Amazon is informing customers that it plans to shut down its cloud storage service, Amazon Drive.
Amazon Drive competes in the same space as Dropbox, Box, OneDrive, Google Drive, and others. The company has decided to shut down the service, sending emails to customers to inform them of the change. Per Amazon’s FAQ page, the service will be shuttered at the end of the year.
After December 31, 2023, customers will no longer have access to their files in Amazon Drive.
Between now and the shutdown date, Amazon will take other phase-out steps.
Yes, on October 31, 2022, the Amazon Drive app will be removed from the iOS and Android app stores. On January 31, 2023, Amazon will no longer support uploading files on the Amazon Drive website. You will still be able to view and download your files until December 31, 2023.
The company is doubling down on its Amazon Photos service, with customers photos and videos automatically available saved to that service.
As an Amazon customer, your photos and videos in Amazon Drive have been automatically saved to Amazon Photos. After December 31, 2023 you can continue using Amazon Photos to access your photos and videos.
Microsoft is working to put a dent in Amazon’s dominance in the government agency cloud computing space, organizing its rivals to help.
Amazon’s AWS is the leading cloud provider platform, both in the private sector as well as the public. Microsoft is its largest rival, and the company is working on getting other companies to help lobby against Amazon’s dominance, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
Microsoft has been sharing talking points with cloud providers Google and Oracle, as well as IBM, VMware, Dell, and HP Enterprise. The talking points are aimed at lobbying Washington to require a multi-vendor approach for large cloud contracts. According to WSJ’s sources, Microsoft has not included Amazon in its efforts.
There’s certainly no love lost between Amazon and Microsoft, especially in their battle for the cloud market. Microsoft famously scored the Pentagon’s JEDI contract, worth some $10 billion, only to have Amazon relentlessly challenge the win in court until the Department of Defense was forced to abandon the contract in an effort to move forward with its cloud transition.
Not long after, AWS won a $10 billion contract to provide cloud services to the National Security Agency. Microsoft challenged that contract award but was unsuccessful in overturning the results.
More recently, an AWS exec took Microsoft to task over its cloud licensing terms, accusing the company of not putting customers’ needs first and engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
It appears the rivalry between Microsoft and AWS is picking up steam with no end in sight. If Microsoft is successful in rallying the smaller cloud providers to its cause, it could represent the single biggest threat that AWS has ever faced.
AWS’ SVP of Sales and Marketing is calling out Microsoft for its cloud licensing terms, despite the latter company’s recent changes.
Microsoft was slapped with an EU antitrust complaint, with smaller rivals claiming the company uses its desktop and office suite dominance to unfairly compete in the cloud market. The complaint alleges that it costs more for companies to use a third-party cloud provider, rather than bundling Windows and Office with Microsoft Azure. Microsoft has since vowed to change its licensing terms, but AWS’ Matt Garman says it’s not enough:
Customers and policy makers around the world increasingly see MSFT’s recent licensing rhetoric as a troubling admission of the same anti-competitive tactics that many companies have been raising with them for years, but went unheeded until they were put before the European Commission.
Garman goes to say that Microsoft is not really interested in doing what’s right for its customers and that the company continues to engage in discriminatory practices:
MSFT’s answer is not to do what’s right for customers and fix their policy so all customers can run MSFT’s software on the cloud provider they choose; but rather, under the pretext of supporting European technology needs, MSFT proposes to select cloud providers about whom it is less competitively concerned and allow MSFT software to run only on those providers. This is not fairness in licensing and is not what customers want. We continue to hear from customers around the world that MSFT’s discriminatory licensing practices are costing them millions of dollars and the freedom to work with whom they wish.
While it’s not uncommon for tech companies and executives to take shots at one another, Garman’s words are particularly pointed. It’s no secret that Microsoft Azure is a growing threat to AWS’ position in the market. As a result, it’s hard to tell whether Garman’s statements are borne out of genuine concern for customers or a larger concern over Azure’s growth in the market.
Cloud providers establish data centers in regions to help provide customers faster, more reliable access to their services. Google is now adding a Mexico region, which will be its 35th worldwide.
“The cloud region in Mexico will unlock new possibilities for the use of cloud technologies by public sector organizations in the country. Different public entities would benefit from interoperating in an efficient and secure way, facilitating access to computing power and information technologies. It is important to mention that the computer developments in Mexico are highly specialized so they can become important references for other Spanish-speaking countries,” stated Dr. Juan Carlos Sarmiento Tovilla, Director General of Information Systems at the Federal Court of Administrative Justice.
