AWS, Google, and Microsoft cement their cloud dominance

From InfoWorld: Not surprising, Amazon Web Services dominated another quarter -- and all of 2016. However, the cloud giant finally has real competition.

On the Microsoft earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella expressed the understatement of the century, acknowledging that AWS "is going to be a credible competitor." AWS is much more than that: It's redefining enterprise IT forever, with everyone else having to sprint to catch up to its torrid pace of innovation and price cuts. Interestingly, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud appear to be doing exactly that.

Sure, in 2016 AWS profits ($3.1 billion) exceeded the highest revenue estimates of its next closest rival, Microsoft Azure, which Bernstein analyst Mark Moerdler rounds out at $3 billion and others peg closer to $1.6 billion. Alphabet, meanwhile, declares that its Google Cloud Platform is on "a terrific upswing," but all signs point to annual revenue well below that of Azure.

Even so, among these two runners-up, we're talking about billions not millions, even as other would-be contenders crater. The market is consolidating around the big three cloud vendors, and it may be too late to add a fourth.

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