Microsoft Gloats over Latest Gartner Cloud Report, but Amazon Still Makes Everyone Else Look Silly

In a blog post today, Microsoft has taken to the tubes to speak to their excitement about being included in the latest Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service from Gartner. Gartner has added them in the Visionary category.

What's most interesting about this report, and the Microsoft side of it, is how quickly Microsoft has moved to ensure inclusion in the report. Windows Azure's IaaS technology just left preview four short months ago. That's truly an amazing feat.

Microsoft's blog post is here:  Gartner Recognizes Microsoft as a Cloud Infrastructure as a Service Visionary

However, if you read through the full report, you'll notice that, despite a lot of growth, the majority of the companies just can't seem to catch Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon continues to lead by a wide margin. If the distance were any further between IBM and Amazon, they'd need a DeLorean with a flux capacitor to see each other.

The full Gartner report is here: Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service

Additionally, on a sad, but expected note, Dell has been dropped from this particular report. Once a strong vision, the Cloud has moved beyond what Dell can manage based on their current state as a company. Dell formally withdrew its IaaS offering a few months back (read: Dell Dumps Cloud Aspirations). I'll be attending DellWorld in December of this year, and I'll be interested to hear what Dell is doing to compensate for the lost vision. During last year's event, Dell was "all in" to build their own Cloud service (complete with all the hardware) and work to be an immediate contender in the space. As you can see, that didn’t happen.