Gartner assesses the eight top cloud platform service providers—accounting for 97 percent of the global cloud services market—which includes AWS, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Alibaba, IBM, Huawei and Tencent.

The top eight cloud platform service providers own 97 percent share of the global market, with AI and generative AI technologies becoming key to winning customers.

These eight leading cloud companies are Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Alibaba, IBM, Huawei and Tencent, according to Gartner’s new Magic Quadrant for Strategic Cloud Platform Services. The market has been consolidating over the past several years, which is why these eight providers in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant control 97 percent of the global cloud infrastructure and platform services industry.

[Related: Cloud Market Share For $84B Q3 2024: AWS, Microsoft, Google Cloud Lead]

GenAI ‘Reshaping’ Customers’ Cloud Choice

The IT market research firm’s new Magic Quadrant reviews these top cloud companies based on various factors, including the ability to execute in the market and their innovation vision.

“Generative AI and digital sovereignty are among many new factors that are reshaping how enterprises select public cloud providers,” said Gartner in its new report.

Mandatory vendor features from the market include software-defined computing storage and networking with access to web services APIs; a managed database PaaS offering; a global presence; elastic provisioning and resizing of compute, network, storage and platform services as well as capacity sold on a metered-usage basis, to name a few of Gartner’s requirements. The cloud platform services market is based on delivery of public cloud Infrastructure as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform as-a-Service (PaaS) services for supporting mission-critical and large-scale production workloads—whether enterprise or cloud-native.

“Today, these hyperscalers are expanding beyond standard IaaS and PaaS services to offer complete solutions in strategic new areas such as AI and ML, digital sovereignty and industry clouds,” Gartner said.

Here is how Gartner reviewed AWS, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Alibaba, IBM, Huawei and Tencent in terms of execution and vision, as well as each vendor’s strengths and weaknesses. Note that Gartner doesn’t explicitly rank the companies, but CRN has extrapolated the positioning of the firms in each quadrant for each criterion.

Leader: Amazon Web Services

Execution Rank: No. 1

Vision Rank: No. 3

AWS won the gold medal for execution on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Strategic Cloud Platform Services, while ranking third for vision.

The Seattle-based cloud market leader offers a range of cloud infrastructure and platform services, catering to a complete array of IT requirements with a focus on enterprise customers. Key customer digital transformation programs include AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) and the AWS Enterprise Transformation Program. AWS’ strategy is to continue enhancing its IaaS and PaaS services and partner ecosystem, while promoting its Amazon Bedrock platform for GenAI application development.

Weakness: AWS’ own Titan AI foundation models are not currently competitive with leading alternatives on standard benchmarks and have achieved only limited market traction.

Strength: AWS offers significantly more software development kits than its competitors, covering most modern and legacy programming languages.

Leader: Google (Google Cloud Platform)

Execution Rank: No. 2

Vision Rank: No. 2

Google, led by its cloud business Google Cloud, won the silver medal for both execution and vision on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

The Google Cloud Platform appeals to enterprises with a goal of transforming their IT to a fully cloud-native approach, with an emphasis on AI-enabled services. GCP has core strengths in container-based architecture, advanced data center design and industry-leading GenAI models. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s ability to address enterprise needs has steadily improved, including more robust enterprise account management, a larger partner network and more integrated support for VMware and Oracle workloads.

Weakness: Enterprises tell Gartner that despite improved support for legacy workloads, Google does not fully cater to their needs. GCP often releases new features in preview without a published schedule for general availability and does not clearly specify which new services or compute instance types are available in which regions.

Strength: Google’s Vertex AI platform offers unified AI/ML development, agent-building tools, a full range of industry-leading models, and built-in code generation using its own Gemini models.

Leader: Microsoft (Azure)

Execution Rank: No. 3

Vision Rank: No. 1

Microsoft won the gold medal for vision on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant, while ranking third for execution.

Microsoft Azure maintains a comprehensive array of IaaS and PaaS services that meet all enterprise IT use cases. Azure provides hybrid cloud capabilities that allow enterprises to integrate their on-premises, Windows-based environments with the cloud. In addition, the Redmond, Wash.-based company’s vast network of partners worldwide make Azure a popular choice for many customers in regional markets.

Weakness: Gartner users rate Microsoft Azure below its closest competitors on service, support and their overall deployment and integration experience. Microsoft also lags others when it comes to ensuring the technical quality of its Azure Cloud Solution Provider partner network.

