There’s been an awful lot of research in the infrastructure as a service space over the past several weeks. Well bow down now, because Gartner has released its Magic Quadrant and there’s plenty to digest.

You thought Amazon Web Services (AWS) would be streets ahead at the top of the Quadrant? You thought correct. You thought Microsoft would be the nearest challenger to AWS? You thought correct there too.

What you might not have been expecting was that AWS and Microsoft were the only two companies Gartner analyst Lydia Leong deemed worthy of the ‘leaders’ tag. A gaggle of players comprise the visionaries section: CenturyLink, CSC, IBM – noted in the Quadrant at IBM (SoftLayer) – Google and Verizon Terremark.

Several other companies reside in the niche players category; the nearest challengers here are Rackspace and VMware, whilst GoGrid and Joyent finished flat last. HP, who recently invested a billion …