It was great to attend the UK Cloud Awards ceremony on the top of City Hall this week. Luminaries from the cloud industry were present and a good time was had by all. As a judge of the awards it was nice to see the celebrations among companies whose profiles and submissions I had studied. 

What struck me in the submissions though was the growth of Microsoft in providing cloud services as backbones to many of the projects. While Amazon and Google gain the high profile as “cloud companies” (rightly given their scale), it seemed from this (albeit limited and unscientific) sample that companies are adopting Microsoft’s cloud offerings and integrating them into their core IT at pace. Many of the companies who won (for example Outsourcery) specialise in this Microsoft integration activity for the cloud. That said Microsoft were a sponsor which might have pushed their network to apply – though this would not affect the judging. 

Another thought was the range of small companies who are now entering the cloud integration and infrastructure space.  Small companies such as Memset, Splunk and Databarracks are providing specialist services to compete. It is simply not the case that the cloud is wholly dominated by the big-three/five/eight (however you cut the pie!). 

Do take a look at the list of winners – and I am going to try to catch up with some of the companies involved over the coming months in my research activity, which I will try to report here. 

http://ukcloudawards.co.uk/congratulations-our-winners