Microsoft Azure top performer globally, flop performer in Australia

Stan Beer
Tuesday, 11 October 2011 17:47

Microsoft Windows Azure is once again the top cloud performer platform globally in the latest Compuware Cloudsleuth survey. However, like other offshore providers its performance in Australia is less than inspiring with much slower response times than most other regions of the world and an order of magnitude slower than the top local performer.

 

The Cloudsleuth site compares the leading cloud platforms of the PaaS and IaaS services providers around the world in terms of response times and availability.

For the second year running, Windows Azure displayed the best overall response times - an average of 5.98 sec over 30 days - shading Google App Engine (6.17 sec), OpSource (6.77 sec), Rackspace (6.88 sec), Teklinks (7.20 sec) and Amazon EC2 (7.23 sec).

The story in Australia, however, is somewhat different.

Not only was Windows Azure in Australia, operating out of Singapore, a much poorer performer than the global average with a response time of 9.84 sec for third place behind Japanese provider IIJ GIO (9.62 sec) but it was an order of magnitude slower than the top performer, local provider IT Clouds ,which clocked a lightning fast response time of 0.73 sec.

The generally slow rates of all the offshore cloud providers in Australia appears to indicate that the transcontinental channels between Australia and the rest of the world are a big enough bottleneck to give onshore Australian players like IT Clouds a significant advantage in the local market.