Cloud computing is a model for delivering IT services in which resources are retrieved from the internet through web-based tools and applications rather than a direct connection to a server. This allows companies to avoid up-front infrastructure costs (e.g. purchasing servers), as well as enabling organizations to focus on their core businesses instead of spending time and money on computer infrastructure. Worldwide spending on public cloud services and infrastructure will reach $122.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 24.4% over 2016. By 2020, IDC forecasts public cloud spending will reach $203.4 billion worldwide with Software as a Service (SaaS) remaining the dominant cloud computing type, capturing nearly two thirds of all public cloud spending.
With the world’s biggest and best attended cloud event Cloud Expo Europe having recently taken place on 15th – 16th March, we were keen to analyse the online conversation, identify the key influencers and look at what they are saying.
MAPPING THE COMMUNITY
We were very interested in seeing which brand and individuals were leading the discussion around cloud, so we analysed over 994K tweets mentioning the key words: “cloud OR cloudcomputing OR hybridcloud OR privatecloud OR publiccloud OR thecloud OR cloudstorage OR “cloud storage” OR #saas OR #iaas OR #paas” from 16th December – 17th March 2017. We then identified the top 100 most influential brands and individuals leading the discussion on Twitter. What we discovered was a very engaged community, with much discussion between individuals and brands. Below you can see a network map of the online robotics conversation with the number one influencer Ian Moyse at the centre. This map was created with our Influencer Relationship Management software (IRM). Be sure to click on the map to enjoy the full size network diagram in greater detail.
Ian Moyse –UK Sales Director at Natterbox, Board Member FAST & Governance Board Member Cloud Industry Forum
“Cloud now underpins our everyday lives, often veiled behind the scenes of a service or device we take for granted. In its various forms of SaaS, PaaS and IaaS, cloud solutions are empowering consumers and businesses to disrupt the status quo and do things quicker, faster, easier and from any device. anywhere, at any time. Cloud is becoming ubiquitous through the increase of new technology gadgets, IOT (Internet of Things) and online service delivery such as Uber, Shazam, Skype, and Dropbox. We are moving into a time where everyone is aware and concerned about Data Privacy and security and for 2017 & 2018. GDPR and Privacy Shield will be increasingly familiar terms.”
Joe McKendrick – Analyst and Contributing Editor at Forbes
“The cloud revolution has put enormous power — supercomputing power — at everyone’s fingertips, no matter what size of business, type of business, or location in the world. What’s really exciting about cloud — and associated digital technologies — is that it enables tremendous and almost unlimited entrepreneurial opportunities — not just for startups, but also for individuals and teams within large organizations wanting to try out new ideas. That’s where transformation is happening in a big way.”
Tim Crawford – CIO Strategic Advisor at AVOA
“Cloud presents the single biggest opportunity for enterprises today. Not only that, cloud provides the foundation that enterprises will need to leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT).”
TOPIC ANALYSIS
We were interested in seeing which topics were spoken of the most in the context of cloud, so we analysed tweets and blogs from the top 100 influencers and brands between 1st June 2016 – 17th March 2017, and counted the number of times various words were mentioned. In order to provide an accurate gauge of the conversation, we measured the frequencies of all the words used by the influencers in our programme, in conjunction with the keyword “Cloud”. We then applied the tf–idf algorithm to adjust for the fact that some words appear more frequently in general. These words were then weighted and made into the word cloud shown below:
It’s interesting to see topics such as “multi-cloud”, “cloud-based”, “enterprise”, “platform” and “SaaS” being frequently mentioned among the top cloud influencers and brands, illustrating the industry forecasts that SaaS is the dominant cloud computing type. Top brands being mentioned in the context of cloud include AWS, IBM, Oracle, Azure, Informatica, Google, Cisco and HPE. Also interesting to note is that AI and IoT are being frequently mentioned by the cloud influencers and brands, illustrating the importance of incorporating IoT and AI into future cloud based applications.
TOP 100 INDIVIDUALS
We looked at all the individuals engaging on Twitter to bring you a list of the top influencers in cloud. Below is the top 50, if you want to see who ranks from 50-100 be sure to download the full report by clicking the download button below.
