There is a common phrase, often attributed as a Chinese proverb/curse, “May you live in interesting times.” For those following the cloud technology space, we are definitely living in interesting times. In their latest magic quadrant report on IaaS, Gartner describes the market as still evolving and maturing. This would imply the market leadership is in flux, yet according to Gartner “AWS is the overwhelming market share leader, with more than five times the compute capacity in use than the aggregate total of the other fourteen providers in this Magic Quadrant.” I would say that makes AWS an 800lb gorilla in the room that the competition must get by. Many of those competitors could be considered 800lb gorillas in their own right. Microsoft, IBM, Google are not small companies, yet AWS has managed to create a dominant position in the marketplace.