Developers favour AWS, Azure over Google's cloud IoT platform: Survey

Developers favour Amazon and Microsoft's cloud-based Internet of Things (IoT) platforms over Google's offering in the segment, according to a survey conducted by the IBM-founded non-profit Eclipse Foundation.

The annual IoT developer survey showed that more than half the respondents (52%) mentioned Amazon Web Services (AWS) as their preference, followed by 31% for Microsoft's Azure. Only 19% of the developers were on Google's cloud-based platform, an 8% decrease from last year.

The Eclipse Foundation survey also showed that while Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) was the protocol of choice for IoT messaging, Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is increasingly being used by companies as both IoT deployments and back-end systems scale, IotBusiness.com reported.

The survey report also showed that 93% of the databases and data stores used in IoT projects are based on open source software and data collected by IoT networks or meshes were hugely diverse. 

It also revealed that the data collected and used by IoT applications is incredibly diverse, ranging from time series sensors to device information and data from log files.

Tech giants Amazon, Google and Microsoft are engaged in a battle for cloud supremacy. While the survey shows AWS is the popular choice, Microsoft recently overtook it in terms of cloud revenue. 

The Satya Nadella-led IT giant, which follows a hybrid cloud strategy just like Google, garnered $5.3 billion in cloud revenue for the October-December period, taking the company's total revenue from the segment for 2017 to $18.6 billion. 

In contrast, Amazon Web Services (AWS) garnered $5.11 billion in revenue for its fourth quarter ended 31 December 2017 and $17.46 billion in the entire year. 

Microsoft follows a July-June fiscal year while Amazon follows the January-December format.

In addition, Microsoft showed a higher growth rate of 56% in the quarter compared to Amazon’s 45%. 

The increase in Microsoft’s cloud revenue can be linked to the huge 98% growth in revenue from its cloud computing arm Azure. Its revenue from its Dynamics 365 product line grew 67% while Office 365 Commercial revenue rose 41%.

Interestingly, tech giant IBM has declared that its cloud revenue for the quarter ended December 2017 stood at $5.5 billion, topping that of both Microsoft and Amazon. However, its revenue for 2017 was $17 billion, lower than that of its two rivals.