This document provides a summary of an industry influencer report analyzing conversations about Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in the cloud computing community from March to September 2009. 1) Amazon had the largest share of voice in conversations, mentioned more than Microsoft and Google. However, its share of conversations decreased over time. 2) Amazon was discussed more than Microsoft by influential bloggers, middle bloggers, and long tail bloggers. 3) Both Amazon and Microsoft owned a sizable share of conversations about security, with Amazon mentioned more after announcing its Virtual Private Cloud offering. 4) The report identifies the most influential bloggers in the cloud computing community and maps their connections.

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Industry Influencer
Report for
Prepared by eCairn
Oct 3rd 2009
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents.....................................................................................................................2
Background..............................................................................................................................3
Scope.......................................................................................................................................3
1 - Share of Voice....................................................................................................................4
Number of Mentions.........................................................................................................4
Amazon Best Daily Buzz....................................................................................................5
Microsoft Best Daily Buzz..................................................................................................5
Google Best Daily Buzz.....................................................................................................5
2- Share of Mind......................................................................................................................6
People mentioning Amazon the most................................................................................6
Influence of the Amazon blog...........................................................................................7
3 – Ownership of the Security Topic..........................................................................................8
4 – Community Map & Influencers Identification......................................................................11
Influencers......................................................................................................................11
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Background
Smart marketers understand the critical role influencers have in their industry.
They are highly networked within their community, including between each others.
These are the people listened to by prospective customers because they're respected, trusted
and usually pretty independent.
They influence a brand image and the best leads come from those movers and shakers in a
particular marketplace.
Understanding who they are, how they relate to your brand and working to establish a
relationship with any of them is a critical task.
eCairn's Industry Influencer report provides a wealth of data and insights coming from those
influencers regarding your brand's, such as:
• Share of Voice
• Share of Mind
• Positioning on key industry topics
Scope
The target for this analysis is the attention experienced by the Amazon brand in the cloud
computing community during the period of March 2009 to September 2009. It offers a
comparison with the Microsoft brand in general and more particularly, on the topic of security.
The cloud computing community referred to in this document is a collection of 550 expert
bloggers who are ongoing conversations on cloud computing.
Twitter, Youtube and Forums were not used in this study.
550 This represents 32k relevant conversations over 6 Months
NO
NO
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1 - Share of Voice
Share of voice is defined by the number of mentions of the Amazon brand in conversations
taking place in the Cloud Computing community .
Number of Mentions
The following graphs illustrate the volume of conversations with mentions of the “Amazon”,
Microsoft and Google brands. Graph1 shows the 'conversation share' for those 3 brands and
graph2 shows it's trend over time.
Share of Voice Share of Voice
160
1102 140
120
100
80
2510 60
40
950 20
0
Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Amazon Google Microsoft Amazon Google Microsoft
Graph1 Graph2
Amazon share of voice is important and above Microsoft (2510 versus 1102 mentions *) and
Google (950).
This represents 3% of the overall discussions in September 09 but was 10% back in April 09.
(*)Amazon’s and Microsoft’s own blogs are not accounted in the study
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Amazon Best Daily Buzz
• May 21st: Launch of the Import/Export feature:
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/05/send-us-that-data.html
• Aug 25th: Announcement of Amazon Virtual Private Cloud:
http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2009/08/introducing-amazon-virtual-private-cloud-
vpc.html
• July 12th-19th – Microsoft Azure pricing announced generating comparisons with
Amazon's pricing. BMC leverages AWS to deploy and manage cloud environment.
Microsoft Best Daily Buzz
• May 17th – May 24th : Ray Ozzie talks about Microsoft and Cloud Computing at the JP
Morgan Global Technology, Media and Telecom conference. Multiple products
announcement and pre-annoucenments.
• July 12th: Microsoft announced pricing for it's Azure cloud computing services :
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsazure/archive/2009/07/14/confirming-commercial-
availability-and-announcing-business-model.aspx
Google Best Daily Buzz
• Google Buzz has been going down from its high of April 2009.
• Sept 20-27: Google announced the release of it's Sites APIs which generated a small
buzz in the community.
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2- Share of Mind
Share of mind is defined by the percentage of people that have talked about Amazon vs
Microsoft in the last 6 Months
Share of Mind
350
300 286
# of influencers
250
200
161
150
100
50
50 32
16 12
0
Influencers (17 total) Magic Middle (55 total) Long tail (474 total)
Amazon Microsoft
Amazon is more discussed than Microsoft accross the Influencers, Magic Middle bloggers and
Long Tail blogs. 95% of the influencers and 90% of the magic middle bloggers have talked
about Amazon in the past 6 months.
People mentioning Amazon the most
The table below shows the bloggers that talk the most about Amazon. Influencers are in dark
blue, Middle Magic in middle blue and Long Tail in light blue.
Influencers
Magic Middle and Long Tail bloggers
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Influence of the Amazon blog
Amazon’s blog isn't networked with other Cloud Computing blogs thus has no influence in the
Cloud Computing community. It is ranked # 433 over 530 blogs.