Google’s move comes roughly a month after CEO Sundar Pichai announced the company’s plans to invest $1.2 billion in Latin America.
Microsoft has largely resolved an outage impacting Microsoft 365, including Microsoft Teams.
The outage began late Wednesday and continued into Thursday morning. The outage impacted several Microsoft 365 services, including Teams, Outlook, Exchange, Word, and other apps.
The company identified the issue as stemming from a broken connection in an internal storage service.
We’ve determined that a recent deployment contained a broken connection to an internal storage service, which has resulted in impact. We’re working to direct traffic to a healthy service to mitigate impact. Additional information can be found in the admin center under TM402718.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 21, 2022
Microsoft says most services have been restored, although there may still be some users experiencing issues.
We believe that the majority of services have recovered. We're continuing to monitor the issue to ensure there is no residual impact. More details can be found under TM402718, MO402741, or at https://t.co/AEUj8uj65N.
— Microsoft 365 Status (@MSFT365Status) July 21, 2022
Microsoft and Oracle are partnering to integrate their cloud platforms, providing customers with a powerful multicloud option.
Oracle and Microsoft have announced Oracle Database Service for Microsoft Azure, a way for Azure customers to easily access Oracle Database services in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). The new service builds on a partnership dating back to 2019.
“Microsoft and Oracle have a long history of working together to support the needs of our joint customers, and this partnership is an example of how we offer customer choice and flexibility as they digitally transform with cloud technology. Oracle’s decision to select Microsoft as its preferred partner deepens the relationship between our two companies and provides customers with the assurance of working with two industry leaders,” said Corey Sanders, corporate vice president, Microsoft Cloud for Industry and Global Expansion.
The service will allow customers to connect their Azure subscription to OCI. The service will automatically configure everything necessary to integrate the two platforms, providing a familiar Oracle Database Services dashboard combined with Azure terminology and the benefit of Azure Application Insights monitoring.
“There’s a well-known myth that you can’t run real applications across two clouds. We can now dispel that myth as we give Oracle and Microsoft customers the ability to easily test and demonstrate the value of combining Oracle databases with Azure applications. There is no need for deep skills on either of our platforms or complex configurations—anyone can use the Azure Portal to harness the power of our two clouds together,” said Clay Magouyrk, executive vice president, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
The partnership between Microsoft and Oracle should help both companies leverage their respective benefits in their quest to gain more of the cloud market.
Microsoft is upping its efforts to target government and public sector clients and help them transition to the cloud.
Microsoft has been rolling out customized versions of its cloud platform in an effort to target specific markets. One such example is Azure Space, which the company launched in late 2020. Microsoft has now announced Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty.
“Governments are obligated to meet specific requirements for varying data classifications including data governance, security controls, privacy of citizens, data residency, sovereign protections and compliant operations following legal regulations like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation),” writes Corey Sanders, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Cloud for Industry and Global Expansion Team. “The Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty — offering governance, security, transparency and sovereign technology — combined with strategic partners can support the digital transformation of government customers unlike any other cloud provider in the world.”
Government cloud contracts have become increasingly important to Microsoft as the company works to catch up with market leader AWS. The company acquired Impact Level 6 Pentagon certification in late 2019, giving it the ability to bid on classified contracts.
Microsoft and AWS have continued to compete with each other for lucrative government contracts, and Microsoft clearly wants to gain an advantage.
“Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty is being built on the Microsoft public cloud to accelerate digital transformation while creating a customized experience adhering to government requirements,” Sanders adds. “Government customers will have the power of the public cloud, addressing low cost, agility and scale expectations, with the full breadth of capabilities like modern developer services, agile infrastructure, secure DevOps, open-source platforms, modern collaboration and low-code development. Additionally, Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty customers will continue benefiting from Microsoft’s global security signals, analyzing over 24 trillion signals every day to identify and help protect against local attacks.”
The company has already been working with governments around the world to help build solutions that meet their needs.
“Institutions and critical national infrastructures need the modeling, building and management of resilient-by-design Secure National Clouds able to guarantee data integrity, availability and protection in line with country-systems guidelines,” said Gennaro Faella, Senior Vice President Innovation, Leonardo. “Thanks to our extended research and innovation capabilities we can leverage the best from Microsoft Cloud with our capabilities in the cyberspace and in protecting national assets. Our long-term collaboration comes together in a solution that helps ensure the sovereignty of data while at the same time benefiting from the innovation of the public cloud.”
