back to article Cloud is a six-horse race, and three of those have been lapped

Analyst firm Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has again found that Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are the most mature clouds, but has omitted more than half of the vendors it covered last year on grounds that customers now demand more than just rented servers and storage. “Customers …

  1. Loud Speaker

    O.R.A.C.L.E.

    So Oracle is offensive? who knew?

    1. AndrueC Silver badge
      Thumb Up

      Re: O.R.A.C.L.E.

      Opinions

      Research

      Advice

      Computer

      Linked

      Experts

      Actually quite a good novel by Kevin O'Donnell Jnr.

      1. TVU

        Re: O.R.A.C.L.E.

        ...and there was me thinking that O.R.A.C.L.E. stood for One Rich Abhorrent Controversial Litigious Enterprise.

    2. TheVogon

      Re: O.R.A.C.L.E.

      "The analyst firm says AWS is the most mature cloud and has come to be seen as a safe choice, but cautions:"

      But AWS is one of the worst for lock-in. With Azure you can always bring it back on premises.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: O.R.A.C.L.E. - lock-in

        For cloud vendor lock-in, it's possible to have a near identical setup between cloud and on-prem.

        Unless you want to use the features that are available to simplify administration of the environment and free up your time before the tasks on the back log...

        The reality is that most of the cloud issues presented including lock-in are a shade of grey rather than black or white. If there's a genuine business benefit from using cloud (and the benefits vary significantly by application and business...) or is the self-imposed on-prem lock-in actually holding your business back?

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: O.R.A.C.L.E.

        "But AWS is one of the worst for lock-in. With Azure you can always bring it back on premises."

        That's still lock-in though.

      3. nooooonocloud

        Re: O.R.A.C.L.E.

        Vendor lock in FFS- there has ALWAYS been Vendor lock in...You are locked into Microsoft yes?

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

      4. inquisitive2014

        Re: O.R.A.C.L.E.

        The Vogon,

        Be careful. Due to the nature of cloud there are a lot of things that you can't do in the cloud that are impractical/impossible to do on-prem. This means that it is not always possible to bring it back in-house. For example, Microsoft Azure Partner training cautions there are significant differences between Azure SQL and SQL on premise. This is a reflection of the enhanced functionality of the Azure version rather than an indictment of the on-prem version.

        IMHO in 2018 there are significant challenges with migrating to the cloud and challenges with migrating between clouds. Migrations are being successfully delivered every day but anyone who tries to tell you the process is trivial or straightforward is being disingenous.

    3. TheVogon

      Re: O.R.A.C.L.E.

      "Google’s positioned itself as the most cost-effective cloud, but “its deepest negotiated discounts are usually limited to a single-year contract.”"

      So a race to the bottom. From the many calls and attempts to add me on Linked in from their increasingly desperate sales staff, I keep imagining a deserted datacentre with rolling tumbleweeds...

    4. TVU

      Re: O.R.A.C.L.E.

      "So Oracle is offensive? who knew?"

      Given Oracle's hostility to all things open source and the way that litigation is the option of first resort, I think it's safe to say that Oracle is deeply offensive.

  2. Bob Ajob

    Thanks

    Thanks for sharing the link to the non paywalled MS funded document. Having worked with both top (AWS) and bottom (IBM) of these providers, I can safely say that there are some useful warnings in there worth reading. The most insightful may be the statement at the end regarding the lock-in that isn't meant to be associated with cloud services.

    1. JassMan

      Re: Thanks

      Even bigger thanks for the graphic. It is so long since I have seen one of these (since the death of daisy wheel and golf-ball printers) that the artistry involved almost brought a tear to my eye.

      Mind you I don't mind the death of those printers since I am sure they played a large part in my need for hearing aids in both ears.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gartners Magic Square....

    ...it's magic because only the gullible (read senior management) believe it's real.

    1. Korev Silver badge

      Re: Gartners Magic Square....

