Cloud Service Strategies and Competition in the Chinese Market Among Major Technology Companies

Abstract

Regardless of the area of their core business -- marketplace, search engine, game or social network -- many major technology companies find cloud services a new area of growth. Amazon first launched the Amazon Web Services in 2006, followed by Microsoft launching Azure in 2010. On the other side of world, a similar story unfolded in China. Alibaba launched its cloud services in 2008. This thesis first analyzes why these three giant technology companies all chose to enter the cloud service market and how their strategies differ. Based on their capability, different companies have different product focuses on IaaS, PaaS and SaaS in cloud service. And instead of being a single product provider, most of them chose to build up a product platform integrating internal resources and external partnerships. The thesis also discusses how the cloud services impact each company’s financial performance.

The Chinese cloud market is projected to grow at a stunning speed, which reveals huge potential. At the same time, the competition has been fierce among the players. In this section, the study is focused on the strategies of the three companies in this competition. The analysis starts with a general market overview and then examines the marketing strategies and competencies in this particular market for each company. The thesis also includes some recommendations to the companies as well as the future outlook of the market.