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| Rank | Twitter Handle | Name | Company | Influencer Score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | @imoyse | Ian Moyse – FInstSMM | Cloud Industry Forum | 100 |
| 2 | @dhinchcliffe | Dion Hinchcliffe | 7Summits | 99.47 |
| 3 | @ldignan | Larry Dignan | CBS Interactive | 99.14 |
| 4 | @BButlerNWW | Brandon Butler | Network World | 93.88 |
| 5 | @BostonVC | David Skok | Matrix Partners | 88.83 |
| 6 | @DavidLinthicum | DavidLinthicum | Cloud Technology Partners | 84.43 |
| 7 | @ttunguz | Tomasz Tunguz | Redpoint | 81.42 |
| 8 | @joemckendrick | Joe McKendrick | Forbes | 77.59 |
| 9 | @nrmehta | Nick Mehta | Gainsight | 70.57 |
| 10 | @dancberg | Daniel Berg | IBM | 65.39 |
| 11 | @markrussinovich | Mark Russinovich | Microsoft Azure | 55.49 |
| 12 | @tcrawford | Tim Crawford | AVOA | 55.42 |
| 13 | @joeweinman | Joe Weinman | joeweinman.com | 52.28 |
| 14 | @gigabarb | Barb Darrow | Fortune Magazine | 52.24 |
| 15 | @scottgu | Scott Guthrie | Microsoft | 50.89 |
| 16 | @holgermu | Holger Mueller | Constellation Research | 50.83 |
| 17 | @angelluisdiaz | Dr. Angel Luis Diaz | IBM | 49.51 |
| 18 | @sjvn | S. Vaughan-Nichols | CBS Interactive | 47.43 |
| 19 | @jeffbarr | Jeff Barr | AWS | 46.89 |
| 20 | @rwang0 | R Ray Wang (王瑞光) | Constellation Research | 46.59 |
| 21 | @adrianco | adrian cockcroft | AWS | 43.65 |
| 22 | @nitot | Tristan Nitot | Cozy Cloud | 42.3 |
| 23 | @TamaraMcCleary | Tamara McCleary | Thulium.co | 41.43 |
| 24 | @MarkVHurd | Mark Hurd | Oracle | 40.88 |
| 25 | @bernardgolden | Bernard Golden | Navica | 36.81 |
| 26 | @billatnapier | Bill Buchanan (Prof) | Edinburgh Napier University | 36.08 |
| 27 | @EMorphy | Erika Morphy | Freelance Journalist | 36.05 |
| 28 | @pm_suzie | Suzie Prince | ThoughtWorks | 36.05 |
| 29 | @simonlporter | SimonPorter | IBM | 34.68 |
| 30 | @GordOnCloud | Gordon Davey | Willis Towers Watson | 32.97 |
| 31 | @JimHarris | Jim Harris | jimharris.com | 32.11 |
| 32 | @ValaAfshar | Vala Afshar | Salesforce | 29.65 |
| 33 | @Dana_Gardner | Dana Gardner | Interarbor Solutions | 29.37 |
| 34 | @hnshah | Hiten Shah | Quick Sprout | 28.65 |
| 35 | @Staten7 | James Staten | Microsoft | 27.87 |
| 36 | @Kevin_Jackson | Kevin Jackson | GovCloud Network | 26.58 |
| 37 | @owenrog | Owen Rogers | 451 Research | 25.37 |
| 38 | @LouisColumbus | LouisColumbus | Ingram Micro Cloud | 24.8 |
| 39 | @danielnewmanUV | Daniel Newman | Futurum Research + Analysis | 23.59 |
| 40 | @swardley | swardley | Leading Edge Forum | 23.55 |
| 41 | @dez_blanchfield | Dez Blanchfield | The Bloor Group | 22.1 |
| 42 | @Michael_Corey | Michael Corey | Corey & Associates | 22.05 |
| 43 | @bobevansIT | Bob Evans | Evans Strategic Communications | 21.89 |
| 44 | @Tech_Journalism | Rich Miller | Data Center Frontier | 21.81 |
| 45 | @ABridgwater | Adrían Bridgwater | Computer Weekly | 20.11 |
| 46 | @jeffborek | Jeffrey Borek | IBM | 19.82 |
| 47 | @ShellyKramer | Shelly Kramer | V3Broadsuite | 19.73 |
| 48 | @lmacvittie | Lori MacVittie | F5 Network | 19.41 |
| 49 | @cloudpundit | Lydia Leong | Gartner | 18.77 |
| 50 | @jsnover | Jeffrey Snover | Microsoft | 18.7 |
TOP 100 BRANDS
We also looked at all the brands engaging on Twitter to bring you a list of the top brands talking about cloud. Below is the top 50, if you want to see who ranks from 50-100 be sure to download the report to get the full top 100 list, and see who are most the influential brands in cloud.