Microsoft is clearly pulling out all the stops in its efforts to grow its cloud platform.
Microsoft surprised the industry when Netflix chose the Redmond company for its advertising ambitions, but Microsoft had a winning formula.
Netflix has been working to unveil an ad-supported tier as it looks to revitalize its subscriber growth. The company turned in its first subscriber drop in nearly a decade and sees an ad-supported tier as a way to attract new customers. Google and NBCUniversal parent Comcast were seen as the front-runners to assist Netflix, but Microsoft swooped in seemingly out of nowhere to secure the contract.
According to Business Insider, there were a combination of factors that led to Microsoft’s win, not the least of which was what the company was willing to promise. Google pulled out all the stops in assembling a team that “went to the top of the company” but couldn’t meet Netflix’s expectations.
“We got feedback from Netflix that our number was underwhelming,” Insider’s source revealed.
Much of the problem stemmed from Google hedging its bets over fears Netflix would eventually abandon it in favor of an in-house solution.
“This deal only made sense for Google to put the effort and reconfigurations to go to market if Netflix was going to permanently outsource it,” the source continued.
In contrast, Microsoft approached the deal with a far more optimistic view, meeting Netflix’s targets — reportedly revenue in the “billions” — and viewing the new relationship as a way to eventually poach Netflix as a cloud customer from AWS. In other words, rather than a fearing a potential loss, Microsoft saw an immediate win with the potential for a much larger one down the road.
“What I see is Netflix is testing the Azure/Microsoft waters with a feature or two first,” a Microsoft employee told Insider.
Another factor — and one that is becoming a major one for companies choosing a cloud provider — is that Microsoft doesn’t directly compete with Netflix. AWS parent Amazon has Amazon Prime, Comcast owns NBCUniversal and its Peacock streaming service, and Google owns YouTube TV.
Ultimately, when taken together, Microsoft had the right attitude, approach, and circumstances to pull off the advertising coup of the year.
AWS is beginning to earn a reputation for being a better open-source player as the company looks to address its customers’ needs.
AWS is the leading cloud platform, with companies and government agencies around the world relying on its services. Since much of the internet runs on open-source software, it stands to reason that cloud platforms and open-source would go hand-in-hand. In that climate, AWS is quietly earning a reputation for itself as a solid open-source player, even if it’s not quite as active as other tech companies.
In a writeup for TechRepublic, Matt Asay makes the case that AWS has made some major improvements in its open-source approach, especially since the days when it had the reputation of trying to convince the industry it was contributing more than it was. As an example, Asay cites AWS engineer Divij Vaidya’s tweet about becoming one of the top 10 contributors to the Apache Kafka project just three months into his new role.
Made it to top 10 contributors (trailing last month) of @apachekafka project after 3 months into my new role as founding engineer of @apachekafka open source team at @awscloud
We are hiring for a globally distributed fully remote team to work on open source Apache Kafka! Join us pic.twitter.com/NSMRNGayu6
While AWS is currently the market leader, Microsoft has been gaining ground. In addition to the advantage the Redmond company has as a result of its ecosystem of operating systems and desktop software, Microsoft is also one of the leading contributors to open source projects.
AWS clearly has a newfound appreciation for the benefits that come with contributing to open source projects, especially in the context of helping to tailor its services to its customers’ needs.
Tom Keane, Microsoft Cloud VP, is leaving the company after allegations he verbally “cut people down to pieces” on a regular basis.
Keane was one Microsoft’s “golden boys,” a group of executives that have skirted and flaunted the company’s internal policies because of the results they delivered. Business Insider wrote a scathing report on these executives and the turmoil they created within the company. One such executive, Alex Kipman, announced his resignation in June after Insider reported on his history of sexual harassment, and now Keane is resigning as well.
In a LinkedIn post outlining his departure, Keane focused on his accomplishments over the 21 years he spent at the company, including his work building out Azure.
Today I am excited to share that I am leaving Microsoft and taking the next step in my career to build on the world’s computer. I could not be prouder of the last 21 years, and equally excited for my next journey to begin.
While Keane’s post was upbeat, it’s hard to imagine Insider’s original report didn’t play a part. Sources told the outlet that Keane would “cut people down to pieces,” with one former executive saying, “I’ve seen him reduce people to tears.”
Still other insiders said Keane was known as “King Tom,” saying, “People have to say the right thing and kiss the ring for King Tom.”
