Microsoft Takes the Lead (Barely) Over Amazon in Windows Hosting

A recent report by Netcraft is showing that, after a literal tie in Windows web hosting for the last few months, Microsoft has now overtaken Amazon by less than 1,000 computers.

Per the report, Microsoft's success has come directly from the growth of Windows Azure. If you remember as part of the company's earnings report in January, Windows Azure saw triple-digit increases in customers. The Netcraft report states that Windows Azure has grown almost 50 percent since May 2013.

While Amazon and Microsoft only garner about 1 percent each of the market, they both still maintain a large lead in a segment that is highly fragmented. Still, Amazon has been at this a lot longer than Microsoft and only shows how popular and trusted Windows Azure has become.

Also of interest in the report (at least to me), Netcraft shows the Windows Azure datacenter locations. The datacenters are split into regions and geos (geographical locations), with two new Japanese datacenters made publicly available on in February 2014. Windows Azure datacenters are located in the US (California, Virginia, Illinois, and Texas), Europe (Netherlands and Ireland), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong and Singapore), and Japan (Saitama Prefecture and Osaka Prefecture). This is important for even more success for Windows Azure in the future as it plays into Microsoft's recent complaints against the heavy-handed spying of the NSA and how they promised to go around the US government by opening datacenters all over the world. Based on the regions and geos outlined, it seems Microsoft already has a great start.

A couple other interesting bullets from the report:

Read the full report on the web here: Microsoft neck and neck with Amazon in Windows hosting