      This one's unusual as it seems quite sensible - possibly because the conclusion is obvious to anyone.

      1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

        Re: Gartners Magic Square....

        AND, you could just replace 'cloud' with 'data slurpers' and the results would be the same or if not a whole load worse for Google.

        Avoid at all Costs people.

    2. Adam 52 Silver badge

      Re: Gartners Magic Square....

      Was there anything in particular that you think they've got wrong here?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Gartners Magic Square....

        Not in this case, but when you have a field a 5 year old could guess, it's not hard....but they have a track record on shit predictions.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gartner: Always insightful and accurate

    Like this one back in the day:

    https://www.computerworld.com/article/2476489/windows-phone-os/gartner-says-windows-phone-to-hit-10--market-share-in-2018--in-what-universe-is-tha.html

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: Gartner: Always insightful and accurate

      Hey, they were only off by a couple of orders of magnitude.

      I note that in 2014, IDC was predicting close to 7% 2018 market share for WinPho, so being hilariously wrong about that particular prediction seems to have been something of a fad.

  5. thondwe

    Gartner - pay us lots of money to back up your position with some patently obvious observations

    1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

      Yeah, like saying that Azure is a fine choice - especially if you are already committed to Microsoft.

      The words no, shit and Sherlock come to mind.

    2. BobDowling

      When my outfit started getting Gartner reports I asked where the "declaration of interest" was: where in the report did they declare which of the reviewed companies had a relationship with Gartner? There was always an embarrassed hush at that point, and a careful analysis of the tops of shoes.

  6. Sil

    IaaS is fine but a study of PaaS would be even more interesting, and probably very hard to write.

  7. IGnatius T Foobar ✅

    Gartner

    Take this all with a grain of salt, of course. Gartner leans strongly towards "current trends will continue" so that the people who buy these reports can justify their decision making process and point to the Gartner report instead of taking the fall themselves if something goes wrong. They pay a lot of money to be able to do this.

    1. J. Cook Silver badge
      FAIL

      Re: Gartner

      ... unless it's about Anti-virus: I'm pretty sure Symantec is paying gartner a trailer of money every month to ensure that it's still classed as a 'leader' in the field.

      and regarding manglement? I had a manager that was gartner this, gartner that, and was patently choosing crap 'solutions' every other week, because he had the attention span of a sugared up two year old. (and that's insulting sugared up two year olds the world over...)

      Yeah, paying too much money for recommendations that a fifth grader could do better on. (In fact, I'll listen to a five year old better- that is #12 on the Evil Overlord list, you know.)

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oracle's path

    I have it on some strong authority that Oracle's cloud offerings are based on software that is substantially lacking in tests, with no plans to correct. Caveat emptor.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oracle - Looks like Cloud, smells like restricted Colo

    Oracle Cloud is horrible. It's like Cloud, but with a bunch of restrictions like "Public IP only (for Private Cloud)"; "Static Routing Peers only" and other similarly annoying and legacy ideas. They seem to give out a very arrogant opinion - that their offering is correct and all else are wrong - on most things, when they seem to be in the minority/niche way of doing things, not the majority/common.

    A bit like having Kool Aid rammed down your throat by a zealot, when you wanted Lemonade instead.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    That chart just shows...

    ...who’s paying Gartner the most.

    Nothing else. Why give this organisation of parasites any more publicity?

  11. Roj Blake Silver badge

    What This Story Really Means...

    ...is that only six cloud companies were willing to pony up the money Gartner was asking for.

  12. EnviableOne

    So In summary

    AWS is in the lead

    Azure is catching up

    Google is trying, but needs to put more money in to catch up

    Alibaba is to china focused, but if you get all the features is ok

    Oracle is paying cursory attention to the market, cos someone said they need a cloud

    and IBM is trying and failing with its usual competence

    Are these things we need to pay Gartner for?

  13. Big Johnson

    IBM

    Glue factory....

    Ever try to actually buy something from their digital site? Just a shlt show!!

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