Paul Gaffney, Home Depot senior vice president of information technology, who also spoke at the Google event, said,
“All of us have a role as consumers to drive competition so multi-cloud is a very important part of doing that.”
Snap, the social networking company that popularized disappearing messages through its Snapchat service, recently revealed in filings for its initial public offering
that it has committed to spending $2 billion over five years to use cloud computing services from Google.
A few years ago, Hearst, the media company, was exclusively using Amazon for cloud computing,
but later added services from Microsoft and Google, said Philip R. Wiser, Hearst’s chief technology officer.
Darryl West, global chief information officer of HSBC, said at the event
that the bank used Google, Amazon and Microsoft for cloud services, noting that each company has its strengths.
That event occurred late last month when an Amazon employee entered an incorrect set of commands on a computer, unintentionally knocking
out a large set of servers in an Amazon data center in Northern Virginia and, with it, an array of online services from other companies.
In the fourth quarter, Amazon accounted for 40 percent of the worldwide market for public cloud services, compared with 11 percent for Microsoft
and 6 percent for Google, which was tied for third place with IBM, according to Synergy Research Group.
Often companies rely mostly on Amazon for cloud service, while a specific development team inside
the company familiar with Microsoft technologies will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud service.