IDG Contributor Network: Cloud war collateral: What the rise of AWS, Azure has meant for data centers

When Henry Ford introduced the Model T in the fall of 1908, he likely didn’t comprehend the full scope of events he would set in motion. Come 1914, and Ford’s production line had reduced assembly times from 12 hours to less than two and a half hours, slashed the going price of an automobile, and redefined the working wage of factory employees, ultimately putting more than 15 million Model T’s on the road and igniting the entire automotive industry in the years to come.

Competition often leads to innovation and progress for other industry players. One modern equivalent of this can be seen in the rise of public and private cloud providers like Amazon and Microsoft.  AWS’ sales numbers recently topped $12 billion, up nearly 55 percent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to push ahead and is projected to reach $20 billion in annual cloud revenue by June 2018. As these powerhouses and others like Oracle and Google continue to see widespread adoption across industries, other players have stepped in to consume their piece of the $204 billion-dollar cloud infrastructure pie, leading to an ecosystem of cloud and data center partners that continue to push the technology envelope to expand capabilities of these offerings. 

To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here