Microsoft's blog does a little better though stays close to the bottom of the list with a ranking
of #331.
The Amazon blog is active with several posts per week.
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3 – Ownership of the Security Topic
Ownership of a topic (the outcome of positioning) is defined by how many time your brand is
mentioned along with the target topic
Number of Mentions within the Security Topic
Share of Security Share of Security
(# of conversations) 100
347 80
60
40
982
492
20
0
Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep
Other Amazon Microsoft Overall Amazon Microsoft
Both brands own a sizable share of the “Security” topic.
Indeed brands like IBM or HP account for less than 1/3 of the Amazon volume when people are
having conversations on security and cloud computing.
The spike for Amazon at the end of August is a consequence of the introduction of their VPC
(Virtual Private Cloud) offering which is perceived as a response to the security challenge in
cloud computing.
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More specifically, here's a graph showing the key expressions found in conversations about
security+Amazon vs security+Microsoft:
Security: Amazon vs Microsoft Comparison
5
Virtual Private Cloud
4 A blue bar means an expres-
sion w as found along w ith Mi-
3 Cloud Providers crosoft more than Amazon. A
red bar means an expression
2 Public cloud w as found along w ith Amazon
Cloud services more often than w ith Microsoft
1 Web services
Data center
0
Sql data
Sql azure database
-1
Ado.net data services
-2 Data services
Net services
-3
-4
-5 Sql data services
Breakdown of the Security Topic
Below is an 'expression cloud' of the most frequent expressions encountered in “cloud security”
discussions:
• Beside Amazon and Microsoft's product offering no other brand's product makes it to
the top expressions (IBM, HP, SUN microsystem, Rackspace)
• Private/Public cloud fuels many 'cloud security' discussions and Amazon is often
mentioned in those discussions (see graph1).
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Below is a complete list of the top 100 expressions found in conversation on security:
1 to 25 26 to 50 51 to 75 76 to 100
data center saas market group
private cloud systems service level deliver
cloud services technology soa hosting
service providers network vendors cloud offerings
public cloud amazon ec2 benefits of cloud software ag
cloud providers cloud security alliance product dana gardner
computing platform microsoft business model
virtual private cloud virtual private virtual machines company
cloud security users support storage
applications sql azure access amazon web
data operating system enterprise architecture google apps
business model issues enterprise cloud
amazon web services environment virtual public and private
enterprise cost public control
customers provide standards create
business process organizations security and compliance inc has announced
cloud infrastructure information cloud service providers enterprise customers
solutions process architecture enterprise architects
software amazon point google
web services sql data services resources sql azure database
infrastructure cloud storage gardner announced
providers service level agreement governance set
offering private level net services
management server build industry
azure center help cloud platform
Notes:
• To make it readable, we have removed the top & obvious expressions
• Our text mining feature is in beta and the cloud above “favors” long expressions.
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4 – Community Map & Influencers Identification
Influence ranking is defined by cross references between people belonging to
the Cloud Computing community
The cloud computing community consists of 500’s of influencers who blog about cloud
computing related topics.
Influencers
Here are the top influencers in this Community:
Url Title
http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS Software as Services | ZDNet.com
http://smoothspan.wordpress.com SmoothSpan Blog
http://apsblog.burtongroup.com Application Platform Strategies Blog
http://www.biske.com/blog Todd Biske: Outside the Box
http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor James Governor's Monkchips » An industry analyst blog looking
At software ecosystems and convergence
http://www.roughtype.com Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog
http://www.johnmwillis.com john m willis ESM Enterprise System Management Blog
http://blogs.gartner.com/thomas_bittman Thomas Bittman — A member of the Gartner Blog Network
http://www.redmonk.com/cote People Over Process » One foot in the muck, the other in utopia
http://www.highscalability.com High Scalability | Building bigger, faster, more reliable websites.
http://www.elasticvapor.com ElasticVapor :: Life in the Cloud
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Gardner Dana Gardner’s BriefingsDirect | ZDNet.com
http://gevaperry.typepad.com Thinking Out Cloud
http://www.datacenterknowledge.com Data Center Knowledge: Data centers, design, power, cooling
http://www.cloudave.com CloudAve
http://www.allthingsdistributed.com All Things Distributed
http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com Cloud Computing Journal
http://blogs.gartner.com/daryl_plummer Daryl Plummer — A member of the Gartner Blog Network
http://dealarchitect.typepad.com deal architect
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Hinchcliffe Enterprise Web 2.0 | ZDNet.com
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Influencers Map
The map below shows the connections between influencers and magic middle bloggers and
provides two main clusters in Red and Blue
• The Red cluster includes most of the influencers.
• The Blue one does contain several members of the Gartner blog network (analyst).
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The overall map of the community is pretty dense and it shows a fairly tightly networked com-
munity (in red).
Acknowledgements: Data comes from eCairn, Graphs are built with Touchgraph, Tag clouds are built with Wordle.
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