Gartner: Top 10 cloud storage providers

Gartner lists Amazon, AT&T, Google, HP, IBM and Microsoft among what it says are the top 10 cloud storage providers

According to a Gartner survey, about 19% of organizations are using the cloud for production computing, while 20% are using public cloud storage services.

That means there's a pretty good sized market for the cloud, and specifically cloud storage. Gartner predicted in 2012 $109 billion was spent on cloud computing, a 20% increase from the year before.

But the cloud is a big industry too, with a lot of vendors seemingly having a cloud strategy today. So where do potential customers start? Recently, Gartner released a list of the top 10 cloud storage providers, based on enterprise capabilities. Below is a description of each, based on pros, cons, strengths and weaknesses.

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Softlayer

Softlayer's Cloudlayer object storage system is based on the OpenStack Swift platform that accompanies a range of other services offered by Softlayer, including compute and CDN. Softlayer also has a storage-area network (SAN) offering and an international presence, with data center locations in its headquarters of Dallas, along with Amsterdam and Singapore. Its lack of support and turnkey deployment cycles, Gartner says, has meant that the product has not caught on wildly with the enterprise market yet though.

More information on Softlayer Cloudlayer.

Network World staff writer Brandon Butler covers cloud computing and social collaboration. He can be reached at BButler@nww.com and found on Twitter at @BButlerNWW.

Read more about cloud computing in Network World's Cloud Computing section.