Amazon Web Services to face strong competition from Microsoft Azure next year

Lately, Microsoft has been focusing on its cloud-computing platform, Azure, as part of the company’s CEO’s “mobile-first, cloud-first” ambitions. While the company’s cloud platform isn’t the leader in the market, it is expected to produce strong competition against Amazon Web Services in 2016. According to market-research firm FBG Capital Markets, Microsoft’s Azure will reach an annual run-rate trajectory of $8 billion-plus in 2016 — which is apparently the same run rate as Amazon Web Services this year. FBR stated:

“We continue to believe 2016 will be a ‘206 area code street battle for the cloud,’ with Microsoft firmly best positioned as the vendor to compete with AWS on the enterprise cloud front for years to come. We believe Microsoft and Azure have a long runway to cross-sell into their massive enterprise customer bases with a broad platform of cloud offerings for the next few years. We believe its best cloud days are ahead given our positive checks from the field around solid uptake of key cloud products (e.g., Office 365, Azure) heading into 2016.”

It will be very interesting to see if Microsoft’s investment in cloud pays off in 2016. The “new Microsoft” is certainly a threat for Amazon when it comes to cloud computing, but Microsoft may take over Amazon in the cloud-computing business in 2016, thanks to its recent focus on the cloud.