Many had wondered why CEO Satya Nadella had not done more to address the company’s “golden boy” problem, especially after publicly taking a stand against toxic corporate culture.
Perhaps these resignations indicate Nadella and Company are finally taking action.
Microsoft has received permission to provide cloud services in Kuwait, a big win for the company as it continues to expand its cloud business.
According to Zawya, Microsoft received permission to deliver Azure, Azure Stack Hyperconverged Infrastructure, and Office 365 to businesses and organizations in Kuwait. The company received approval from the Communication and Information Technology Regulatory Authority (CITRA).
“In order to realize our digital ambitions and support the New Kuwait Vision 2035, it is crucial for government entities and private enterprises to adopt robust, secure cloud-based products and services to drive innovation. We have recognized the effort that Microsoft has made towards delivering these solutions, and we are confident that these and other technologies will unlock unprecedented opportunities for a cloud-first Kuwait,” said Eng. Salim Muthib Al-Ozainah, Chairman and CEO of CITRA.
Microsoft welcomed the news, emphasizing that CITRA’s endorsement added a trust factor to its operations in the country.
“Digital transformation plays a major role in moving the country of Kuwait forward, but this journey goes beyond just the technology – trust plays a major factor in the equation as well,” Alaeddine Karim, Microsoft Kuwait GM, said. “The permission granted to us by CITRA reinforces Microsoft’s position as a trusted technology provider and demonstrates our commitment to empowering organizations to innovate securely and accelerate digital transformation across the country.”
The US Air Force is moving ahead with its cloud plans rather than waiting on the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract.
JWCC is the successor to the doomed $10 billion Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract that was initially awarded to Microsoft. AWS challenged the award and kept it tied up in court for so long that the DOD ultimately abandoned it in favor of the multi-vendor JWCC. The DOD is currently seeking bids from AWS, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle.
The Air Force has decided it doesn’t want to wait for the DOD and risk another delay. The military branch is instead moving forward with its own Cloud One endeavor.
“The short story is we’re not waiting, we haven’t waited, we will continue to not wait for anybody else to come and provide us with capability,” Air Force CIO Lauren Knausenberger told FedScoop. “We’re moving forward, we’re moving out, we’re continuing to improve” Cloud One, she added.
Knausenberger went on to call Cloud One the “world’s largest cloud instantiation for any commercial or government entity.”
The Air Force tapped SAIC to implement its own multicloud approach, using AWS, Google, and Microsoft’s cloud platforms. While the DOD is continuing to pursue the $9 billion JWCC contract, Knausenberger doesn’t see a conflict with Cloud One. In fact, if JWCC becomes a reality, she believes it may offer “better pricing on compute” and ultimately complement Cloud One.
“And if it does, we’ll still use our Cloud One as a front door and we will purchase that compute via JWCC,” she added.
Google Cloud has just signed the biggest office space lease in San Francisco since the start of the pandemic, sending a message about its future plans.
Companies large and small have been transitioning to remote and hybrid workflows as a result of the pandemic. Some companies, however, have continued their efforts to return to the “old normal,” doubling down on in-office work and expanding their office footprint. Few have done so as much as Google, and the company made its intentions clear with its latest lease.
According to San Francisco Business Times, Google Cloud has subleased a 300,000-square-foot office space that was formerly used by Square. The latter has the lease till 2027 but is moving its offices to South San Francisco.
While no one knows if Google plans to direct lease after 2027, when Stripe’s lease expires, the lease is the biggest in San Francisco since the pandemic began, offering a glimmer of hope for the real estate market.
AWS is looking to reduce customers’ bills for cloud services, but the company clearly has its own reasons for doing so.
AWS is the leading provider in the cloud market, with roughly a third of the overall market. In spite of its lead, according to Business Insider, the company has a reputation for surprise bills, hidden costs, and “artificially high” fees. In fact, Insider goes so far as to call AWS “a poster child for the surprise cloud bill that customers now dread.” The company now says it is working to address the issues and help lower bills.
“When the pandemic started, we started to work with a lot of customers on how they can reduce their cloud costs,” said Mark Schwartz, an enterprise strategist at AWS. “But that’s not just special for the pandemic.”
While the cost decreases will be welcome for most customers, Amazon definitely has a long-term plan behind the change.
“Our view is that if we can make customers more successful in the cloud, that is going to determine the future of the cloud,” Schwartz told Insider. “I’m going to customer executives and saying, ‘How can I help you be more successful?’ And that’s really the long game for us.”
