Research bods Horses for Sources (HfS) have put 10 companies in its winner’s circle for infrastructure as a service – but Microsoft and Google are nowhere to be seen.

The report, compiled by HfS analyst Dr Thomas Mendel, is the latest in a flurry of research articles prognosticating on the market leaders for IaaS, hot on the heels of the ‘race to the bottom’ for Amazon, Google and Microsoft in storage pricing. Yet only AWS made the winner’s circle, with Microsoft in the lesser ‘high performers’ category and Google trailing behind.

In the same week that IDC analyst David Tapper found that IBM was the most lucrative IaaS vendor for US enterprise buyers, IBM has also come up trumps here in terms of execution.

Perhaps surprisingly several companies better IBM in terms of innovation, considering the amount of investment Big Blue puts into its patents arm. Cisco was considered …