Nutanix successfully challenged incumbents like EMC and Cisco by bringing the architecture of consumer giants (e.g., Google's use of commodity hardware) to the enterprise. They combined this with an Apple-like focus on end-to-end quality control by delivering their software in a hardware appliance.

Akamai leverages its historic strength in edge networking for its compute offering. By allowing customers to build and deliver applications at the edge, closer to users, they can significantly reduce expensive egress fees typically charged by traditional hyperscale cloud providers. This cost-saving angle is a key competitive differentiator.

While network effects drive consolidation in tech, a powerful counter-force prevents monopolies. Large enterprise customers intentionally support multiple major players (e.g., AWS, GCP, Azure) to avoid vendor lock-in and maintain negotiating power, naturally creating a market with two to three leaders.

While Box and Dropbox scaled with freemium models and massive funding, Egnyte took a contrarian path. They charged all customers from day one and focused exclusively on enterprise needs. This discipline, though questioned by their board and analysts, ultimately led them to leadership in the category.

Don't try to compete with hyperscalers like AWS or GCP on their home turf. Instead, differentiate by focusing on areas they inherently neglect, such as multi-cloud management and hybrid on-premise integration. The winning strategy is to fit into and augment a customer's existing cloud strategy, not attempt to replace it.

The high-speed link between AWS and GCP shows companies now prioritize access to the best AI models, regardless of provider. This forces even fierce rivals to partner, as customers build hybrid infrastructures to leverage unique AI capabilities from platforms like Google and OpenAI on Azure.

The rise of public cloud was driven by a business model innovation as much as a technological one. The core battle was between owning infrastructure (capex) and renting it (opex) with fractional consumption. This shift in how customers consume and pay for services was the key disruption.

Anthropic is making its models available on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This multi-cloud approach is a deliberate business strategy to position itself as a neutral infrastructure provider. Unlike competitors who might build competing apps, this signals to customers that Anthropic aims to be a partner, not a competitor.

Real-time AI security monitoring cannot rely solely on the cloud. Most locations lack the bandwidth to stream high-resolution video for cloud-based processing. Effective solutions require a hybrid approach, performing initial inference on-premise at the edge device before sending critical data to the cloud for deeper analysis.