Strength: Microsoft’s alliance with GenAI model provider startup OpenAI has positioned Azure as a leading enterprise GenAI platform.

Leader: Oracle

Execution Rank: No. 4

Vision Rank: No. 4

Oracle ranks fourth for both execution and vision on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) offers a range of bare-metal, IaaS and PaaS services based on x86 and ARM chipsets, and Nvidia infrastructure for AI/ML. OCI differentiates through its distributed and sovereign cloud options, low prices for on-demand compute instances and strong data integration tools. The Austin, Texas-based company has also partnered with key players for joint solutions including the Oracle Cloud VMware Solution and Nvidia DGX Cloud on OCI.

Weakness: Oracle does not offer any industry-leading GenAI models of its own. Its AI developer tools are less full-featured than those of other leading providers, and its full set of AI services is not yet available in many OCI regions.

Strength: OCI’s approach to distributed and locally operated cloud infrastructure positions it as a leader in sovereign cloud solutions.

Challenger: Alibaba Cloud

Execution Rank: No. 5

Vision Rank: No. 5

Alibaba Cloud ranks No. 5 for both vision and execution on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

Alibaba offers a more comprehensive range of services compared with its Chinese competitors and is well-positioned to assist Chinese enterprises in expanding globally. Over the past year, Alibaba Cloud has redefined its core strategy and implemented price reductions to stimulate growth. The company is making a substantial investment in AI, although these services are currently deployed primarily in China.

Weakness: Alibaba Cloud availability of international sales, support and partner resources is limited outside China. Due to trade tensions impacting China’s access to hardware, Alibaba Cloud’s global infrastructure for AI and machine learning has not kept up with Western cloud competitors.

Strength: Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen ‘Qwen’ family of large language GenAI models has been deployed by over 90,000 enterprise users since launching in June 2023. Alibaba has chosen to open source its Qwen models, which are downloadable from Western portals such as Hugging Face.

Niche Player: IBM

Execution Rank: No. 6

Vision Rank: No. 7

IBM ranks No. 6 for execution and No. 7 for vision on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

IBM Cloud is focused on IaaS, container services and data-related offerings. The Armonk, N.Y.-based company provides flexible hybrid and multi-cloud options thanks to the capabilities of Red Hat OpenShift. IBM differentiates by offering the option of complete solution outcomes through a service engagement with IBM Consulting, IBM Expert Labs or a local partner.

Weakness: IBM does not currently offer its own multimodal foundation models to compete directly with other industry leaders. IBM’s AI services lag in the areas of image and video generation, and its code assistants focus mostly on COBOL to Java conversion.

Strength: IBM is the sole cloud provider that supports the provisioning of IBM AIX, IBM i and Linux on hosted, and IBM Power server-based virtual instances.

Niche Player: Huawei Cloud

Execution Rank: No. 7

Vision Rank: No. 6

Huawei Cloud ranks No. 6 for vision and No. 7 for execution on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

Huawei Cloud is particularly focused on increasing the deployment of its next-generation QingTian architecture, first-party AI infrastructure based on its own Ascend chipsets and its Pangu family of GenAI models. The Chinese tech giant plays a big role in China’s expansive “One Belt One Road” initiative that directs data center infrastructure investments toward Africa, the Middle East, Oceania and Latin America.

Weakness: Relations between China and the West are strained, which has created high barriers to trust for Huawei in some nations. While other China providers also incur political scrutiny, only Huawei faces direct bans or restrictions on the use of its hardware in some markets.

Strength: Parent company Huawei is a telecommunications equipment leader in many emerging markets. Existing Huawei customers can modernize their IT infrastructure by adopting Huawei private and public cloud services, integrated over Huawei networks.

Niche Player: Tencent Cloud

Execution Rank: No. 8

Vision Rank: No. 8

Tencent Cloud ranks last place for both execution and vision on Gartner’s Magic Quadrant.

Tencent Cloud has a portfolio of public cloud services available internationally, with an emphasis on container-based PaaS services. The Chinese company sets itself apart by prioritizing cloud-native services that not only support its commercial cloud business but also cater to other business groups within parent company Tencent Holdings.

Weakness: Tencent Cloud is not well-known globally in online IT developer or engineering communities and lacks a local support presence in many international regions. Also, the range and size of Tencent implementation partners outside China is very limited.

Strength: Through its historical support for some of the largest gaming and social media applications in the world, Tencent Cloud’s platform services are optimized for highly scalable distributed applications, including its Cloud Media Services and Super Application Solutions.