Dive Brief:

• Six in 10 professional software developers say they work with AWS as a cloud platform, though Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure made "substantial gains" from last year, according to the 2021 Stack Overflow Developer Survey released Monday. 

• In addition to its current broad adoption, AWS is also the top platform developers want to work with, according to 40% of respondents. Google Cloud (23%) and Microsoft Azure (21%) rank second and third, respectively.

• ​ Just one-third of developers "dread" working with Amazon's cloud platform, according to Stack Overflow. By contrast 57% of software professionals dread working with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and another 63% say the same of IBM Cloud or Watson. 

Dive Insight:

Businesses selecting a cloud vendor to power their infrastructure weigh a number of factors before signing on. Developer preference may not immediately come to mind — but it could influence the value businesses can get out of the platform.

More finance-oriented executives, such as a CFO, might be more amenable to the platforms that represent a lower up-front cost, according to Andrew Bartels, VP and principal analyst at Forrester.

But CIOs and other tech-focused executives will also be thinking about "which is the environment that's going to be the best fit for our people," said Bartels.

More than half (57%) of developers have some or a great deal of influence with regards to technology purchases within their organization, according to the 2020 edition of Stack Overflow's survey. 

While weighing cloud vendor options, executives also consider a provider's ability to cater to their industry, a trend bolstered by the expansion of industry-specific cloud offerings from the top vendors in the field. Staffing, security and financial support can also tip the scales in one direction as a cloud strategy is coming together.

Functionality and use case fit are components that influence the vendor evaluation process, said Bartels. 

"You might choose to go with vendor A, let's say Azure, because that's what your development team prefers, even if it is slightly more expensive than AWS, or vice versa," said Bartels. "There is that tradeoff between cost versus fit and preference of your development resources."