Microsoft Azure Is Gaining Traction Among Techies

The latest data from TickerTags indicates that Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN might have more competition in the cloud services business than investors realize.

TickerTags monitors social media sites to identify trends by searching for words and phrases that appear together in social media content, such as tweets.

While Amazon’s AWS is clearly the gold standard for cloud services, Microsoft Corporation MSFT’s Azure seems to be getting a groundswell of support among many techies. The number of technology message board mentions of AWS and Azure are now roughly equal. Mentions related to Microsoft Azure are up 273 percent year-over-year so far in 2016.

Azure also appears to be picking up momentum headed into summer. Message board mentions of Azure were up a staggering 52 percent quarter-over-quarter in Q2.

Earlier this month, Goldman Sachs reported Microsoft still has a major gap to make up if it wishes to compete with Amazon for the top spot in cloud computing. In the past year, Amazon’s AWS generated $8.9 billion in revenue, annihilating its nearest competitors Microsoft ($1.8 billion) and salesforce.com, inc. CRM in terms of market share.

However, the battle for the massive cloud market is far from over, and Microsoft’s 2016 surge in popularity among the most tech-savvy critics could be a good sign for the future.

Disclosure: The author holds no position in the stocks mentioned.