Amazon, Google, IBM and Microsoft topped a recent "Scorecard" as the leaders for cloud IT infrastructure services.
IHS Markit conducted its first Scorecard for cloud IT infrastructure service providers, which profiled and analyzed the top seven revenue producers for cloud IT infrastructure, and announced the results on Monday. Not surprisingly, Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN), Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) and Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) received the "leader" designation for cloud IT infrastructure services while CenturyLink Inc. (NYSE: CTL), Equinix Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX) and Rackspace were ranked as "established" players.
"Leadership in the cloud IT infrastructure services market requires very strong in-house software development skills, and all the leaders in our Scorecard have a long history of innovation. This is not expected to change moving forward," said Cliff Grossner, senior research director, data center, cloud and SDN, at IHS Markit. "Established players, meanwhile, are able to leverage an existing services client base to which they can offer operational efficiencies. Although they have lower market momentum than the leaders, their significant presence indicates strong adoption of their solutions."
The verticals that were analyzed for the Scorecard included infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), cloud-as-a-service (CaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS). The Scorecard evaluated the leading off-premises cloud IT infrastructure service providers on criteria using data and metrics, including direct feedback from buyers, provider market share, market share momentum, financials, brand recognition, reputation for innovation and other benchmarks.
Providers were classified as leader, established or challenger based on their overall scores.
— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation