A report published this week by The Futurum Group identifies Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google as the top three providers of software development platforms.
Based on a 100-point assessment of the business value provided, product innovation & technology capabilities, strategic vision, go-to-market execution and ecosystem alignment, the Futrum Signal analysis for Software Development Platforms report finds that Microsoft, AWS and Google attained Elite status by each garnering more than 90 points.
Mitch Ashley, vice president and practice leader for software lifecycle engineering for The Futurum Group, said Microsoft, AWS and Google have reached the elite level due to the breadth and depth of their platforms, the speed of innovation, their extensive ecosystems and their effective integration of AI into the development lifecycle.
Microsoft, however, is the only provider to score 90 points in all five attributes tracked, which suggests there continue to be areas where Google and AWS are still trying to close a gap with a rival that has for decades now been a leading provider of software development tools and platforms.
Additionally, the report notes that other providers of software development platforms that scored at least 80 points included Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, GitHub, Atlassian and Salesforce. That suggests that while Microsoft, AWS and Google are clear leaders in the category, competition among providers of software development platforms remains fierce.
The reason any organization opts to standardize on a particular software development platform will vary widely, and it’s not uncommon for the same organization to have adopted two or more of these platforms depending upon the type of applications one team might build versus another.
The one thing that has been consistent through the years is the level of focus Microsoft has on application developers, many of whom are now building both Windows and, more recently, Linux applications using tools and platforms provided by Microsoft. The Futurum Signal report, however, also suggests that after years of effort, both AWS and Google have made considerable progress wooing software developers as part of an effort to build an ecosystem to rival the one Microsoft has developed.
Of course, past success is no guarantee of future performance, so as competition continues to intensify, it is probable that other providers of software development platforms might gain momentum. Microsoft, AWS and Google, to maintain their Elite status, will also need to continue to invest in a range of application development platforms that are designed to appeal to developers of varying levels of expertise. At a time when artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are disrupting the way software is developed, almost nothing about existing platform preferences is guaranteed.
Swapping out software development platforms, however, is not a decision that most organizations make lightly, so once a provider of a platform is established in an organization, it becomes deeply embedded within the DevOps workflows organizations rely on to build software. As such, IT leaders can usually count on the fact that providers of these platforms will typically go to great lengths to ensure that as many application development teams as possible within an organization continue to use that platform, in the hopes of limiting any possibility they might one day be usurped by one of their many rivals.