Forrester has announced Microsoft Azure and AWS offer customers the best PaaS experiences in its latest Wave Report.

The company pitted the world’s 11 leading PaaS vendors, including Alibaba, Amazon Web Services (AWS), CenturyLink, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Pivotal Software, Red Hat, Salesforce and SAP against each other across a range of different factors, with Microsoft and AWS’ platforms offering the best user experience across the board.

Microsoft was the overall winner, with the analyst firm praising its range of services such as database tools (referring to the Azure Cosmos DB) and integrations, with lots of support for developers via preconfigured resources that help businesses get up and running quickly.

«Overall operational tools and features are strong; Microsoft also operates a leading data-center network and offers Azure Stack for on-premises deployment,» the firm noted. «Microsoft offers a range of AI services on Azure, but only Azure ML is distinctive.»

However, there are some drawbacks to Microsoft’s platform, such as natural language processing, limitations of its function as a service (FaaS) and releasing features without the proper documentation. In these areas, AWS ranked better, putting its suite of PaaS services in second place. 

AWS also generates three times as much revenue as Microsoft’s cloud platform and offers much more to the developer community, with more preconfigured services and service bundles putting it hot on Microsoft’s tail. 

Google came in at third place, helping developers build apps quickly with its «zero-configuration infrastructure» and backing of open-source platforms such as Kubernetes and TensorFlow. it also offers a range of fully managed services, which puts it only slightly behind Microsoft and AWS.

Oracle, IBM and Salesforce were all noted as strong performers, while SAP, Alibaba, Red Hat and Pivotal were ranked as contenders. CenturyLink came in at the bottom of the leaderboard as a challenger.