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a mobile-games developer. The shockingly exposed iles also included
unsecured passwords. Amazon took measures to secure the data and warn
customers, but this one event left its clients understandably worried that
public-cloud data was far more exposed than anyone thought (Brian 2013).
Amazon also needs to overcome competitive pressures, especially from a
handful of companies that can also leverage their leadership in new-media
hardware, software, and media services. Some of these, like Microsoft,
IBM, and Oracle, have more experience than Amazon in the market for
large corporate clients. One way for AWS to succeed is by heavily discount-
ing cloud services, then, once the competition is driven out of the market,
raising prices once more, a tactic that proved successful in Amazon's retail
book-selling operation (Streitfeld 2013). It is not an exaggeration to say
that even in this early stage of development, the struggle for competitive
dominance in cloud computing, just as across the Internet, is narrowing
to a handful of corporations that can marshal a similar degree of leverage
(McChesney 2013). These include familiar names: Apple, Google, and
Microsoft. Of these leaders, Microsoft is probably the most committed
to providing general cloud services, especially to businesses, which have
helped the company maintain its elevated position even as the others
have successfully challenged its consumer-services market. Businesses and
government agencies have long been committed to Microsoft software
and the company now aims to move these and new customers from reli-
ance on physical programs to online services for a fee. So far it has been
reasonably successful, with over 100,000 businesses using the company's
cloud services. It is important to emphasize this point because much of
the day-to-day attention in the popular press goes to the others, primar-
ily because Google is the major gateway to search, Apple to music, and
Facebook to social media. Even Twitter, a much smaller company, garners
more notice than Microsoft. But the company Bill Gates started in 1975
has a very strong foundation in business software and, with software
migrating to the cloud, Microsoft has invested heavily in cloud platforms.
Over the last few years, the company has quietly built up its Server and
Tools division and it now generates $18 billion a year in revenues, with
six of its subdivisions topping the $1 billion mark.
Microsoft is counting on the cloud platform offering its Azure service
to enable customers to develop applications and otherwise make proit-
able use of their own information. Azure provides both Platform and
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