Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella says it all – Mobile first, Cloud first. While we’re not sure about “Mobile first”, Microsoft’s “Cloud first” strategy is serving Microsoft very well. According to Microsoft’s Q3 2017 earnings, Microsoft’s intelligent cloud was up 11% at $6.8 billion. Microsoft Azure revenue increased 93% YoY. The earnings clearly underline the fact that Microsoft is doing a really good job in the cloud and the numbers just keep on increasing.
Even Apple has been publically known for using Microsoft Azure along with Amazon Web Service (AWS) for Apple’s own iCloud. Apple has been silent about Google’s cloud services, although there were several reports about it that were surfaced back in 2016. But now that’s changing.
CNBC spotted a PDF called the iOS Security Guide that was updated by Apple back in January that underlines iOS’ security measures. The new PDF states its iCloud service: “The encrypted chunks of the file are stored, without any user-identifying information, using third-party storage services, such as S3 and Google Cloud Platform.”
Unfortunately, it still remains unconfirmed whether or not Apple uses Google Cloud services outside of media content such as photos and videos for its iCloud. Neither does is provide us with any information as to when the switch actually occurred.
This move by Apple might not hurt Microsoft or even Amazon for that matter, but it definitely benefits Google’s cloud services. Google Cloud Platform is far behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure and it still has a long way to go. But does this move benefit Apple themselves? That is yet to be seen.