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| Rank | Twitter Handle | Name | Influencer Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | @VMware | VMware | 100 |
| 2 | @IDCTracker | IDCTracker | 94.75 |
| 3 | @awscloud | Amazon Web Services | 69.74 |
| 4 | @digitalocean | DigitalOcean | 62.52 |
| 5 | @Azure | Microsoft Azure | 57.82 |
| 6 | @TechCrunch | TechCrunch | 56.51 |
| 7 | @IDC | IDC | 55.43 |
| 8 | @IBM | IBM | 51.87 |
| 9 | @Oracle | Oracle | 49.44 |
| 10 | @CIOonline | CIO.com | 48.55 |
| 11 | @NetworkWorld | Network World | 42.67 |
| 12 | @googlecloud | Google Cloud | 40.07 |
| 13 | @Rackspace | Rackspace | 38.05 |
| 14 | @infoworld | InfoWorld | 32.49 |
| 15 | @Cisco | Cisco | 30.8 |
| 16 | @IBMcloud | IBM Cloud | 30.18 |
| 17 | @HPE_Cloud | HPE Cloud | 28.78 |
| 18 | @docker | Docker | 28.02 |
| 19 | @cloud_comp_news | CloudTech | 24.66 |
| 20 | @SAP | SAP | 24.48 |
| 21 | @451Research | 451 Research | 22.88 |
| 22 | @code | Visual Studio Code | 22.36 |
| 23 | @MatrixPartners | Matrix Partners | 21.81 |
| 24 | @NetApp | NetApp | 21.58 |
| 25 | @InformationWeek | InformationWeek | 21.17 |
| 26 | @TheCloudNetwork | The Cloud Network☁️ | 19.79 |
| 27 | @Dell | Dell | 18.87 |
| 28 | @CRN | CRN | 18.66 |
| 29 | @TheRegister | The Register | 17.76 |
| 30 | @Computerworld | Computerworld | 17.71 |
| 31 | @Workday | Workday | 17.02 |
| 32 | @MSCloud | Microsoft Cloud | 16.78 |
| 33 | @BoxHQ | Box | 16.7 |
| 34 | @CloudExpo | CloudEXPO ® | 15.81 |
| 35 | @Xero | Xero accounting app | 15.62 |
| 36 | @cloudfoundry | Cloud Foundry | 15.02 |
| 37 | @CiscoCloud | Cisco Cloud | 14.74 |
| 38 | @ITBusinessEdge | IT Business Edge | 14.49 |
| 39 | @Akamai | Akamai Technologies | 14.29 |
| 40 | @IBMBluemix | IBM Bluemix® | 13.97 |
| 41 | @DellEMC | Dell EMC | 13.74 |
| 42 | @Informatica | Informatica | 13.47 |
| 43 | @IBMBluemixIaaS | IBM Bluemix IaaS | 13.37 |
| 44 | @cbronline | CBROnline.com | 13.23 |
| 45 | @ComputerWeekly | ComputerWeekly | 12.76 |
| 46 | @AccentureCloud | Accenture Cloud | 12.64 |
| 47 | @vCloud | VMware vCloud | 12.45 |
| 48 | @elevioapp | elevio | 12.35 |
| 49 | @CloudBlogs | Cloud 🗣OPINES | 11.97 |
| 50 | @RedHatNews | Red Hat, Inc. | 11.81 |
At Onalytica we love building these lists and want to give back to our loyal readers as much as we can. If you’re interested in other topics (such as Virtual Reality, Digital Health, Digital Marketing) be sure to have a gander on our blog or why not propose some topics to us on twitter? We also build some very cool software to manage all of these influencers. Get a free trial today by clicking the button below!
Disclaimer: As ever with these lists, it must be stressed that the ranking is by no means a definitive measurement of influence, as there is no such thing. The brands and individuals listed are undoubtedly influential when it comes to driving discussion around Cloud computing.
The PageRank based methodology we use to extract influencers on a particular topic takes into account the number and quality of contextual references that a user receives. These calculations also take into account a user’s relevance (number of tweets on topic) and reach (number of followers). If you want to learn more, please read our article that outlines influencer identification.
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TOP 100 INFLUENCERS AND BRANDS FOR 2017
Download this free report which reveals the top 100 Cloud influencers and brands for 2017