…

• Amazon is all about the public
cloud first and foremost. It has
called private cloud “false
cloud”. If your company is of a
similar mindset this can be
advantageous and help drive
change.
• Amazon got it right (in terms of
demand) out of the gate with
IaaS and data/storage services
and is leading the marketplace
still (after several years).
• Amazon started in the cloud and
didn’t have to transition services
and offerings to the Cloud.
• Amazon was the earliest to
market with IaaS and data
storage enabling them to control
more of the market than it’s
competitors.
• Amazon is viewed as the market
leader in the public cloud
(especially in IaaS) today.
• Amazon is struggling with
customer support and customer
relationships.
• Amazon has no significant SaaS
or PaaS offerings and services
that enable it to compete at the
level Google and Microsoft are.
• Amazon’s hybrid story is weaker
than Microsoft’s.
So what’s the summary on Amazon?
AMAZON ASSESSMENT…

• They’ve said that cloud platform
prices should follow Moore’s
Law and have led pricing
reductions.
• They’ve innovated with pricing,
and their automatic discounts
are interesting for many
customers.
• Like Amazon and Microsoft they
have the financial backing and
datacenter presence to get a
scale advantage.
• Like Microsoft they have PaaS
and SaaS offerings across this
space.
• Google has significant leadership
in the mobile market which
could have an impact longer
term.
• Like Microsoft, Google initially
bet that the market wanted PaaS
and was late with IaaS.
• Their IaaS offering is
relatively new.
• Google is still developing
enterprise credibility. In the
startup space it’s a different
story, but in enterprise this can
have an impact.
So what’s the summary on Google?
GOOGLE ASSESSMENT…

• It’s an open source project. • Some firms offer public IaaS
based on OpenStack so it get’s a
lot of press (across these
companies).
• Users love standards, so vendors
claim to follow them, but they
also add proprietary extensions
which results in it often not
being truly standardized.
• Only a few vendors will most
likely dominate OpenStack and
it’s unclear who they’ll be.
• HP’s Helion public cloud
hasn’t gotten much
traction.
• Rackspace has left the pure
IaaS market.
So what’s the summary on OpenStack?
OPENSTACK ASSESSMENT…

• Force.com is typically sold as an
adjunct to Salesforce CRM. Their
identity platform similarly is tied
to CRM (pricing model wise).
• Some apps can be built solely
with point-and-click tools.
Making development more
accessible.
• Developers can also use
Apex, a Salesforce language
for more advanced efforts.
• Customer self-selection: Since
your customer data is in the
Salesforce cloud, why not build
your apps there, too?
• Customer lock in is total with
Force.com. The platform,
language, and tools are all
proprietary.
• Has no IaaS offerings (different
approach). It’s storage also
focuses on the Non Relational
data stores and it’s own services.
So what’s the summary on Salesforce?
SALESFORCE ASSESSMENT…

• IBM bought SoftLayer for $2
billion in mid-2013.
• SoftLayer was a hosting
company as well as a cloud
provider.
• IBM highlights SoftLayer’s
ability to provide both VMs
and physical servers.
• Private cloud positioning and
physical server differentiator.
• A competitor in Cloud Storage,
IaaS, PaaS (not a leader, but still
competing).
• IBM began a number of cloud
initiatives
• While they have made
impact in most cases they
have not got much traction
with customers
• IBM announced a plan to spend
$1.2 billion on cloud.
• But it’s spread across many
datacenters (scale concern)
– 12 new this year.
• Microsoft spends this
to build a single
datacenter.
So what’s the summary on IBM?
IBM ASSESSMENT…

• Significant private cloud
customer base.
• Currently offer vCloud Air
themselves.
• Still has significant portion of
Virtualization marketplace.
• It provides IaaS based on
vSphere in VMware
datacenters.
• Has a decent volume of
specialists and experts in the
marketplace (skill transference).
• Initially encouraged hosters to
offer IaaS with vCloud.
• This saw low uptake and
interest.
• vCloud Air isn’t a complete
public cloud platform.
• It’s mostly VMs
• Customers can also buy
some Google Cloud
Platform services through
vCloud Air, e.g., blobs.
• VMware has no significant
SaaS, PaaS, or storage/data
offerings and services.
So what’s the summary on VMware?
VMWARE ASSESSMENT…

The players that matter (today) were covered. Everyone else is evolving.
RACKSPACE? HP? ASSESSMENT…

They all matter. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses also is important.
However there is one leader in the cloud AND in the enterprise (today): MSFT.
SUMMARY…
+ Enterprise Credibility
++ Industry Leader (IaaS)
+ Industry Leader (Cloud Storage)
+ Relevant In Machine Learning
++ Enterprise Credibility
+ Industry Leader (IaaS)
+ Industry Leader (PaaS)
+ Industry Leader (SaaS)
What else?
+ Industry Leader (Virtualization)
+ Industry Leader (Cloud Identity)
+ Industry Leader (Security Center Offering)
+ Integration Leader
++ IoT Leader
+ Enterprise Credibility
+ Industry Leader (IaaS)
+ Industry Challenger (PaaS)
+ Industry Leader (SaaS)
IBM offers IoT Foundation Services within Bluemix+ IoT Leader

Consumption economics, B4B, Gartner’s reports, and go test each platform.
RECOMMENDED
READING & NEXT
STEPS…
Try it out yourself. Pick a simple
workload, find an experienced partner
(like 2toLead), and implement IaaS, PaaS
or SaaS and see how it can help reduce
costs, improve enterprise agility and
provide significant benefit. 

Thank You!
Organizers, SponsorsandYouformakingthispossible.
100+SharepointPresentationsAt.. Slideshare.Net/RHarbridge
WhenToUseWhatWhitepaper.. WhenToUseWhat.com
AzureCodeSamplesGallery.. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/documentation/samples/
Message Me On LinkedIn or Email Richard@2toLead.com
SPEAKER | AUTHOR | SUPER FRIENDLY
Twitter: @RHarbridge. More to come on our blog at http://2toLead.com.

Microsoft Azure and the Competitive Public Cloud Industry: What You Need to Know

Microsoft Azure and the Competitive Public Cloud Industry: What You Need to Know

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