In other words: Save the customer money now and they’ll spend more over the long term.
“They’re very happy to see a customer’s cloud consumption go down over two or three quarters,” Neil Lomax, the president of sales at AWS IT partner SoftwareONE, told Insider. “They know that if they do that, the customer will come back stronger because they get way more confidence in that cloud environment.”
According to new research, the top three cloud providers are extending their lead in the market, accounting for 65% of total cloud spending.
AWS is currently the market leader, although Microsoft Azure has been making significant gains, and Google Cloud has been establishing itself as a multi-cloud provider. While the overall market continues to grow at a whopping 34%, these three providers account for 71% of the cloud market share, according to Synergy Research Group.
As the cloud market has grown, the top three providers’ share of cloud market spending has grown as well. In the first quarter of 2022, global cloud spending was $52.7 billion, with the top three raking in 65% of that. In contrast, several years ago, the top three accounted for 52% of global cloud spending, demonstrating their growing dominance in the market.
According to Synergy, smaller companies will need to differentiate themselves by targeting niche markets in order to remain competitive.
“While the level of competition remains high, the huge and rapidly growing cloud market continues to coalesce around Amazon, Microsoft and Google,” said John Dinsdale, a Chief Analyst at Synergy Research Group. “Aside from the Chinese market, which remains totally dominated by local Chinese companies, other cloud providers simply cannot match the scale and geographic reach of the big three market leaders. As Amazon, Microsoft and Google continue to grow at 35-50% per year, other non-Chinese cloud providers are typically growing in the 10-20% range. That can still be an attractive proposition for those smaller providers, as long as they focus on regional or service niches where they can differentiate themselves from the big three.”
Oracle has beat its larger rivals to a significant milestone, becoming the first major cloud provider to open a cloud region in Mexico.
Cloud providers open data centers in various regions in an effort to improve the speeds and availability of their services to customers in those areas. Despite being in eighth place in the cloud market and well behind AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, Oracle has managed to open a Mexico data region first in the state of Querétaro.
“We are excited to establish a cloud region in Mexico that will offer public and private organizations, as well as partners and developers, the opportunity to leverage OCI to grow their businesses,” said Maribel Dos Santos, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Mexico. “The Oracle Cloud Querétaro region offers organizations a wide range of services, including access to emerging technologies, to help improve the customer experience and positively impact the country’s ecosystem of innovation.”
Oracle also took the opportunity to reaffirm its commitment to transitioning to renewable energy. The company plans to power all of its data centers with renewable energy by 2025, including the new Querétaro location.
AWS CEO Adam Selipsky is bullish on the cloud computing transition, telling CNBC’s Jim Cramer that “most of it’s still yet to come.”
Selipsky succeeded Andy Jassy as AWS CEO when the latter replaced Jeff Bezos as CEO of parent company Amazon. AWS is currently the market leader in cloud computing, but Selipsky believes there is still plenty of room for growth in the market.
“It’s possible that AWS could become the largest business at Amazon. Now, Amazon has other large and great businesses, and so it could take a while for us to get there,” Selipsky said in an interview on CNBC’s “Mad Money.”
“Essentially, IT is going to move to the cloud. And it’s going to take a while. You’ve seen maybe only, call it 10% of IT today move. So it’s still day 1. It’s still early. … Most of it’s still yet to come,” he added.
Selipsky’s comments echo those of his boss when he was still CEO of AWS.
“It’s still really early days,” said Andy Jassy, speaking about the cloud in 2019. “Sometimes we remind ourselves that even though it’s a $30 billion revenue run rate business growing 45 percent year-over-year, it’s the early stages of enterprise and public sector adoption in the US. Outside the US they’re 12 to 36 months behind depending on the country and industry.”
Amazon recently turned in its first quarterly loss since 2015. Meanwhile, AWS was a bright spot for the company, continuing to grow 36.5% year-over-year. Like many cloud providers, AWS greatly benefited from the pandemic-fueled drive to transition to the cloud.
If Selipsky is right, AWS’ best days are yet to come.
Google has made its Earth Engine available to all governments and businesses as an enterprise-grade Google Cloud service.
Google Earth Engine is a tool for “planetary-scale environmental monitoring.” When Google released it in 2010, it was primarily for scientists and NGOs. As climate change becomes a bigger threat, however, the company wants all governments and businesses to have access to it.
“Over the years, one of the top climate challenges I’ve heard from businesses, governments and organizations is that they’re drowning in data but thirsty for insights,” writes Rebecca Moore, Director, Google Earth, Earth Engine & Outreach.
