Part three of a series<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Once a company decides to move to the cloud, one of the hardest decisions it will make is choosing a vendor. There is no right or wrong answer here, as the decision depends on your company’s specific needs.<\/span><\/p>\n In a future series, we will dive into the specific criteria you should consider when selecting a cloud vendor.<\/strong> But for now, let\u2019s start with a rundown of the most popular providers across IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and SaaS (Software as a Service).<\/span><\/p>\n Hands down, <\/span>Amazon AWS<\/b> and <\/span>Microsoft Azure<\/b> are currently winning the IaaS cloud space. They are the only two providers deemed both \u201cLeaders\u201d and \u201cVisionary\u201d by<\/span> Gartner\u2019s \u201cMagic Quadrant.\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n With both AWS and Azure, you will find a wide selection of services and highly competitive prices. Additionally, you will see an emphasis on innovation, with new services regularly deployed around things like \u00a0IoT and Artificial Intelligence.<\/span><\/p>\n IBM <\/b>has been making moves to catch-up to Amazon and Microsoft and is showing a lot of<\/span> growth in its cloud practice<\/a><\/strong>. Their investments in Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence, among others, should help accelerate that growth.<\/span><\/p>\n Salesforce<\/b> is well-known for its SaaS offering, and they are looking to have the same impact in the PaaS market. Gartner has crowned them the leader in “<\/span>High Productivity Application Platforms as a Service.<\/a><\/strong>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Oracle<\/b> and <\/span>SAP<\/b> are both well known for their enterprise applications and are now in<\/span> a race to compete in the cloud<\/strong><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s always surprising to see <\/span>Google<\/b> on anything but the leader’s list. While they may not be a big player in the IaaS space right now, they certainly have a<\/span> stronghold in PaaS<\/a><\/strong> and SaaS (Google Apps ring a bell?)<\/span><\/p>\n\n Cloud Providers: The Leaders<\/h2>\n
Cloud Providers: The Others<\/h2>\n