Microsoft Azure Most Popular Cloud Development Platform

More than a third of active cloud developers are favoring Microsoft's Azure as their platform of choice, according to an Evans Data survey.

36 percent of more than 400 surveyed developers said have used or are using Microsoft’s Azure Cloud platform, the market research firm said. Google storage came in second with 29 percent, followed by Amazon Web Services with 28 percent.

“Microsoft was very aggressive with its introduction of Azure to the development community a few years ago and that has paid off,” said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data, in a statement.

Evans also found that more than half of all cloud developers are loyal to their platform and deploy apps in the service they develop on. 27 percent said they deploy on a different platform, while 10 percent said they use a "hybrid" model with an " on-premises element". The languages most frequently used by developers surveyed were Java with 64 percent; C++ with 60 percent, C# with 58 percent and PHP with 49 percent.

There was no information about the developer surveyed by Evans.

Wolfgang Gruener is a contributor to Tom's IT Pro. He is currently principal analyst at Ndicio Research, a market analysis firm that focuses on cloud computing and disruptive technologies, and maintains the conceivablytech.com blog. An 18-year veteran in IT journalism and market research, he previously published TG Daily and was managing editor of Tom's Hardware news, which he grew from a link collection in the early 2000s into one of the most comprehensive and trusted technology news sources.

See here for all of Wolfgang's Tom's IT Pro articles.