Microsoft Windows Azure entered the Leaders section of Gartner Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Enterprise Application for Platform as a Service. The MQ was published by Gartner January 7, 2014.
This position is shared with marketleader Salesforce.com. The MQ in total contains 19 PaaS services.
Gartner publishes Magic Quadrants on many IT related services and solutions. A MQ provides a high level overview of available solutions in a specific market and discusses their strengths and cautions.
Gartner describes the cloud first policy of Microsoft and the agressive frequent updates delivering new features and enhancements. About every two weeks Microsoft releases new features and services.
The MQ mentions the ability for customers to run applications in-house or in Azure enabled by the mirroring of capabilities between Azure and private cloud. I miss the mentioning of using a Service Provider managed Azure based cloud. This capability is delivered using the Windows Azure Pack. This adds an additional choice for customers in location, management, costs & provider. The recent launch of Microsoft Cloud OS Network containing 25 Service Providers as member shows this additional choice.
A reprint of the Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Platform as a Service is available here.