Cloud IaaS providers; Survey Results.

Here are the results of the survey Tell us your preferences: Cloud IaaS providers
 The following IaaS providers were considered:

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS)
2. RackSpace
3. GoGrid
4. Savvis
5. Joyent
6. CloudSigma
7. NaviSite
8. Google Apps
9. Microsoft Azure
10. SoftLayer
11. Terremark
12. Private Clouds option

 My comments are below each picture. Feel free to add your comments

 Most respondents are familiar with public cloud. 30 out 34 respondents to the question above are cloud users , some for as long as three years.

Most prefer public IaaS providers who do not use proprietary PaaS. Only 18% like the idea of IaaS plus provider proprietary PaaS (best known example are AWS, Google Apps and Microsoft Azure).  56% prefer pure IaaS providers who may offer 3rd party PasS

As expected, AWS is a clear popularity leader.  80% of the respondents know how to use their site or want to learn how to use it. Google Apps is a second place with 60%, based on the same metric, although there are more people knowing how to use RackSpace (#3  ranking).

Here we rank IasS providers who either are a customer or expressed interest to become customers short (6 months) and long term. AWS is #1  leader, followed by Google Apps, Rack Space and Microsoft Azure. Ranking #5 are the group that prefers to have a private cloud (in orange).

Maybe this survey is filled in by a sample representing public cloud users. There is not representative, But the private cloud advocates are a smaller pie than we thought. One inference is perhaps, once one has a good experience with a public provider, there is less propensity to consider the private cloud alternative.

This is an "inglorious" list of how many do NOT want to consider a particular IaaS provider. The most startling discovery is to see Microsoft Azure the least considered provider. The other IaaS  with high "inglorious" rating (GoGrid, Savvis, Terremark) are really perceived as hosting companies and they  must increase their PR and awareness marketing as cloud providers.

The price one pays as leader , if that also has the high number of customers leaving. The absolute numbers are not relevant, as the percentages of those leaving versus new customers would be a better indicator . Rack Space and Amazon had the largest numbers. Surprisingly we see Joyent loosing as many customers as Amazon. One way is to dismiss this chart as unreliable, not enough data, etc.  This  will be not the responsible thing to do. Sure, we may have too few respondents in this survey, but what if we discover something that can be rectified, and investigating further?

Savvis  has no records of loosing customers. My final take away are are:

• In spite of the preference for IaaS providers with no proprietary  PaaS, the market is dominated by proprietary PaaS IaaS (AWS, RackSpace, Google Apps) Yet  Microsoft Azure failed to gain acceptance
• Newer players started from ground up to provide cloud IaaS do much better than established co-location and hosting companies re-focused in providing cloud services.  
• As a an entry point to the Magic Quadrant  of Gartner, an IaaS provider must show minimum  $25M in revenues. It is not clear in the case of case of most hosting companies, including Terremark (recently acquired by Verizon for $1.4B) what segment from their revenues comes from IaaS Cloud Services, Their popularity is not proportional with their valuations.

We read in the Verizon news of Terremark acquisition, that other IaaS companies as potential take over:  Savvis, GoGrid and others with a big hosting operations. The gold lies in the soft technologies of the new IaaS providers such as Joyent , and  others, not considered in this survey.

Otherwise, when the acquisition ecstasy is over, the big telecoms might discover they just bought real estate, bricks and legacy hardware.