Amazon.com Inc. 'Overwhelming Leader' In Cloud Infrastructure

Amazon.com Inc.'s AMZN cloud infrastructure services is doing more than 10 times the capacity volume of 14 other providers covered in an annual survey. http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-2G2O5FC&ct=150519&st=sb Infrastructure, along with software as a service and platform as a service, is generally placed among the three broad categories of cloud computing services. Amazon "is the overwhelming market-share leader," according to the report, published Monday by Gartner Inc. IT. Although Amazon is facing increasing competition from Microsoft Corp. MSFT and Google Inc. GOOGL in the sector, "it retains a multiyear competitive advantage," Gartner said. Number-two ranked Microsoft entered the cloud infrastructure as a service market two years ago with the launch of its Azure Infrastructure Services. Google, in Gartner's number three slot, "is still in the rudimentary stages of learning to engage with enterprise and midmarket customers," according to Gartner. Google now competes on price, but "needs to expand its sales, solutions engineering and support capabilities." At the back of the pack is International Business Machines Corp. IBM. IBM acquired independent the Web hosting service called Softlayer last year, and in January shut down it SmartCloud Enterprise cloud offering, after moving customers to SoftLayer. Hewlett-Packard Co. HPQ "no longer has sufficient market share to qualify for inclusion" in the survey, Gartner said. Rackspace Hosting Inc. RAX, Computer Sciences Corp. CSC and Verizon Communications Inc. VZ are among companies deemed as "niche players" in cloud infrastructure services.