AWS, Microsoft, and Google are the top leaders in cloud computing. They cover all your cloud requirements and online operations with cutting-edge offerings and reliable cloud services. But the cloud space keeps growing as new players add to the floor. Alibaba Cloud is also one of the vital players in current business cloud services that have recently gained market attention.
Amazon launched its cloud division, AWS, in 2006. Since then, AWS kept growing with constant innovation and adding a wide range of cloud solutions. Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, launched in 2009, began its operations by serving small enterprises with cloud solutions similar to AWS. Alibaba is now a leading cloud service provider in China, serves large-scale enterprises and provides a vast range of cloud computing services.
Alibaba Cloud vs. AWS – Cloud Features
In terms of cloud functionalities, AWS is the largest. Since Alibaba Cloud is still in development, it offers global services such as high-performance, elastic computing power in the cloud and services like data storage, relational databases, big-data processing, and content delivery networks. Some distinctive services are Mongo DB, Anti-DDoS, Analytic DB, and Table Storage, but they are unavailable globally. With Anti-DDoS technology, Alibaba Cloud provides better security to your web applications. Data security is better guaranteed at Alibaba Cloud as they have high-level international certificates, which include a Gold Certificate of cloud security recognized by the British Standards Institute. Alibaba Cloud’s advanced big-data-backed technology offers faster access and operations to cloud data.
Alibaba Cloud vs. AWS – The Position
Let us now glance through the global positioning of the two giants of cloud computing:
– While Amazon is the biggest e-commerce giant in the U.S., Alibaba is in China. As per NASDAQ, Amazon is valued at around $400 billion, and Alibaba’s market cap is a little over $250 billion as per its NYSE share price. The nature of their core businesses and the scale of their cloud computing requirements urge massive computing necessity. Progressively, their experience handling this enormous workload has given them confidence in offering cloud services to others.
– According to Synergy Research Group, AWS is at the top of the cloud service providers list, and Alibaba is ranked fifth. The ranking is for the cloud platform, infrastructure, and private cloud services published in the most recent Cloud Infrastructure Market Share report.
Alibaba Cloud vs AWS – The Revenue
Both of these have seen enormous growth recently. From the final quarter of 2016, as the total worldwide spending increased by 46% in cloud infrastructure services, AWS and Alibaba Cloud have increased their market share at the expense of smaller cloud providers. In the most recent quarter, AWS made a steep growth in earnings, with a total income of $3.53 billion. It also maintained the dominant position in terms of revenues that exceeded the next four competitors down the line combined. Alibaba Cloud, on the other hand, earned revenue of $254 million, which certainly is a good number for an emergent company. As the small players continue struggling in the cloud market, Alibaba’s rapid rise has become more remarkable.
As discussed above, Alibaba showcased impressive growth, but at the same time, one should keep in mind that when the market share is small, it is much easier to grow a big number than when the market share is large. Also, Alibaba grew at a rate higher than AWS primarily due to the fact that Alibaba Cloud is the dominator in China, which has always been a relatively promising and fast-growing market as of today. That said, the revenues from the cloud computing business are significantly lower for Alibaba Cloud compared to AWS. However, it is worth noting that Alibaba’s rapid growth allowed it to appear in the top five cloud service providers list for the first time.
Although Alibaba is way behind AWS and where it is standing in the cloud industry but Alibaba’s explosive growth numbers, channelized, and strategic efforts clearly express its participation in the race to $500 billion.
