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Competition heats up between PaaS vendors IBM, Microsoft and Oracle
Thu, 12th May 2016
FYI, this story is more than a year old

Over the next few years, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) providers will significantly improve solutions available in the market, which will lead to the technology gaining widespread appeal and greater adoption.

This is according to Technology Business Research's (TBR) Cloud Developer and Platforms Research, which finds the number of platforms customers need is intensifying vendor competition.

TBR finds the PaaS market is expected to grow steadily and reach $26 billion in 2020, posing significant opportunities for vendors in both public and hosted private cloud and increasingly in on-premises cloud.

IBM's recent investments in Bluemix will help it close the gap on PaaS market leaders Microsoft and Oracle, especially since IBM pioneered on-premises PaaS with Bluemix Local, TBR says.

“Line-of-business (LOB) purchasers and developers are more often influencing and funding cloud purchases alongside IT departments than they did in the past, making purchase decisions more collaborative and strategic,” says Cassandra Mooshian TBR cloud senior analyst.

“The LOB persona has entered the mix in a big way over the past 12 months and is gaining influence over cloud purchase decisions, as LOBs are more often funding workload adoption. The benefit of LOB involvement is very apparent as LOBs work more closely with developers than ever before while keeping IT policies and strategic business directions in mind," Mooshian says.

Furthermore, tenure with enterprise accounts goes a long way in PaaS, with large enterprise incumbents Microsoft, Oracle and IBM viewed as enterprise-ready, according to TBR.

“Microsoft and Oracle lead in enterprise PaaS adoption, partly due to their large incumbent customer bases from large enterprises to SMBs. IBM, with continued build-outs around its PaaS ecosystem, will continue to gain recognition in this space, challenging front-runners,” adds Kelsey Mason, TBR cloud analyst.