Tech giants compete for cloud computing: competition for developer prices

Beijing Time February 4 News, foreign media published an analysis of the article said, Google, Microsoft and Amazon are currently mobile devices and network services in the field of fierce fighting. But the latest war between them is indeed intangible: power is calculated.

Microsoft and Google are increasingly trying to beat Amazon in lucrative, thousands of rental computing stores and supercomputers. Amazon rules the market through Amazon's cloud computing service (Amazon Web Services, hereinafter referred to as "AWS"). AWS helps companies deal with digital tasks such as broadcasting Netflix movies over the internet and helping insurance consultants Validus analyze traffic accident records.

Today, Amazon is trying to sell AWS to a number of big companies that are fundamental to Microsoft's business. Microsoft and Google are now seeking to acquire innovative companies that have been the best customers for AWS.

Because of this, three companies are constantly digging horns with each other, cutting prices, and subverting long-established strategies, thus controlling the fastest-growing area of technology, the "cloud services".

"The War on technology has expanded to all aspects of the business and Halo service is now the newest battleground," said Bill Coughran, a former senior vice president of Google and Sequoia Capital partner at the venture capital company, Bill Kuglen. Although Amazon has captured the hearts of developers, Google and Microsoft are making progress. ”

Firebase, a software innovation firm based in San Francisco, benefited from the war. When Firebase was founded, Amazon offered its 12,000-dollar AWS service line. Rackspace Hosting, another Amazon competitor, offered a 36,000-dollar free service. Firebase even got a takeover offer from Microsoft and Amazon through the company's Investor Grace Investment (New Enterprise Associates).

James Tamplin, co-founder of Firebase, said his company ultimately chose AWS Services, "mainly because Amazon already has more advanced infrastructure." James Tamplin ”

Firebase is currently paying Amazon a monthly fee, so when a user accesses a Firebase network service, he logs on to the AWS server rather than firebase its own server. Tamplin declined to disclose the company's pay standards to AWS. But McKinsey, the consultancy, calculated last autumn that the average price for companies to buy and maintain a small server was $31.55, while AWS and other cloud services averaged 16.06 dollars. Amazon, Microsoft and Google have not disclosed their cloud product revenues, but market research firm IDC predicts that the "public cloud" service is now one of the fastest-growing areas of the information technology industry, with a market size of 40 billion trillion dollars last year.

Forrester, another market research firm, predicts that Amazon currently controls about 70% per cent of the public cloud leasing computing power and the supercomputer market. The Wall Street Journal predicts that AWS now receives more than $2 billion trillion of revenue from these services each year.

It is not just income that is at stake. Through cloud services, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are also vying for the loyalty of software developers, selling more of their services to businesses over time.

Since Amazon launched its AWS service in 2006, the company has had few challenges in the cloud market, giving Amazon a chance to dominate the emerging market. The rise of AWS has also been assisted by technology innovation companies such as Zynga, which have found it simpler and cheaper to make Amazon manage the software and servers needed for their business.

Since last summer, however, the cloud war has been escalating. Last June, Microsoft overhauled its cloud services "Windows Azure" and added many services like AWS to the service, such as the ability to lease more flexible "virtual computers".

In the same month, Google, which has previously dabbled in the cloud services market, has launched a service called "Google Compute Engine", allowing companies to run their web apps on Google-administered computers.

They soon began a fierce battle over prices. In the week of last autumn, Google announced that it would cut the price of computing storage services by 20%, and the monthly price per gigabyte would be reduced to 9.5 cents. Amazon soon lowered the price of services to the same rate as Google, which led Google to announce another price cut, down to 8.5 cents per GB per month. Microsoft also announced a few days later that the price of Windows Azure services would be reduced to a level comparable to that of two competitors. Amazon has said earlier that it has cut its service prices for AWS 25 times.

As far as Google is concerned, the company's service relies on its own CV. "The infrastructure we serve has supported Google's Google sites, YouTube and other Web services for the past 14 years," Challes Lau Shailesh Rao, Google's head of the cloud platform, said. ”

Amazon, Google and Microsoft have also dug horns with each other, leading to lawsuits. Last October, Amazon sued Daniel Powers, the former top Daniel Bols of Google, because of concerns about the high-level shift to Google's many trade secrets in the cloud computing world. Last December, a federal court in the United States ruled that Bowles could not join the Amazon until this March to prevent him from using Amazon's trade secrets to dig up its current, former or potential customers. Amazon, Google and Bowles have all failed to decide whether to do so.

Amazon is also recruiting more salespeople and selling AWS services through corporate technology "retailers". Amazon announced last November that it has appointed 15 "top" retailers to help companies sell AWS services to companies. "Amazon recognizes that the company must cater to the needs of corporate users," said Nader Muchandani Mulchandani, chief executive of Scalextreme, which helps companies manage and use AWS services. ”

At the same time, Microsoft is also speeding up the wooing of technology start-ups, often the "best customers" of AWS. Satya Nadella, President of Microsoft's Windows Azure Business, Satia Nadra to the Silicon Valley on a regular basis, asking how to improve the business, adapt it better to technology companies, and ask large companies what they need.

Microsoft officials and some corporate technology buyers say Amazon is currently underestimating the difficulty of selling technology services to big companies. "Amazon's battle in the corporate sector is not ready," said Bill Hilf, general manager of Microsoft's Windows Azure Business Management Bill SCHILF. ”

Adam Selipsky, vice president of Adam Selipski, said Amazon would not discuss the market's competitive situation. He added that "traditional technology companies" are inconsistent in their business and are not suitable to provide customers with a loyal advice on cloud service issues.

(Responsible editor: The good of the Legacy)