News

AWS Dominates HPC User Ratings Survey for Cloud Platforms

• By David Ramel
• 10/07/2020

It was almost a clean sweep for Amazon Web Services (AWS) as the top-rated cloud computing platform in a High Performance Computing (HPC) end-user survey.

The survey, conducted by HPC and hyperscale analyst firm Intersect360 Research, found AWS dominating user ratings in every category but one, topping all of these:

• Highest Level of Product Awareness
• Highest Level of Current Usage
• Highest-Rated, Technical Impression
• Highest-Rated, Operational Impression
• Highest-rated, Overall
• Highest-Rated, Future Outlook for HPC
• Highest-Rated, Likeliness to Use in Two Years
• Greatest Level of Vendor Product Loyalty, Based on Ratings
• Greatest Projected Adoption by Non-Current Customers, Based on Ratings

The only thing keeping AWS from a clean sweep was Microsoft Azure's top rating in the category "Greatest Projected Market Share Gain, Based on Ratings."

"Confirming the trend shown in previous reports from Intersect360 Research, cloud computing has a clear top three, with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud dominating the ratings," the firm said in a news release.

The release quoted CEO Addison Snell as saying, "AWS nearly sweeps the categories at the top of user ratings. Google Cloud is right next to AWS in loyalty, and Microsoft Azure is showing the highest-rated growth possibilities. Alibaba Cloud scores well among a local group but has little awareness or usage outside that."

Besides cloud, other sections for each of the above categories were processors, servers and storage, across which were top-rated offerings including NVIDIA GPUs, Dell EMC, HPE, DDN and many others, with no particular dominance exhibited as in the cloud category.

"The study results make clear that Intel Xeon CPUs are still dominant in the HPC processor market, but also that AMD EPYC CPUs are highly thought of and are gaining in both mindshare and market share," the release states. "NVIDIA GPUs top the ratings in technical evaluation. The combination poised to gain the most, according to the user ratings, is AMD, with EPYC CPUs plus Radeon GPUs."

Snell was also quoted: "What users are really saying they want are NVIDIA GPUs together with either Intel Xeon or AMD EPYC CPUs, but that's not the way the market is heading, as each company is building its own integrated solutions."

Other quotes by Snell included:

• "As we have said in our other research, HPE is clearly benefiting from its acquisition of Cray. Even so, Dell EMC is a strong competitor, and the two companies will continue to battle for market share supremacy. Companies like Atos and Inspur do very well in their local markets."
• "In storage, we see the strong presence and solid evaluation of Dell EMC together with appreciation for the performance and scalability of DDN, locked together at the top of the ratings. Smaller companies like WekaIO, Qumulo, and VAST Data do well among their current users and are projected by users to gain."

The full for-pay report is available at the analyst firm's web site.