Microsoft (MSFT) remains the top "strategic vendor" of large companies, but Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon.com (AMZN) and Red Hat (RHT) will make gains over the next three years, thanks to their cloud computing prowess, says a Goldman Sachs survey of chief information officers.
Microsoft, with its Office suite, is the leading provider of business productivity software, which is widely used in corporate data centers. Microsoft has also expanded into cloud computing. Amazon Web Services, part of e-commerce giant Amazon, is by the far the biggest provider of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), but Microsoft is No. 2, and Alphabet-owned Google No. 3. In the IaaS market, customers rent computers and data storage via the internet cloud.
Large companies continue to shift business workloads to cloud service providers, the Goldman Sachs survey says. Large companies have shifted 11% of their business workloads to public clouds, the Goldman Sachs CIO survey said in June, up from 6% in a December 2015 survey.
"Google and Amazon are expected to be the second- and third-most-strategic vendors in three years, despite not ranking in the top five currently," said the Goldman Sachs report.
While Microsoft is the top strategic vendor, IBM (IBM) overtook Cisco Systems (CSCO) as the second-most important provider of IT technology in the June survey of CIOs. IBM has also pushed into cloud computing.
Oracle (ORCL) and SAP (SAP) round out the top five most strategic vendors.
"In terms of being the most strategic vendor three years from now, Google, Amazon and Red Hat are expected to be the biggest gainers, and IBM, SAP, and Oracle are expected to be the biggest losers relative to their current position," said Goldman Sachs in the report.
