Public Cloud Platforms

The evaluation this category was waiting for has been out since December 2024, and it is one of three scorecards Forrester published in a single wave cycle: global, China, and Europe. The Forrester Wave: Public Cloud Platforms, Q4 2024 is the global edition, nine vendors, thirty criteria, and its Leaders include a name that had never held the top rung before.

The report that is already out: The Forrester Wave: Public Cloud Platforms, Q4 2024

Principal analysts Lee Sustar, Charlie Dai, and Dario Maisto summarized all three editions on December 10, 2024, and their three takeaways are the market's current definition.

First: "The serverless-first (and often only) public cloud is here." Kubernetes and FaaS have become implementation details, with Chinese providers notably innovative in serverless machine learning and deep learning.

Second: digital sovereignty and cloud sustainability now influence European procurement, and the blog's precision is worth keeping: a region-separated provider is not necessarily a sovereign cloud vendor without the regulatory and certification compliance.

Third: "Cloud AI moves from scattershot to orchestrated services," with the evaluation focused on infrastructure firepower, AI-assisted developer tools, and generative AI enablers like retrieval-augmented generation, though many services were not yet generally available at scoring time.

Four Leaders, one first-timer

The global Wave's four Leaders: AWS, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, and Microsoft. The remaining field: Tencent Cloud, Oracle, IBM, Huawei Cloud, and OVHcloud.

Microsoft's Leader placement runs on its genAI strategy, Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Studio, GitHub Copilot Enterprise, and Microsoft Fabric, positioned for organizations seeking quick uptake of AI innovation alongside longstanding Microsoft environments, with hybrid and multicloud capabilities as the differentiators.

Alibaba Cloud took a Leader placement for the first time, with the second-highest scores in both Current Offering and Strategy, and the highest possible scores in seventeen criteria, including database, data integration and governance, container and Kubernetes services, serverless and FaaS, compute, IoT, storage, and AI development services. Forrester's citation credits homegrown models, the breadth of foundation model choices, model-as-a-service, and standout data and analytics, and positions it for Chinese enterprises and international corporations needing cloud scale across APAC, parts of Africa, Europe, and Latin America.

The first-timer is the edition's headline. The global cloud podium had been the same three names for years. A fourth seat appearing in Q4 2024, filled by a vendor winning seventeen maximum scores, is the strongest evidence in the report that the AI era is redistributing the cloud market, not just growing it.

The field's lower half tells the same story from the other direction. Tencent Cloud, Oracle, IBM, Huawei Cloud, and OVHcloud fill out the nine, and OVHcloud's presence is itself a market signal: a European sovereign-minded provider scored in the global edition means the regional pressure the Europe edition documents has pushed its way into the global field. The global scorecard is no longer only about the hyperscalers' home territory.

The other two scorecards in the cycle

The China edition, The Forrester Wave: Public Cloud Platforms In China, Q3 2024, led by Charlie Dai, scored eight Chinese providers on thirty two criteria, with Alibaba Cloud taking twenty three highest scores and the verdict that it "stands out as a public cloud platform driven by AI innovation." The Europe edition, The Forrester Wave: Public Cloud Platforms In Europe, Q3 2024, led by Dario Maisto, examined how sovereignty and sustainability priorities are creating opportunities for Europe-focused providers.

The three editions are one market seen from three angles, and the angles disagree by design. Global strength does not transfer to China's regulator-shaped market or Europe's sovereignty-shaped one, and a buyer shortlisting across regions is actually running three different procurements wearing one category name.

The honest limits of a December 2024 scorecard

The report's own caveat is the most important one: many of the AI services scored were not yet generally available at evaluation time. The scorecard grades capabilities that were, in part, still roadmaps, and the AI layer it scores hardest is the layer moving fastest.

The market has also moved under the scorecard since. Twenty months of model releases, pricing changes, and sovereignty regulation have elapsed between the evaluation and a buyer reading it now, and the tier table is best read as the market's state at the generative moment, not its current state.

The sovereignty sentence from the blog deserves to be pinned to every procurement wall: a region-separated provider is not necessarily a sovereign cloud vendor without the regulatory and certification compliance. It is the distinction between a vendor that stores data in the region and a vendor that can prove, certify, and contract for sovereignty, and the global scorecard's criteria touch it while the Europe edition is built around it. Buyers in regulated industries should read the global tiers with that gap in mind.

Three questions for the cloud portfolio buyer

Which angle are you buying from: global, China, or Europe? The three scorecards disagree about the same vendors. If your footprint spans regions, you are running three procurements, and the global tier column only covers one of them.

What was generally available when the vendor was scored? The report itself flags the roadmap problem. For every AI service in the vendor's pitch, ask for general availability dates and reference deployments, and discount everything else.

Who is your sovereignty provider, and what does sovereignty mean in your jurisdiction? The Europe edition's precision, region-separated is not sovereign without regulatory compliance, is the question to put to every vendor, in writing.

Forrester does not endorse any vendor named here, and tier placement should not be read as a recommendation to buy.

The natural next comparison is Public Cloud Platforms In Europe: this evaluation exists to draw a line most vendors blur on purpose: operating a cloud region physically inside Europe is not the same as being certified sovereign under European regulatory regimes.

The neighboring coverage here is Strategic Cloud Platform Services. Eight vendors control more than 97 percent of this market, and the Leader, AWS, is growing in absolute dollars while losing relative market share for the second consecutive year, per Gartner's own 2025 quadrant.