Gartner’s latest ranking of cloud database management systems is a who’s who of the cloud world with market dominant players Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Google, and Oracle all sharing the most upper-right quadrant of the “leaders” category. That category also houses SAP, IBM, Alibaba Cloud, and Teradata in its lower-left section.

Parsing out that leadership fight, AWS was tops in its “ability to execute,” with Gartner citing the cloud giant’s dominance in the market and reviews praising its performance. It was also applauded for having a “better track record for availability and reliability than the other ‘hyperscale’ providers.”

However, AWS drew caution from a lack of cohesive integration capabilities tied to its bevy of options, its lack of multi-cloud focus, and potential vulnerability to more focused offerings in the market.

Oracle lacked the execution height of AWS, but it outflanked its rival to the right for its “completeness of vision.” Gartner highlighted the Oracle Autonomous Database’s strong use of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning that helps enterprises manage their database deployments, and Oracle’s ability to leverage its embedded on-premises strength to target hybrid cloud deployments.

Oracle’s on-premises strength was also noted as a challenge as Gartner cited a perceived financial and flexibility limit from customers. It noted that while Oracle has made progress in this regard by offering more options, it must continue to “work to change this perception.”

It should be noted that these two vendors also topped a recent KuppingerCole Analysts report on the market. Oracle was cited in that report as the “overall leader” in product and innovation, with AWS acknowledged with its market leadership position.

Gartner placed Microsoft just short of AWS’ execution ability, highlighting similar benefits tied to the breadth of its product offerings. Microsoft was also touted for a multi-model strategy for many of its data management offerings that help simplify deployments.

Microsoft demerits ranged from its lack of maturity in the market, with specific mention that some of its supporting services were still making their way to the market, and that cloud-based pricing was typically higher than on-premises options.

“This reflects both a lack of maturity in relation to general financial governance practices among the end-user community and a lack of cost structure standardization across Microsoft’s broad Azure portfolio,” Gartner noted.

Google’s position fell just short of Oracle’s completeness of vision, though its recently launched Anthos platform was positioned as a strength in extending that vision. The container-based platform allows customers to run their services in a hybrid cloud environment with on-premises support.

Despite that accolade, Gartner said that Google still lacked a cohesive cloud data ecosystem vision and that its support was not as robust for users.

“This could be attributable to the fast growth in Google Cloud’s customer base over the past 24 months,” the Gartner report noted. “Google Cloud has appointed new people to senior leadership roles, scaled its customer-facing support organization, and recently launched new premium support offerings, which may help.”