Microsoft Looks To Rivals Like Google To Curb Amazon’s Gov Cloud Leadership

Microsoft is rallying other big-name cloud-computing providers such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Oracle Corp. to press the US government into spreading its spending on such services more widely, taking aim at Amazon.com Inc.’s dominance in such contracts.

The software giant has issued talking points to other cloud companies aimed at jointly lobbying Washington to require major government projects to use more than one cloud service, according to people familiar with the effort and a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

he software giant has issued talking points to other cloud companies aimed at jointly lobbying Washington to require major government projects to use more than one cloud service, according to people familiar with the effort and a document viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Microsoft also approached VMware, Dell, IBM and HP said the people familiar with the effort. It hasn’t yet asked Amazon to join the loose alliance, the people said. 

Amazon dominates the cloud-infrastructure industry with a 39% share of the 2021 global market ahead of Microsoft at No. 2 with a 21% share, according to research firm Gartner Inc. Amazon looms even larger in the business of selling cloud services to governments. Amazon’s cloud had a 47% share of the 2021 U.S. and Canada public-sector market orders, ahead of 28% for Microsoft, according to Gartner. The National Security Agency last year picked Amazon as the sole vendor for a cloud contract that could be worth potentially as much as $10 billion over the next decade, renewing an existing business relationship.

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