“So starting today, we’re making Google Earth Engine available to businesses and governments worldwide as an enterprise-grade service through Google Cloud. With access to reliable, up-to-date insights on how our planet is changing, organizations will be better equipped to move their sustainability efforts forward.”
The tool should be a powerful asset in the fight against climate change.
Forrester Research has named Google Cloud a leader in Document Analytics space, providing a prestigious boost to the cloud provider.
Google is currently the number three cloud provider in the world. CEO Thomas Kurian has made no secret of his desire to move into the number two spot in the next few years. As part of the expansion of its services and abilities, the company rolled out Document AI in late 2020.
According to Sudheera Vanguri, Document AI Head of Product, Forrester has named Google Cloud a leader in two of its recent reports: The Forrester Wave™: Document-Oriented Text Analytics Platforms, Q2 2022 and The Forrester Wave™: People-Oriented Text Analytics Platforms, Q2 2022 authored by Boris Evelson.
“Google Cloud’s strengths include document capture, image analytics, full ModelOps cycle capabilities, unstructured data security, and integration with Google Cloud’s augmented BI platform Looker,” Forrester says in The Forrester Wave™: Document-Oriented Text Analytics Platforms, Q2 2022 report.
Vanguri credits Google Cloud’s success to its close relationship with Google Research, which allows the company to “quickly to integrate bleeding edge technologies into our solutions.”
Forrester is one of the most well-respected names in business research. Naming Google Cloud a leader in the Document Analytics business is sure to boost Google cloud and Kurian’s ambitions.
Multiple reports are showing that Microsoft Azure is increasingly becoming a major threat to AWS in the cloud space.
AWS is the current market leader among public cloud providers, with Microsoft Azure in second place and Google Cloud in third. Despite AWS’s lead, according to the Flexera 2022 State of the Cloud Report, Azure usage has surpassed AWS in several instances, representing the first time this has happened in 11 years of Flexera’s reporting:
As in previous years, AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform are the top three public cloud providers. But for the first time, Azure has closed the gap with AWS, while other cloud providers have not shown much growth. For each public cloud provider, respondents specified whether they’re running significant workloads in that cloud, running some workloads, experimenting, plan to use it or had no plans to use it.
Interestingly, Azure took the lead in overall breadth of adoption among organizations:
Azure passed AWS for breadth of adoption among enterprises. Google Cloud Platform has the highest percentage for experimentation (23 percent) and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure has the highest percentage of plan to use (twelve percent), which could drive more adoption in future years.
Azure also scored a win among “enterprises running some or significant workloads on the platforms.” While Azure tied with AWS at 47% of organizations using it for significant workloads, it surpassed AWS among organizations using it for some workloads, at 33% vs 30%.
Of the top six cloud providers, Azure was the only one that saw its adoption rate increase year-over-year, coming in at 80% in 2022 vs 76% in 2021. In contrast, AWS adoption rates dropped in 2022 to 77%, down from 79% in 2021. Similarly, Google dropped from 49% to 48% and Oracle dropped from 32% to 27%. IBM Cloud’s adoption rate stayed steady at 25%, while Alibaba dropped from 13% to 11%.
While Flexera’s report is telling enough, it’s supported by a new report from Credit Suisse. According to Investing.com, Credit Suisse analysts outlined how “Azure has grown meaningfully faster than AWS” and, as companies transition to the cloud, “the full multi-year impact of Azure’s growth opportunity is still not properly reflected in consensus estimates.”
Overall, the two reports are excellent news for Microsoft and dovetail with previous reports demonstrating the growth potential of Azure.
DocuSign CEO Dan Springer is out as the company’s stock has tanked while the company struggles to return to its pandemic-fueled highs.
Like many companies, DocuSign reached all-new highs during the early days of the pandemic as businesses turned to cloud-based tools to stay productive as employees worked from home. Unfortunately for DocuSign, the company has struggled to maintain its pandemic-level growth rate, and its stock has reflected that. After posting disappointing quarterly results, the company announced that Springer would resign as CEO.
The company struck a positive tone about its future prospects.
“DocuSign has the people, the products and the brand to transform the way the world agrees, making us a leader in our Anywhere Economy,” said chairman Pete Solvik, according to TheStreet.
In the meantime, board member Maggie Wilderotter will serve as interim CEO while the company looks for a permanent replacement. The company’s stock had rebounded 4.1% in early Tuesday trading before settling back down.
