News

AWS Ranks High in Cloud-Native Study

• By David Ramel
• 08/26/2020

As in most things related to cloud computing, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has been found to be a leader in the cloud-native space, particularly among serverless and Kubernetes developers.

That's according to the results of a recent cloud-native study by SlashData, which publishes an ongoing series of cloud-native computing reports at the behest of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). The CNCF's definition of cloud native says:

Cloud native technologies empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. Containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs exemplify this approach.

These techniques enable loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable. Combined with robust automation, they allow engineers to make high-impact changes frequently and predictably with minimal toil.

SlashData's latest report, covering Q4 2019, focuses on the Kubernetes and container orchestration system. Among its findings, the study indicates:

• AWS Lambda continues to be the most-used serverless solution with 46 percent of serverless developers using it.

• 62 percent of cloud-native developers are using AWS as a cloud hosting provider.

• Amazon is the most-used cloud vendor among back-end developers, both for cloud-native (62 percent) and non-cloud-native (45 percent).

• Amazon is the most popular vendor with cloud-native developers leveraging private clouds, with 52 percent of cloud-native developers using it to manage private clouds, compared to 35 percent of non-cloud-native developers.

However, there are signs weakness for AWS in certain segments. "Compared to Q2 2019, AWS has lost 6 percentage points with cloud native developers, who have shown a small, yet consistent shift (i.e., +2-4 percentage points) towards vendors with smaller cloud communities, such as DigitalOcean, Salesforce, Red Hat, and SAP," the report says. "These patterns suggest that the market is still growing and that there are opportunities for minor vendors to grow their share of the market."

The report also shows an AWS attrition rate of 7 and 8 percentage points among non-cloud-native and cloud-native developers, respectively.

And also in the serverless arena: "In the last six months, Google has also become significantly more competitive than AWS with UX and UI designers and researchers, with 25 and 32 percentage points advantage over AWS, respectively."

Amazon's position remains strong, though, mirroring many other studies that show eroding AWS leadership even though it continues to place No. 1 across the board.

For example, speaking of the private cloud statistics, the report says: "Nevertheless, AWS continues to hold onto first place. More than 10 percentage points behind AWS, Google (41 percent) and Microsoft (37 percent) are the second and third most competitive cloud service vendors among developers deploying software on private clouds. The difference in the usage of Google and Microsoft by cloud native and other backend developers is 15 and 8 percentage points, respectively."

The report can be accessed upon providing registration information here.