When asked about which public/hybrid cloud providers they were expected to use over the next 12 to 18 months, over 71 per cent of IT buyers chose Microsoft which is up from 68 per cent last quarter. Amazon managed to get only 24 per cent and Google 17 per cent.

While Amazon dominates public cloud in general, much of its market is from start-ups and emerging companies as opposed to traditional corporate companies. Redmond was the first in the list for cloud operating systems that companies are using or intend to use within the next year for their in-house cloud platforms. More than 71 per cent respondents chose Microsoft over its competitors.